by Lindsey Kelk
‘No one is trying to get your attention,’ Adrian shouted as Sumi bustled off through the doors to the kitchen with her middle finger up in the air. ‘So,’ he said brightly. ‘Where’s the booze?’
‘In the man cave,’ I told him, pointing at the smoky fug clouding up the windows of the cigar lounge. ‘Creepy Dave has whisky.’
His face fell to the floor. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Unless any of you brought a flask?’
John held out empty hands and Patrick groaned.
‘Then it’s carrot juice smoothies or baby bunny punch, pick your poison,’ I told them. ‘The carrot juice smoothie isn’t bad but I’m pretty sure the punch is just loads of Um Bongo.’
‘Fuck yeah,’ Adrian cheered, disappearing to the drinks table.
‘Are you going to tell me all about this incredible party I missed last night?’ Patrick asked. I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or John but, since John didn’t look especially chatty, I took the baton.
‘Sumi had a spare ticket so I went with her,’ I explained, rushing over my words. ‘And John was there. Only we didn’t know until the end because it’s in the dark. That’s why it’s a dark disco, you dance in the dark. Anyway, it ends at nine so I was home really early which was really great and we should go together next month, you’d love it.’
Patrick took a moment to let my word vomit settle.
‘What kind of music is it?’
‘They play everything,’ I answered. ‘Pop, disco, dance, everything.’
‘Might not be my kind of thing,’ he replied. ‘But I’m glad the two of you,’ his eyes flicked between us, ‘had fun while I was slaving away over my edits.’
‘We weren’t there together, I mean, we were both there but we weren’t there together,’ I insisted before realizing I was probably insisting a little too much. ‘But maybe we can all go together next time.’
‘I’m going to get a drink,’ John announced, walking away without asking if anyone else wanted anything.
‘I’m sorry, I know he’s part of the gang now and everything but I do not like him at all,’ Patrick said quietly, curling an arm around my waist. ‘Does he think all that brooding passes for a personality? He’s hardly Heathcliff, is he?’
‘Brooding was very sexy when I was a teenager but really, it is a textbook abusive relationship,’ I babbled, happy to pull the conversation in another direction. ‘Heathcliff is an absolute monster. We had a psychiatrist on The Book Report, reappraising Wuthering Heights as a romantic novel. It was fascinating. Heartbreaking if you love the book, but totally fascinating.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ he replied. ‘What’s The Book Report?’
I blinked and smiled. ‘The radio show I worked on in DC?’
‘Of course, I’d forgotten the name,’ Patrick said, pretending to choke back a sob. ‘You’ll have to send me the link to that one.’
Closing my eyes, I leaned into a kiss that quieted my concerns. All those nights I’d lain awake dreaming about him kissing me, why ruin it over a few forgetful moments?
‘Thank you for coming today,’ I said, wiping my lipstick from the corner of his mouth. ‘It means a lot to me.’
‘Just promise me you won’t put me through this if we have kids,’ he whispered as Lucy heaved herself out of her carrot-adorned throne and waddled towards us. ‘And whatever you do, don’t let them drag me into that cigar lounge.’
I mentally recorded his words, storing them in the safest corner of my brain so that they could be debated endlessly in the group text as soon as possible. I pressed my hand against my stomach to calm a strange feeling I wasn’t entirely sure I liked.
‘Lucy,’ Patrick let go of my hands to take Lucy by hers, kissing both of her cheeks and matching her beatific smile with one of his own. ‘I don’t want to be rude but you’ve put on a few pounds since I last saw you.’
‘Twenty-nine and a half,’ she said with pride. ‘I tried not to gain too much but, you know.’
‘You look radiant,’ he replied, instinctively choosing all the right words. Lucy beamed over at me and I smiled back. ‘When my sister had her first, she was tiny until her thirty-third week and then she blew up like a balloon. A gorgeous balloon but, you know.’
‘What? Your sister had a baby?’
Patrick’s sister was the most militant member of the anti-baby brigade I had ever encountered in my life. The first time I’d met her, she asked me if I wanted kids and when I said I didn’t know, she screamed in my face that I should be sterilized before I ‘panic-spawned’ in my late thirties. Such a charmer.
‘Two, actually,’ he replied. ‘Curtis is almost three and Manix just had his first birthday. I’d be amazed if there wasn’t a third before long, she’s dying for a girl. I’ve never known anyone take to motherhood like she has, she’s a natural.’
Quite the turnaround for a woman who wore a T-shirt that said ‘Feed Don’t Breed’ to her brother’s birthday dinner four years ago.
‘We haven’t told anyone our names,’ Lucy said, letting slip the light giggle she reserved for the opposite sex. ‘They’re top secret.’
‘You haven’t told anyone?’ Patrick replied, his eyes big and blue. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Dave made me promise I wouldn’t,’ she said, fanning herself with a cardboard lettuce leaf. ‘And you know anything I tell one of them immediately works its way around the entire group.’
‘You could tell me,’ he offered. ‘I swear I’ll take it to my grave.’
‘She’s not going to tell you,’ I said, somewhat stuck on the fact his sister had spawned. ‘It was eight months before she told me she’d lost her virginity.’
‘That’s hardly a secret now, is it?’ Patrick said, glancing down at her protruding belly. ‘But I understand. Baby names are sacred. I was the only person who knew my nephew’s names until they were born and I never told a soul.’
