Mie and Sarah

Mandy quickly set me straight over the idea that I would have a limited role in the planning of her wedding. It was our first Wednesday night drinks as a group after our return from Botswana and engagement announcement where she laid down the law with all of us.

"Right you lot, our wedding is a little over four months away and we have work to do. We're already behind since the Best Man and Maid of Honour decided to be rude and take a 3-week trip to Africa and get engaged. I want everything to be in place by the first week of August so I'm not stressing about little details over the last month. So I would like it if all of you can pitch in."

Sarah ever supportive of her best friend, agreed before I could protest, "Don't worry, Mike and I will do everything you need us to. I will make sure he and the boys earn the right to take Adam on his stag do."

Between the two of them, they became a force of nature. Our Wednesday night drinks sessions became planning meetings and our weekends were lost to the various tasks that needed to be done. That first weekend, I was kicked out of my house so the girls could get all the invitations ready.

Being so closely involved in the planning of someone else's wedding gave me and Sarah an idea of what we didn't want for our wedding. Mandy wanted a big traditional church wedding with all the bells and whistles. Neither Sarah nor I were particularly religious and were opting for something a lot smaller. This worked to our advantage because as Mandy dragged us around various wedding fairs and other jobs, we were able to start putting some building blocks in place quietly. Mandy didn't mind as long as we ensured that her wedding was the priority and our ideas were so different that there wasn't any overlap.

She did challenge me about not getting married in a church, one afternoon while the girls using my living room to look through wedding magazines while I provided tea and coffee.

"Mike, why are you so against church weddings?" She asked me

"I'm not. But I'm not a believer, and I'm not going to say my vows in the name of a deity I don't believe in. Anyway, I can't get married in a church."

"What do you mean you can't get married in a church?"

"Mandy I've never been christened or baptised, thus I have never been accepted into a church, therefore I can't get married in one. I know people do anyway but I don't think that's right. I may not believe but that doesn't mean I don't respect religion and their beliefs, I'm not going to be intentionally irreverent," I replied simply.

"But how can you stand up for me and Adam in a church if you're not a believer?"

"There is no rule against it, I'm not the one saying the vows, as long as you two believe then I am happy to support you."

She looked at me in disbelief before turning to Sarah in support, "Don't look at me bridezilla," Sarah interjected quickly. "I don't want to get married in a church either, I just need an officiant, our friends, family and Mike standing opposite me."

Mandy stared at both of us like we were crazy, before dismissing me, "I suppose I can live with that if it's what you two want. Now, Mike, I know it's your house but can you fuck off to the pub so I can discuss dresses with my bridesmaids?"

Thankful for the release I left the house planning to spend several happy hours watching end-of-season football, talking pub nonsense and not thinking about wedding plans. Well, that was the plan, but it appeared Sarah had made plans for me as not long after I had taken a seat Adam and the boys joined me.

"What are you lot doing here?" I asked as they sat down next to me.

"Your fiancé suggested we come and sort out a few things while you sat in the pub so my fiancé will stop complaining that we aren't doing enough," Adam replied with a smile on his face.

"What do we need to sort out, you have a venue, invitations have been sent, hell the catering is even being provided by the venue. At this point, all that needs to be done is décor and dresses and they don't want our help for that," I replied not happy at my afternoon being ruined.

"I know all that mate, but you know Mandy isn't going to be happy until it's all settled. How about this, we still need to pick out our wedding suits and stuff, let's meet next Saturday and get it out the way?" he suggested.

Knowing it was pointless to argue and that it would Mandy happy, which in turn would make Sarah happy I agreed. Tom and Harry, were more keen on discussing actual important issues like Adam's Stag weekend as the girls hadn't given us any time to discuss it.

We spent the next couple of hours arguing over the various merits of different places. I advocated for Newcastle, it was popular for stag weekends, relatively cheap and I knew it well from my Uni days. The boys overruled me on that one, saying it was my town and we should save it for my stag do. In the end, we agreed to a weekend in Dublin.

