Opposites Attract

What Happens In London ,Stays In London

Selene made the obligatory round of the tables, greeting people and thanking them for coming, having a brief catch up before moving on after promising they would hang out more later. She had provided a list of people that she wouldn’t mind being included in Penelope and Kayo’s plans for the night but it seemed that some had slipped in that she hadn't been aware of. In between the few witchy friends that were there, including Tanzi, their officiant for the handfasting portion of the wedding, some of her more bearable cousins and two old school friends whose bachelorette parties she had gone to so felt she had to return the favour, there were a few vaguely familiar faces that turned out to be friends of friends and one that appeared to be friend of the groom.

“Did you invite her?” Kayo side whispered to Penelope and Selene. Both ladies shook their heads.

“Must have been John,” Selene whispered back. Her friends made sympathetic faces although if they were for herself or John she wasn’t sure. “Welp, guess I had better go and say hello.”

“Need backup?” Kayo offered.

“Nope, I’m good, I’ll behave, I can be nice, she’s coming to the wedding so her being here isn’t an issue. Just give it five minutes and then create a distraction.”

“Not a problem,” Penelope agreed. “Godspeed.”

“Thanks,” Selene muttered as she made her way over to where Ridley sat at a table with a couple of Selene’s friends.

“Ridley! Nice to finally meet you in the flesh,” Selene bent down to give her a hug that seemed to startle the other woman, who didn’t so much hug back as sit there stiffly and pray for it to be over. Well, Selene thought, as they say, that's a you problem. If she was going to hang out with Selene and her friends she’d have to get used to spontaneous displays of affection, witches were a touchy feely lot in general and often grabbed without thinking, although she’d warned them all to leave John alone when they met him.

“Nice to meet you too, thanks for including me. It’s a long time since I’ve been to London so it’s great to be back.”

“That’s awesome, we should hang out some time and take in the sights. It'll make a change for me to play tourist, it's always fun to visit places that I never normally have time for."

"Really? Well, yeah, I guess that sounds good."

"Well, I just wanted to come over and say hello and thank you for coming, I hope you enjoy yourself but you’ll have to excuse me for now. Penny has just ordered the first round of champagne and I’m needed at our table but I’ll catch up with you later and we’ll have a nice chat, OK?”

“Oh, OK, sure, I guess I’ll see you later then,” Ridley reached for her tea cup again and took a sip, watching as the other woman left as quickly as she had appeared.

Selene felt a little bad to have dipped out of the conversation so quickly, but honestly she was still quite pissed off after hearing the details of Ridley's rescues and had been as polite as she could be. She'd be having words with her darling Spaceman when all this was over, she didn't appreciate the lack of warning that she'd be having an extra guest.

She slid into the chair that had been left for her and gingerly picked up the cup Penelope indicated. She took a tiny, experimental sip, just managing to hold in the face she badly wanted to make. It was one of those fragrant teas that tasted like you’d just drunk perfume. She didn't like tea at the best of times and this certainly wasn't one of them. In short, it was disgusting.