Realisation dawned slowly for Katie, then suddenly came in a rush.
She was sat at her place in her older sister's wedding reception, bracketed on either side by good looking, pleasant but dim men that, like her, were in their mid-twenties and that her sister (or more likely her mother) had sat next to her in a forlorn attempt at match making. But she let their conversation wash over her while she ate her food, because she'd realised that He was there, at the wedding.
Tom.
The man who had, in one single, transformative night, changed how Katie saw sex forever.
The man who had opened her eyes to the possibilities of what sex could be like, the man who had made love to her and fucked her again and again.
The man who had meant that Katie had fallen in and out of relationships over the five years since, no partner ever able to come close to what he had given her in a magical 12 hours.
He was here. At the wedding. In the band, playing jazz music for the meal. Sat just the other side of the room.
Five years older, but she couldn't see much difference. In his mid-thirties now, he was still as stacked as ever from what she could see of the shape of him under his shirt. Maybe a few more lines around the eyes, but he looked good still.
As the buzz of happy conversation filled the room, she was focused on only one thing... remembering Tom, and what had happened five years before.
Their one night together had been one of those chance encounters, a set of circumstances never to be repeated.
Her bus being cancelled, the rain, him happening to drive past and offer her a lift home, her parents being away for the summer, her sudden crush on him having seen his band play the weekend before. Without any of those one things, it would never have happened.
But those things all did happen, and that night had been amazing. After some time spent getting to know each other they had gone for a swim in her parent's pool, and everything had happened from there. He'd made love to her on the lawn next to the pool, and that had been the start of a night of sex, sex and more sex. And orgasms... so many orgasms. Even five years on she still blushed to remember that night.
All of Katie's boyfriends up to that point had been nice, straight laced, and as she realised that night boring in bed. Tom was the opposite, an incredible, considerate lover but a bit of a bad boy, someone who openly slept around with the yummy mummy brigade in their commuter belt town, and had a somewhat mysterious history to put it mildly.
What Tom had done for her that night had left an indelible mark, and in some ways she'd never been able to move on.
The next day she'd gone to work as usual at Tom's coffee shop for her summer job, and that day had been long... Tom had been nice to her, he had been for the weeks that followed until she went back to university, but had kept it at that. It had been clear to her, without anything being said, that that night was a one off and wouldn't happen again. In some ways she was glad as he was trouble, but in others... she didn't want to have had the best sex of her life by the age of twenty. She'd have loved a repeat.
Less comfortable the next day at work had been Mark, the nice guy and colleague that she'd been sort of seeing over the weeks before. When he'd come over to chat to Katie during a lull she'd been unable to make eye contact, the guilt she felt at having slept with Tom the night before and having done things with him that Mark could only dream of too much for her.
Things between them fizzled out pretty quickly from there, Mark being too nice to actually confront her or ask outright, but pretty clearly suspecting that she'd met or slept with someone else. They'd remained cordial with each other, but whatever there had been between them had gone.
She'd had boyfriends since then, but none had lasted more than a few months. When she went back to uni she had eschewed dating other students and instead had a string of brief relationships with non-students in her university town.
Then, when she graduated and started work in London she'd avoided dating for a while, instead enjoying a series of one night stands (although 'enjoy' wasn't necessarily the term for some of those encounters).
And then, she'd spent six months falling for a married, much older colleague and that had got messy... what had started out as a fun thing rapidly got difficult when emotions got involved, and it ended suddenly despite having given her the closest experience to Tom yet.
In the aftermath, at the age of 24, Katie had realised that she'd spent four years since that night with Tom trying to recreate the magic, whether through looking for another bad boy, having one night stands, or having a relationship with an older man. But none of them did the trick, and she realised that none of them might ever... Tom had been a combination of all those things and more.
So... she'd settled down. Had met a nice guy, a friend of a friend, harmless but kind and considerate, as well as good looking. Things had been going well, he'd met her parents, they liked him.
But then, on her 25th birthday, she'd tried to get him to give her what she'd craved for five years in bed, to do even a bit of what Tom had done for her. For him to take her passionately, to fuck her, to have hot, raunchy sex all night long.
He just couldn't do it. He couldn't even pretend. And so, six months before her sister's wedding, she'd found herself single again, still pining for someone that could give her even a bit of what Tom had given her on that magical night.
And then there he was. Tom, playing just on the other side of the room. The man who she'd barely gone a day without thinking about in the last five years. Back, here, almost within touching distance.
Play it cool, she thought to herself. But, she also realised, don't play it too cool. Because if Katie didn't at least speak to him before he left she knew, without a doubt, that she'd never forgive herself.
Forcing herself to focus back on the conversation, she made small talk for the next half hour, laughing along at some lame jokes and trying to get into the swing of things. She knew that to the two men sat either side of her she would be something of a wedding fantasy... single, attractive, and what man didn't want to be able to say that they'd ended the night with one of the bridesmaids, the bride's sister no less?
But, Katie thought to herself, little do they know... she knew at that moment that she only had eyes for one man that day, and it was the man sat playing jazz over there, not either of those two.
As dessert was cleared away, the band stopped playing and left the room. Katie suddenly worried that she'd miss her chance to speak to Tom as usually the speeches followed straight after, and she couldn't possibly miss the speeches at her sister's wedding.
She felt her heart race a little as there was the usual clink of a knife on a glass and the best man stood up, but then relief. "Ladies and gentlemen, speeches will start in 15 minutes time," he announced. "And you're not going to want to miss what I'm about to tell you all about the groom." He had a wicked grin on his face as he said it, and Katie could see her new brother-in-law squirm slightly at the prospect while some knowing laughs came from around the room.
"This should be good..." laughed one of the groom's friends on their table.
Katie stood up and smiled. "Excuse me one moment, I don't want to risk missing this!"