When I got home Sarah was watching TV and waiting for me with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

"There's my fiancé," she greeted as I came in. "I missed you. I hope you didn't drink too much with the boys, I want to share a bottle of wine and snuggle.

"You okay love?" I replied.

"Yeah, it's just a lot you know. I wasn't joking when I called Mandy a bridezilla."

I nodded my head and took my seat next to her, before opening the wine and pouring us both a glass, "Okay Babe, here's your wine, tell me how Mandy rattled you."

She took a deep breath, "It's not too bad, it's just trying to organise everything in such a short time frame which wouldn't be a problem if she didn't want everything to be so big and perfect. In our group chat, we always need to check and/or look at something for her. Honestly, we've given up arguing with her and just agree with everything she says now."

"Look, we're nearly there, the boys and I are going suit shopping next weekend, so that's one more thing off the list, and we've agreed the stag do. I know that's not important in the scheme of things but it's another box ticked off."

"That's good," she replied before looking at me seriously. "Mike, I guess I'm kind of afraid I'll start acting like her when it's our turn. Apart from our first few days back, we haven't really taken the time to properly think about or celebrate our engagement because we've been concentrating on Mandy and Adam. I just feel like our relationship is taking a backseat at the moment."

I took a sip of my wine while I considered her confession, "Babe, you're already nothing like her. We don't want a big fancy wedding. Also, we have a lot longer to plan. Now as for our relationship taking a backseat, I can't accept that. So why don't you order some pizzas while I change and we'll have a mini-date night right here. We can even watch one of your rom-coms and just snuggle."

After that night we both made a point to find little pockets of time for us to reaffirm our relationship. We still made sure to give our friends the time they deserved but we went back to making our relationship the priority. Mandy wasn't happy at first when Sarah stopped replying to her texts after 8 pm, but they had a chat about it at one of their dress fittings and slowly she calmed down and went back to being the friend we loved. She even took time off wedding planning to help us celebrate our birthdays, which incidentally were just a week apart. I had actually met her the week after her last birthday.

Slowly the weeks passed and we managed to have everything in place by Mandy's self-imposed deadline. This was useful as the first weekend in August was the date Sarah had decided was our anniversary and she was not allowing anything to interfere with our first anniversary. Per her instructions, I booked a table at the Dancing Dragon, the restaurant where we had our first official date for dinner and a pizza lunch at the Medley. She watched me book the pizza lunch as she wasn't prepared to take a chance on my friendship with the manager to guarantee a table.

There was one thing that was non-negotiable, no presents. She had a very stern conversation with me about it in the days leading up to our anniversary.

"Babe, I'm serious no presents or surprises. You fucked that up at Christmas, and we've just had our birthdays. You've given me more than enough this year, you've taken me to Paris, Cape Town and Botswana, and we got engaged. I don't want anything except to have the weekend alone with you celebrating our first year together."

I took her words to heart, we had achieved a lot over the year, and to me, an anniversary was more about sharing memories than gifts. It didn't stop me from buying her an expensive bouquet of summer flowers though.

I had been making us a nice anniversary breakfast when the doorbell went off. Sarah came into the kitchen ready for a fight.

"Mike, what the fuck are these?" she snarled at me.

"They look like a nice set of flowers love, let me find a vase," I replied turning to face her.

"Did you forget the no presents rule? Or do you just think you can ignore me?"

"They're not a present for you love. Yes, they were addressed to you, but there is no card. It is

our

anniversary and I thought it would be nice for

us

to have a nice set of flowers to liven up the kitchen," I answered.

She gave me a strong look, "You're a prick you know that. If you didn't look so cute trying to squirm out of this with that shitty excuse, I'd be throwing these in your face. I'll find the vase, you finish breakfast."

Despite our rocky start, we spent the morning discussing our plans for the day. Sarah was going to spend the afternoon with the girls and meet me at the restaurant. It was her code that she wanted to surprise me with her outfit, and I was happy to play along.

