The Spare Bedroom: A totally heartwarming, funny and feel good romantic comedy

by Elizabeth Neep

  She sure seemed to like Sam, even though they were on the rocks. If we were going through a rough patch everyone would know about it. And Sam would be living a nightmare until he bought me flowers, made me dinner and kissed me on the neck and…

  ‘Well, I really appreciate it.’ I smiled in return, going to look at the next painting, which was just under a metre wide and a metre high. I studied the fine brushstrokes of the geometric shapes – orange, yellow, red and gold in squares and shards and jagged marks. ‘All of it.’ I smiled again. She had been so cool about everything, even having me stay in the spare bedroom, in spite of it all. I took a step forward until the painting was all I could see, savouring the unfamiliar safety of immersion, a feeling like a memory I couldn’t quite recall. I actually had a job. Temporary, yes. Clipboard-holding, absolutely. But a job in CreateSpace nonetheless. The turn of events made me dizzy. ‘It kind of feels like fate bumping into Sam yesterday,’ I mused out loud before stopping myself, turning to face Jamie, forgetting for a second she wasn’t my friend. For a moment there, it kind of felt like she was. ‘Not like romantic fate, just fate, fate,’ I backtracked as she looked at me with the same bemused expression Sam had worn the day before.

  ‘I don’t really believe in fate,’ Jamie said, shaking her ponytail ever so slightly.

  ‘Of course you do.’ I shook my own head to less effervescent effect. ‘Everybody believes in something.’

  ‘I didn’t say I don’t believe in anything,’ she said, her eyes wide with wonder.

  ‘What do you believe in then?’ I asked, my voice echoing around the spacious studio.

  ‘I’m a Christian.’ She smiled proudly.

  Oh, crap. She even had God on her side.

  ‘You’re a what?’ I asked, taken aback by the thought. The only practising Christians I knew were called Mavis and Doris and had a combined age of one hundred and fifty.

  ‘A Christian,’ she repeated, looking equal parts amused and confused. ‘Sam didn’t tell you?’

  I shook my head. Maybe that’s why they broke up? Their inability to see eye to eye on the man in the sky? Sam always had to know he was right, making little room for doubt, no space between his facts and figures for something as ‘flimsy’ as faith.

  ‘No… it didn’t come up.’

  ‘I thought he must have when you didn’t question why we’d decided to sleep in separate beds.’ She laughed. ‘That usually leads to lots of questions!’ It did; it had. But not those sorts of questions. I guessed they weren’t having sex – any more. But never in a million years did I think they would be choosing not to. That Sam would be choosing not to. Sam, who I had lost my virginity to. Sam, who definitely, definitely didn’t lose his virginity to me. Sam, whose friends carelessly joked that he was going to ‘shag his way around his swim club’ after our break-up. That Sam? That Sam couldn’t be living with a girl and not sleeping with her – especially not a girl who looked like Jamie.

  ‘I, erm… I thought…’ I stuttered, losing the ability to form a sentence once again. My mind had just about made sense of their arrangement, their relatively recent separation, her moving out, my undeniable moving in…

  ‘You thought we were just friends?’ Jamie asked, turning from the painting she was now fixed on to study me, her expression open and kind. My heartbeat started to rage in my chest as I felt panic wash over me anew. They weren’t breaking up? They were saving sex for marriage? Sam was saving sex for marriage? Sam was happily dating a girl who believed in everything his own medic mind had refused to understand?

  ‘Yeah… maybe,’ I said, cautiously.

  ‘Oh honey.’ She smiled, looking down at me and putting a light hand on my shoulder. ‘We’re more than just friends.’ She smiled again. ‘We’re engaged.’

  26 September 2013 – Nottingham, England

  ‘You’re engaged?’ I could hear Austin’s voice bellow from the end of Sam’s phone even though it was glued to his face. His accent could be loud at the best of times but when Austin was drunk it was like he was trying to shout across the Atlantic. I looked across from the laptop, perched on the broken coffee table before us, next to the half-eaten Domino’s. I watched Sam laugh openly, shaking his head and replying, ‘No, dude. I said, “We’re otherwise engaged.” You know, as in busy.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I heard Austin say, before adding, ‘You might as well be. Dude, you’re whipped. It’s a Thursday night. Come out.’ Sam rolled his eyes, holding the phone away from his ear as we heard his best friend rant on. ‘You’re flipping married, bro.’ I looked at my slippers, resting on the armchair across from the stained sofa. It wasn’t normal behaviour for two students, I’d give him that, but between Sam’s shifts and sports commitments it was becoming harder and harder to spend time just the two of us.

