Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift

Author:Bethany Clift [Clift, Bethany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529332148
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2021-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

It seems unlikely that I, someone who can panic at the sight of a long escalator, should have such a strong determined streak, but I do. When I make up my mind about something then that is it. I am all in. All the way.

And so it was with James and me. I was all the way in. Love, marriage, baby in the baby carriage.

I should probably have checked with him that he felt the same way.

But they never do have that moment in the romantic novel or movie do they? There’s never a scene where the couple write To Do lists and check they match.

The first throes of love are too heady and exciting to be adult about your needs and expectations. Your needs and expectations at the beginning are sex, laughter, booze, more sex, maybe some food a few times a week, and then some sex again.

Then, if you make it through those first few months, ‘I love you’.

And by then it’s too late to go back and clarify exactly what it is you love and what you want.

You just have to hope that, by some miracle, you both want the same things at the same time.

I thought that if I made James happy then he would magically know how to make me happy in return, like in the movies, like how my parents were. So, I never explained to James what my expectations were, and therefore, can’t blame him for not living up to them. He never knew that I thought moving in together so quickly would mean that we would get engaged, get married, and have kids at the same pace.

He couldn’t have known that I needed these things to happen, and happen quickly, so that there wouldn’t be space in my life or mind for me to dwell on the fact that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t as happy as I had hoped, living my mum’s romantic ideal.

But here I was, thirty-one years old, five years into a mature adult relationship, and no marriage or kids in sight. Not even an engagement ring.

We, like many others, were on the treadmill of life. Work, food, sleep, booze, going out, holidays, birthdays, Christmas, New Year. An endless wheel of endless small moments of joy and sadness that make up a life. A good life. A normal life. A safe life.

But I wanted more. I needed more. I needed proof that this had been the right decision. I needed to be able to go to my mum and tell her I had done it, I had found the true love she had always wanted for me. I needed to wave my engagement ring at Xav and tell him he was wrong: James wasn’t boring, he wasn’t the wrong choice for me, he was right, we were right, and we were happy and we were going to be together for ever.

It was like a video game; do well at one level and then move to the next. I just

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