A buzz comes from beside me and a screen lights up, Steve's name flashing up white on a blue background.
We need to talk. Any chance I can come round?
I bite my lower lip, lips you had pressed against drunkenly just last weekend. Lips I'd happily let kiss me. I'd felt a shot of passion at being in his arms, something that I hadn't felt for a long, long while. We'd been all over one another for most of the night, hands getting bolder and bolder, until I left the bar and headed back home, albeit reluctantly.
Back home to my husband. Back home to one of Steve's best friends.
Steve was an usher at our wedding, and has been my husband's friend since he was 18. We had been friendly, nothing more over that time. Sure, I got him stealing some looks when we shared a holiday with him, back when I was a little leaner, but nothing more than usual. Now I'm carrying a little more weight around the hips - perhaps that was the reason why Jake, my husband, didn't seem as interested anymore.
It was what had surprised me the most about that Saturday night where we had innocuously met, innocuously danced and then not so innocuously kissed. I'd dreaded the next morning, the guilt that came from seeing a message from Steve and the worry that he might end my marriage. But he was surprisingly cool, telling me it was a drunken mistake. I of course concurred with him and thought that was that.
That was until the following Saturday.
I picked up the phone and quickly typed out a message, with just one word.
Why?
I got an immediate response.
Because I feel bad and its best we do it in person. Please?
Jake is out at the football and will be gone all afternoon and I know you know that. But then it's not like you can come around to speak of these things when Jake is here. So I send a message telling him to come around - best to be open and honest with one another, right? Clear the air and make sure we both know it was a mistake...
So why do I feel so nervous?
The door thuds twice and I leave the large sofa and come to the door, seeing his outline through the frosted glass of the window. Even that mosaic of colours can't hide his handsomeness - tall, jet black hair and somehow perpetual five-o-clock shadow. And those blue eyes... even my drunken haze remembered how they looked me up and down a week ago.
"Hey" I say with a small smile as I open the door, leaning against it more casually than I feel, and he responds with the same easy smile.
"Can I come in?"
My answer is to walk away and back into the living room. The front door shutting and the sound of shoes being taken off tell me he's followed me in.
When Steve enters I'm already sat back down and turning the TV off. He takes a seat, eyeing the wedding photo above the now black screen as he takes a seat beside me.
"Jen... last week..." he starts, fingers tented and leaning forward awkwardly. "I don't know what came over me. I've never done anything like that. And to Jake, too."
I shake my head at him and look down myself. "Look, we were both drunk and I'm just as much to blame. Fuck Steve, I married him. Made vows. It's not like you were up there marrying him."