  ‘Not yet.’ Sam laughed. ‘Mate, we might come out later.’ Sam shook his head in my direction, leaning even further into the sofa. ‘I’m just going to spend a bit of time with Jess.’

  ‘Fine dude, fine,’ Austin said in a way that suggested it was clearly not fine before hanging up. Sam leaned forwards to put his phone face down on the coffee table and took another slice of pizza, putting his other arm back around me.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want to go out? I’m happy to, you know,’ I said, already half asleep but still not wanting to be the reason Sam’s friends would give him shit.

  ‘Seriously, Jess, there’s no place I’d rather be.’ He leaned in to kiss my shoulder tenderly.

  ‘What a line.’ I laughed, pulling away.

  Sam grabbed me back, engulfing me in a hug. I feigned a struggle but we both knew he’d already won. ‘You love it. Anyway, you cancelled your painting class for me; the least I can do is say no to that fool.’ He laughed at the thought of whatever Austin would be getting up to now. I didn’t want to know. ‘I still feel bad you had to cancel. It’s just hard because I have swimming and shifts…’ Sam’s sentence trailed off as he kissed my shoulder again.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. More than. ‘I haven’t seen you properly all week.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Sam looked apologetic. ‘They said this year would be a step up, but I never thought it would be this hard.’ I looked across at him, his familiar face a little more worn than the fresh-faced fresher I’d met the year before. ‘Is the class the same time every week?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘But I think I’m going to stop,’ I continued before he could interrupt. ‘It’s been hard enough finding time to see each other as it is. Something’s got to give, right?’

  ‘But didn’t that Art Today contact sort them out?’ Sam shook his head. ‘I’d give up swimming for the team but…’ He looked down, tracing his thumb as it stroked my hand.

  ‘You’ve just got captain. I know, you can’t.’ I squeezed his hand a little tighter. ‘It’s okay; I’ll leave the painting for now, maybe next year.’ I smiled, confident and content.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his face falling at the thought of me going without. ‘To be fair, I’ve seen your art. I think you’d be teaching the teacher a thing or two.’ He sat up a little straighter, reclaiming his hands to run his fingers through his already messed-up hair.

  ‘Yeah, if it’s the right thing, the opportunity will come round again. Things always do.’

  Sam smiled, rolling his eyes at the words we both knew I was thinking: it’s fate.

  I savoured the rare silence of Sam’s student house, before the boys blustered back in. Sam liked to pretend he enjoyed their antics as much as the next ‘lad’ but I could see his inner overachiever starting to strain. ‘How long until everyone gets back?’

  ‘Long enough.’ Sam grinned, only two words needed to shift us from friendly to flirtatious.

  ‘Three minutes?’ I opened my mouth mockingly. Sam laughed, reaching under my top. I could feel each kiss stealing my words, silencing my thoughts but before drifting into him completely, I had to ask. ‘Not yet?’

  ‘Huh?’ Sam replied, breathing
a deep sigh of lust or surrender.

  ‘You said “not yet”. Earlier on, when Austin said we were married, you said “not yet”.’ I looked into his increasingly hazy eyes, unable to guess his response.

  ‘Well yeah,’ he replied, pushing himself up on his forearms – surrender, not lust. When I wanted to talk there were few things that could stop me. ‘Obviously, we’re going to get married one day, aren’t we?’ he continued, entirely unfazed.

  I pushed myself back to sitting to look across at my boyfriend, frozen and perplexed. I studied his expression, not a hint of sarcasm or irony about it. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Sam continued, sitting up, increasingly baffled by my comatose response. ‘I’m not proposing. We’re in uni for Christ’s sake, but you know… one day… I thought, that maybe…’

  I propelled myself forward to kiss him full on the mouth. He laughed through the kiss.

