‘Only because I loveyou.’
The words vibrate against me, tickling my lips before they’re parted by his tongue. It slides in slowly at first, lightly caressing my own before delving deeper as his hands slip around my waist. I lose myself in the feeling, body writhing in his firm hold as heat rises in my blood. His hands roam the surface of my dress and another moan escapes me, but he catches it in his mouth, making the corners of his lips curl even more.
‘I love you, too.’
His hands travel south, caressing my hips before scooping me up into the air in one swift move. I gasp, wrapping my legs around him as he twirls me around and places me atop our chest of drawers.
‘We shouldn’t.’ The words are breathy and soft and lost in my gasp as his lips touch my neck. ‘I need to be downstairs.’
‘Tell me to stop and I will,’ he whispers, teeth grazing my ear as his hand lightly cups me, sending a new wave of tingles down my spine. ‘Just say the word and I promise to go away. . .’
I grapple at his shirt, all sense a thing of the past. The silken tie slips through my fingers to the floor, and I reach for his buttons, working as quickly as my hands will allow.
Then we hear it. A knock, and a loud voice that follows.
‘We’re coming in, make sure you’re decent!’ It’s Kimi.
The door swings open and less than a second later she walks in with Devi by her side, the two of them shielding their eyes. Raina walks in behind them holding an intricately iced cake. It’s beautiful– the kind of cake you’d see on a vision board,myvision board to be precise, the one I made at twenty-five.
I squeal, jumping down from the furniture. ‘Girls! You really didn’t have to! We bought food, we have a cake.’
I take in the swirls of blue and white icing that frame small cursive piping.
For Maddison
Here’s to being thirty, flirty and thriving!
A single candle sits in the middle, flickering gently and lighting the three eager faces behind, urging me to blow it out. I close my eyes before blowing with all my might, no wish needed. I have everything I could want right now. They all clap and cheer, Aiden coming up behind me to give me a tender kiss on the temple.
‘So, when you said you’d come over to help prep. . .’ I say.
‘It was all a ruse!’ Devi finishes for me, unveiling a large gift bag from behind her back.
‘We couldn’t let you turn thirty without an FGA pre-party– come on, now, Mads,’ Kimi tuts, producing a knife to slice the cake.
‘Sent you up here to “rush Aiden” so we could light the candles,’ Devi adds, before turning to him and scowling. ‘When we told you to distract her, this is not what we meant.’
He rolls his eyes at her faux-disapproving glare.
‘I’ll be downstairsactuallyprepping for tonight, then. You ladies enjoy your pre-party,’ he says. ‘First round of guests were told to be here in about an hour, so I’d say you’ve got a solid two.’
The door shuts behind him and all eyes focus on me, the glow from their smiles placing me under the spotlight. They break into the worst rendition of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ that I’ve ever heard, complete with an awful yet confident three-part harmony and synchronised twerk circle. By the time they’re done, there’s no air left in my lungs to thank them. All of it escaped my system as I belly-laughed my way through their performance.
‘I love you guys,’ I finally manage, as they grin in response and embrace me in a four-person group hug.
‘Thirtieth and a housewarming all in one day. You must have been pulling your hair out,’ Kimi says.
I smile. ‘Honestly, this was all Aiden. I’ve been so busy with work that he’s done all the heavy lifting.’
‘Really?’ Raina asks. ‘But there’s all these little touches– the staggered arrival times for family and friends. The matching outfits? It’s so. . . you.’
‘I guess I really have rubbed off on him in more ways than one,’ I say jokingly.
At first, I worried that dating and working so closely together would be a recipe for disaster, but I quickly learnt that when it comes to us there can never be too much of a good thing. We did our best to keep the work talk to the office, and only everoccasionallyblurred the lines with a few late-night office dalliances. It turns out that Evie was right from the start– when we work together, we are magic. Together we’ve conjured the highest conversion-to-sales from events numbers that Evie and the Evielution board have ever seen.
I expected to feel sad or scared or something more daunting when Aiden told me he was planning to leave Evielution, but those feelings never came. I was overcome with pride as I watched him finally take a chance on his real dream. One year down the line and Aiden’s non-profit has started to gain a name for itself, and I am now the solodirectorof events at Evielution. Together, we make a comfortable(ish)-enough amount to rent our first place in London.
The girls hand me the gift bag and wait impatiently as I unwrap the seemingly never-ending assortment of gifts. There are things for the house: vintage plant pots with accompanying plants, gold-rimmed wine glasses, framed pictures of us, the cushion covers I drooled over while window-shopping with Devi, a label maker, a set of gorgeous glass Tupperware with an array of separators to break them into compartments. I try to insist it’s too much, but they all shut me down and say that nothing’s toomuch for such a big milestone. Then they point me towards the final present in the bag, wrapped up neatly in soft tissue paper.