I got to the restaurant early and was sipping a gin and tonic when she came in. Much like a year earlier, she was dressed to make me speechless. She owned the room from the moment she walked in her tight purple dress. Her makeup was light and complementary. We exchanged a polite kiss before I helped her into her bar stool.

Our dinner had none of the emotional conversations of the year before. This was definitely a celebration of how far we had come in the little over a year we had known each other. She was radiating happiness, so much so that she forgot to be annoyed with me when the staff brought out a special congratulatory dessert and a bottle of champagne with sparklers.

I tried to lead her to the nice cocktail bar we had in our area but she was adamant we went to the pub instead, we were recreating our first date after all. We found our friends waiting for us. They didn't make a big deal about it being our anniversary, they were just there to celebrate our happiness. We managed an hour before Sarah made us go home.

At home Sarah led me to the living room instead of the bedroom, she settled me on the sofa before heading out to the kitchen. She returned with two glasses of what appeared to be brandy and coke, remembering one of our first shared memories together as a couple.

She made a point of sitting on my lap instead of next to me.

"Thank you for the last year. Every day since I met you, you've found a way to make my life better," she said kissing me deeply.

I broke the kiss but held her tightly to me, "You don't have to thank me, this has been the best year of my life, we've got the rest of our lives to try and make every year better than the last," I replied with another kiss.

She looked at me seriously, "Mike, do you really think we'll ever have a better year than this?"

"Well my love, that's the goal, isn't it? I don't know but it'll be fun trying. Anyway, at least the next year will be better, some of our best friends are getting married in a few weeks. We're getting married. How can the next year not be better?"

She didn't respond except to give me another kiss, before sliding off my lap to pick up our glasses. Handing me my glass we didn't share many words, just happy to enjoy the moment together. Slowly our drinks finished and wordlessly she went and refilled our glasses. She was silent for a minute when she came back.

"I can't believe how much I have learned to love you in just a year. I was so broken and scared of love and yet it only took me a month to fall in love with you, and now imagining a life without you is the most painful feeling I can think of."

I had no response so I just smiled and pulled her into me while playing some music we both liked as we drank our drinks. When we finally made it to bed, what we shared was slow and sensual. I took my time to appreciate the lingerie to match her dress and stripped her slowly before allowing her to return the favour. We took our time to feast on each other before I slowly sunk into her depths. At no point did she turn desperate or needy, we were both content to absorb the moment, savouring the love and intimacy we had for each other. We quietly came together before falling asleep, very few words were said, they weren't needed.

The next morning I woke to an empty bed, before I could get disappointed I heard music coming from downstairs. Slowly I made my way downstairs and found Sarah wearing the shirt I had worn on our date. She was living in her own world making us breakfast, much like the first time I had seen her like that, I was entranced by her happiness and the carefree way she moved as she cooked. Finally, she noticed me and I received a bright smile before she poured me a coffee and returned to making our breakfast.

Over pancakes, she explained herself, "You deserved it, I'm always the one to wake up and find you gone." She gave me another smile before continuing, "Seriously as much as I wanted to wake you up, we have to finish our anniversary weekend if we'd woken up together we wouldn't leave that's how much I want you right now."

I just laughed at her, "Babe, we cleared the key part of the date, everything from now is just a bonus. Let's go back to bed."

She laughed and threw her napkin at me before returning to her meal. Slowly we made our way through the morning sharing little jokes while cleaning up the kitchen. An hour before we had to leave to make our booking, she made her way to the bathroom begging for a shower before we had to leave. Twenty minutes later I heard her call to tell me the shower was free, I found her sitting naked on our bed drying her hair when I realised she had picked out clothes for both of us. Most of them were innocuous but I noticed two new identical baseball caps that weren't in my collection.

Sarah caught my confused look, "Hah, you little arsehole. I knew you wouldn't be able to help yourself and surprise me for our anniversary. I'm always stealing your caps, this way we get matching ones when it's just us."

I laughed at her before responding, "Okay babe, maybe we should do the same thing with a few hoodies and then maybe I'll get to wear mine."