  ‘Well, one day, when you ask, I’ll say yes,’ I promised, talk of swimming and shifts and painting classes all but forgotten. ‘But no best man’s speech,’ I said, raising an eyebrow at the thought of Austin spinning a yarn in front of all four sets of our grandparents.

  ‘And no kids,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Too messy and they always stop half of the wedding breakfast from being able to drink.’

  ‘And no slow dances,’ I chipped in, torn between Biffy Clyro and Jason Derulo.

  ‘And no church,’ Sam added. ‘Just me and you. On a beach somewhere far, far away.’ He smiled, his fingers finding their way to the flesh of my sides once again.

  ‘Like Sydney?’ I asked, relaxing into his touch.

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled, softly moving his hands up my bare back. ‘Just like Sydney.’

  Chapter 10

  2 August 2020 – Sydney, Australia

  A hopeless waiter made hopeless moves on Jamie.

  ‘You look like that model,’ he swooned, topping her wine glass up to dangerously generous proportions.

  She turned to me with an apologetic shrug. ‘I get that a lot.’ Oh, please.

  She put the drink to her pristine lips, her fourth finger bare as the day she was born. Engaged people were meant to wear rings. It was a sign, a warning. And after waiting so long for mine, I’m afraid her ‘I was taking it on and off so many times for work that I just bring it out for special occasions’ line wasn’t going to cut it. Not for me, at least.

  I looked around the restaurant. Under a canopy, fairy lights illuminated every corner of the outdoor terrace. I’d love to say it was too much but it was perfect; no doubt a favourite haunt for the soon-to-be newlyweds. I looked around for Sam. Where the hell was he? My stomach felt sick at the thought. I forced my attention back to Jamie, torn between avoiding the punch of her flawless profile and desperately wanting to work out which model she looked like. After our chat in the gallery, neither one of us had mentioned her divine revelation but talk of the wedding now flowed as freely as the waiter’s overly generous, you’re-never-getting-in-her-pants-mate wine. I had nodded and smiled and smiled and nodded whilst Jamie had explained in excruciating detail how Sam had led her to the top of a hill, got down on one knee and finally asked for her hand in marriage. ‘What about the rest of you?’ I had joked like the weird uncle at a family gathering, just trying far too hard to break the ice. But the ice, like my heart, was cracked. Jamie had forced a laugh before carrying on, informing me that they had been dating for two years and were getting married in two months. Two months. As in eight weeks. As in fifty-six short days.

  ‘That’s all a bit… quick,’ I said, barely loud enough for her to hear me, reluctant to open my mouth too wide for fear that I may throw up on her orange patent heels, which I was pretty sure cost more than my monthly London rent. She smiled, a stupidly attractive smile, sparkles lighting up her eyes. Of course, it didn’t feel quick. They’d decided to wait until the wedding to have sex. Sam must have had the two slowest years of his life. Meanwhile I had had the three slowest years of mine. Three years. Three. I knew I should be over him by now. I’d thought I was. But we were together for five. He was the love of my life. I thought I was the love of his. I looked across at Jamie and tried not to draw comparisons. We had had it all planned out, our whole future, both our names scribbled on every single page. Ours wasn’t how love stories ended so I guess I refused to believe we had.

  And then it had started again, the universe bringing us back together, until…

  ‘Over here, honey.’ Jamie ascended to her modelesque height, whilst the waiter stared on agog. Sam smiled broadly, canines and all, as he walked across the restaurant toward us, turning the heads of one or two of his own admirers as he did. Overwhelmed and at a loss for words, I rose out of my seat to give him a brief hug, one of those awkward near-embraces where you don’t know if the other person is going in for a hug, one kiss or two. It was easier when we just kissed – oh, just like that, I thought, as Sam planted one on his perfect girlfriend’s mouth. Sorry, fiancée; his perfect fiancée’s mouth. I slumped back into my seat and tried not to think about how he used to do that to me.

  ‘How was CreateSpace?’ Sam took a seat, a sip, and looked over at me eagerly, figuring our conversation would flow on seamlessly from lunch. When was he planning to tell me?

  ‘Good,’ I said shortly, looking him dead in the eye. Sam sat up a little straighter in his seat.

