Still Thinking of You by Adele Parks Read Free Book Online

Lloyd chuckled at his own wit. Mia chose not to answer. ‘Is she clever, funny, what? Give me details,’ demanded Lloyd.
    ‘It’s always hard to say when someone is marrying one of your oldest friends, isn’t it? I’m not sure I can be objective. I mean, who is good enough for your best friend? I don’t know much about her. She went to a very ordinary university, one of those that’s really a poly, so she’s no genius.’
    Lloyd wondered whether going to an ancient university was the best thing that had ever happened to Mia. It seemed to be the only thing she ever measured anyone by. Lloyd decided to move the conversation along.
    ‘Rich told me that they are taking off to the Alps to get married. Just the two of them, and that they are planning to pull a couple of witnesses off the slopes. Sounds cool.’ Lloyd was thinking about his own very big and very formal wedding, several years earlier. He hadn’t thought it was possible to argue about the thickness of the card of an invitation, but apparently it was. ‘I think they’ve made a wise move having a no-fuss wedding.’
    ‘Do you?’ Mia wasn’t so sure. She’d hoped for a big bash, where everybody got drunk and sentimental. As it wasn’t to be, she had concocted an alternative plan. ‘Listen, it’s just a quick call to run through the details of the stag weekend.’ Mia hoped she sounded breezy and efficient, rather than tense and a little desperate.
    ‘Rich never mentioned a stag weekend.’
    ‘It’s a surprise. I’m arranging a stag holiday for Action
    Man.’
    ‘ You are?’
    ‘I am one of his best friends, even if I am a woman,’ said Mia, hotly irritated. She’d met with the same surprise not only from Jase, but also Ted, so she was particularly alive to any implied criticism. ‘I thought that you, Action Man, Scaley and Big Ted and I could all go away for a couple of days, just like old times. I’m planning something wild in Dublin.’
    ‘You and four guys?’
    ‘I suppose Kate might tag along, but we often did that at uni.’
    ‘And you’re thirty-three and still unmarried, I just don’t understand it,’ joked Lloyd.
    ‘Ha-fucking-ha,’ snapped Mia. She was stung because she’d had the same thought herself, a thousand times. ‘So how does the second weekend of November sound?’ Mia took a deep breath. She hoped she sounded nonchalant. She had been living on a knife edge for the past few months. She’d planned everything so carefully. The timing of the stag do had to coincide with her cycle and, of course, getting Scaley Jase on the trip was paramount, but she had to give the necessary attention to the demands of everyone’s diaries.
    Yes, she’d considered sperm banks; she’d investigated them quite thoroughly. Rationally, she knew that one could trust the medical notes that read ‘6 foot 2 inches, MENSA member, with blue eyes and no medical conditions’, but how could you be 100 per cent sure? Mia constantly had visions of the Elephant Man, without the IQ and with more congenital deficiencies. Besides, the cost of artificial insemination was extraordinary, and she had to start watching the pennies now. She was unlikely to be flush after she had the baby and gave up work.
    She had considered getting pregnant via a one-night stand, but there was always the danger of the unknown there, too. A guy might seem like a rational, intelligent, pleasant enough guy while he’s eating pizza, but what’s to say that in reality he’s not an axe-wielding psycho? And if she took the time to get to know the one-night stand, then that, too, would lead to all sorts of complications. By definition it was no longer a one-night stand if she actually knew the guy. It would be a relationship. The donor might suddenly decide he was in love with her (men that she wasn’t particularly attracted to were always doing that). Then he might decide that he wanted to help bring up the baby.
    There was no chance of that with Jason.
    Mia couldn’t see