She laughed back at me, "That's such a great idea, I get to double my hoodies, I get new ones plus more of yours to steal."

Sighing at the obvious reality of that statement, I took my robe off the hook and went to get my shower.

As we walked up Port Meadow to the Perch, Sarah asked me about my favourite memories of our year together. I had to think about it for a while, it was hard to pick, but I eventually had an answer.

"I think it was the first night after we became official, we just stayed up all night and enjoyed each other's company. We had only known each other for like 3-4 weeks but even then I knew I was besotted with you."

She looked at me with complete adoration before giving me her response, "That's one of my favourites too, but honestly it was the night you did the Cha Cha Slide with me. I know it barely counts because we weren't together yet, we hadn't even had a date yet - and yes I'm counting our movie nights as dates. You barely knew me, we had only met once before but you were prepared to go out of your comfort zone for me. Yeah, you played a little hard to get but you still did it just because I asked and you wanted to make me happy. That's when I knew I wanted to find out if we could be something."

We stopped to share a small kiss before continuing on our walk. We had a great afternoon before inevitably ending up in the pub so I could watch the cricket. I wish I could say the cricket was good but it wasn't, I didn't care because I had the love of my life with me. She was so cute holding my hand as I watched, pretending to be interested in what was going on even occasionally commenting. I watched the old boys in the pub give me amused looks at her comments, but I didn't care.

When we got home, we settled on the sofa and watched Star Wars while drinking more wine and just holding onto each other. We had taken the next day off of work so we weren't concerned about being drunk or hungover. At that point, sex was the last thing on our minds we just wanted to enjoy each other's company. We made it to 5 am having gotten through the first 6 films before we got to bed. It was a perfect weekend.

Before we knew it, Adam and Mandy's wedding was upon us. The night before the wedding Mandy and Adam's parents booked out our local pub for all the guests and particularly out-of-town visitors to get together. As the best man, I knew it was my job to network and get to know as many of the guests as possible. Sarah looked stunning in her little black dress and accompanied me the entire night. As the party came to a close, Mandy and Adam, started arguing with us. The boys were spending the night at our place while the girls were going to spend the night at the hotel. They wanted Mandy to come back with us for a few hours with the promise she would leave in good time to be ready for the wedding.

Sarah wasn't particularly sympathetic, "You wanted all this traditional shit, now you have to live with your decisions. I'm not happy either about spending the night away from Mike, but I agreed because it's what you said you wanted. What happened to a girls' night drinking bubbles in our jammies?"

Adam looked at me for a reprieve, I softened slightly and gave him what they wanted, "Look, go into the garden, I'll lock the door, you have 30 minutes, then I'm dragging you out of there."

Sarah gave me a funny look as I called the rest of our friends over with the instruction to keep everyone out of the back garden.

Everyone understood what I had done, and did not comment. Sarah waltzed away to the bar and came back a couple of minutes later with a devious grin on her face. She flashed me the key to the disabled bathroom, "Come on if they get a quickie so do we." Without another word, she grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the bathroom.

Sarah wasted no time losing her knickers and bent over the sink presenting herself to me. Instead of following her lead, I pulled her back up to me and nuzzled her neck while I slipped my hand between her legs and began to finger her gently. I used my other hand to cover her mouth when she began to moan. Slowly I felt her getting more desperate, knowing we didn't have much time, I bent her back over the sink and sunk into her in a single stroke. It was hard and fast and we both came quickly. I went to grab some toilet paper to clean her up, but she stopped me and instead used the knickers that she was holding before slipping them inside my jacket pocket.

"There you go Baby, a present. New kink unlocked, semi-public sex." With a brief kiss, she unlocked the door and went back to the party. I took an extra minute to clean up before joining her.

What I received leaving the bathroom was a room full of knowing looks, and deeply blushing Sarah who maintained a defiant look on her face as she stood at the bar ordering us more drinks. I used the time to discreetly open the door to the back garden. I had a good idea of the blind spot Adam and Mandy would be using, they were quiet so they must have heard me coming.