  ‘It was great, thanks, Bub,’ Jamie said over the background noise, reaching a hand out to rest on his tanned forearm for all – and especially me – to see. ‘Jess is going to use her time before Art Today to help Tim out with exhibition.’ Sam sent a quick glance my way. And he thought he was the productive one out of the two of us. Here I was using my fake spare time before my fake new job to help out my fake new friend, Jamie.

  ‘That’s amazing, Jess,’ Sam said, trying to read my deadpan expression. ‘Thank you.’

  He looked at me again and I refused to meet his eye. They still thought I was trying to do them a favour, like my free time would have just been spent mooching around the city.

  ‘Wanted to use my time well,’ I muttered, insinuating that any time spent hanging around his apartment wouldn’t be, a little dig that I’m sure didn’t even scratch the surface.

  ‘Well, that’s great!’ Sam recovered after a long silence, his words characteristically a little too late, reaching his hand out to rest on mine. I looked down at it for a moment, hating it for being on mine after all his omissions but not knowing if I wanted it to move.

  ‘CreateSpace is a pretty big deal in your world, right?’ he added. My world. I guess it was, until I’d let my world become him. ‘And it’ll definitely help Tim out.’ I hoped to God it would help me out too. I needed to get some money and get out of Sam’s stupid flat. ‘He’s pretty useless without Carlo.’ And I’m pretty useless without you. ‘New jobs, new cities, man, I can’t keep up!’ Sam joked. That made two of us. ‘I guess we need some bubbles to celebrate?’ he continued, removing his hand from mine to return it to Jamie.

  ‘I think we do,’ I said flatly, resting bitch face now very much active. Jamie no sooner looked around the room before the waiter was on her like a rash, pouring champagne into three narrow flutes.

  ‘To new jobs.’ Sam raised his glass in the air.

  ‘To new friends,’ Jamie joined in, reaching her delicate fingers high. Friends.

  ‘To new engagements,’ I said, a smile on my face. I turned to look at Sam, whose own face was a picture: stunned and scared. He should have been the one to tell me and his expression told me he knew that too. He should have told me the second he’d seen me, the second he’d brought me back to his place. He’d had so many opportunities to tell me the truth. Yes, I had lied too, but never about him, never about us. Jamie took a sip and placed her glass down, as Sam did the same. I took a big fat gulp and placed my glass down with a thump that said: don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m pissed, Sam.

  ‘I’m just going to pop to the bathroom,’ Jamie said and rose to her feet to
give both me and Sam another look at her toned thighs. ‘If the waiter comes’ – unlikely without her there – ‘I’ll have the usual.’

  15 December 2012 – London, England

  ‘The usual?’ I muttered the question under my breath. Sam placed his strong hands to rest on my hips on and smiled. ‘At Soho House. He has a usual?’ I demanded as best I could through a whisper. He shrugged, hands still on my hips. The ‘meet the parents’ charade was nerve-racking at best, never mind when it turned out your boyfriend’s parents were stinking flipping rich. I looked around the gilded room, at the plush velvet sofas that lined it and the ornate picture frames hosting paintings I could barely even dream of owning, never mind painting. And this was just the corridor. ‘I mean, I guessed you didn’t grow up in squalor.’ I looked my boyfriend up and down again, his hair pushed back and his face closely shaved. He had told me his parents were both doctors, but had neglected to mention that his dad was an important oncology consultant who made regular visits to the city – so regular that Soho House considered him a close personal friend. Not to mention (and Sam certainly didn’t) that his mum was a visiting lecturer at University College London in her spare time – like doctors had all that much time to spare. ‘You could have told me to wear something nice,’ I went on. Sam’s firm grip never wavered. He held my gaze just as steady; I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh. ‘I wanted to make a good impression!’ Was I being dramatic? Maybe I was being dramatic.

  ‘Who cares if you impress them or not? You impress me, okay? If anything, they should be trying to impress you, soon-to-be award-winning artist.’ Sam tilted my chin up to kiss him, all annoyance melting at the mention of my favourite accolade: I still couldn’t believe that they had actually liked my portfolio. ‘And my mum’s already invited you to Christmas carols; that’s a pretty big deal in their world.’ He laughed.