Maybe you should have, I thought to myself. Could have spared them eighteen years of schoolyard bullying.
‘Ohh, Dave would kill me but I am dying to get it off my chest,’ Lucy squeaked, looking around the room for potential witnesses. Apparently I didn’t count. ‘You’re sure you won’t tell anyone?’
Patrick crossed himself and leaned in as she wrapped her fingers around his ears.
It was unreal. Two weeks ago, she would have pushed him under a bus as soon as look at him and now she was about to confide her super special secret baby names to Patrick bloody Parker.
‘I might go and get a drink,’ I said, rolling my eyes as they gasped and giggled at each other.
‘I’ll take a whisky if you’re going in there,’ Patrick called as I walked away. ‘Thanks, Ros.’
‘“I’ll take a whisky if you’re going in there”,’ I parroted as I let myself into the cigar room, immediately choking on the thick, Cuban fug. It was every bit as awful as I’d imagined it might be. Leather recliners, tall bookcases, a poor woman in Mad Men cosplay, tasked with cutting and lighting the cigars, who looked about ready to throw herself through the window. I hoped she was being well paid.
‘Ahoy there, Ros,’ Creepy Dave crowed from his oxblood throne. ‘What are you doing in my lair? Husband-hunting?’
His assembled minions all guffawed while looking me up and down. Their wives must be so proud.
‘I’m sorry, I appear to have walked into 1952 by mistake,’ I replied, pouring a small glass of whisky and shooting it straight back. Bleurgh. It was incredible that you couldn’t smell this hovel in the main room, Sumi must have rented every air purifier in London.
‘We’ll let you stay,’ Creepy Dave’s brother, Weird Dean, said. ‘But only if you sing us a song.’
I took another swig of whisky before turning to face him.
‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you’re an arsehole, shut up.’
‘Was that a haiku?’ asked a voice in the corner. It was John, perched on a ledge by the bookcase. My lips parted to speak b
ut my throat seized up at the memory of last night and everything slowed down for just a moment. His body against mine, his arms around me. And then I remembered he was married and I had a boyfriend and the world came hurtling towards me fast.
‘Not quite,’ I said, thinking for a moment and counting the syllables on my fingers. ‘That would be, roses can be red, violets are often blue, shut up you arsehole.’
‘I’m impressed,’ he replied, showing off that downturned smile of his while the rest of the menfolk went back to discussing I really didn’t care what. ‘Let me have a go. How’s this? Last night was very weird, how can I apologize, I fucked up. Does that work?’
‘Couple of syllables off but the sentiment is there,’ I said, choking on a fresh plume of smoke as Creepy Dave puffed out. ‘You don’t have to apologize, I should apologize. I apologize. Apologies.’
The dimple in his left cheek made an appearance as he smiled.
‘How come you’re on the whisky?’
I looked at the glass and realized my hand was shaking.
‘Desperate times?’
‘Desperate measures,’ John finished. ‘Would you like to get some fresh air?’
With watering eyes, I looked back into the main room to see Lucy and Patrick still deep in conversation, Patrick talking and Lucy staring at him, positively rapt.
‘OK,’ I said, following him out the door and into the gardens. Patrick wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t like him cancelling on me the night before either.
It was another hot day. The notoriously reliable weathermen were still promising that the humidity would break soon and we would get an almighty downpour to test my father’s shed roofing skills. I made a mental note to sleep in my cagoule for the next couple of nights.
‘Did you have a good time last night?’ I started as we stepped off the path and onto the lawn. Keep off the grass signs be damned. ‘I mean before we saw you. And after we saw you, obviously, just generally, did you have a nice night—’
‘Ros,’ he said, cutting me off before I could talk myself off a cliff. ‘You did know it was me, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ I exclaimed, walking with all my weight on the balls of my feet to avoid sinking through the soil in my spike heels. I was aerating it, they should be grateful. ‘Of course I didn’t, I would never.’
‘What, because of Patrick?’ John asked with a dark look.
‘Yes but also because you’re married,’ I said, lowering my voice as I looked back into the Carriage House. ‘I wouldn’t do that to Patrick or your wife, it’s not fair. If you’re not happy then that’s for you to work out bu—’
‘What did you just say?’ he interrupted again. ‘My wife?’
‘Will you stop doing that?’ I sighed, moving further away from the party. ‘Don’t butt in while I’m talking, it pisses me off.’
He followed me across the lawn, his long legs catching up with me too quickly. ‘I’ll stop interrupting you when you start making sense. What are you talking about, my wife?’
‘The giant blonde,’ I replied, stretching my hand high up over my head. ‘The really pretty woman from the bar, the one you’re married to.’
‘Oh, that wife.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked a stone as he nodded. ‘You mean the one I divorced two years ago?’
I looked back at him, mouth agape.
‘You missed that part of the story, did you?’ John asked, combing his hair out of his eyes. His forehead was already damp, it was so hot out. ‘So you probably didn’t get the bit where she was cheating on me then refused to give up her half of the business in the divorce because her dad gave us half the startup money. So now I have to work with my ex-wife, on the businesses I built up from nothing.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, allowing my weight to fall back into my heels, anchoring myself into the ground. Everything suddenly felt unsteady. ‘I’m sorry.’
He gave a dignified sniff and stared off into the distance while I took in this new information, adding it to my Facts About John pile. I already knew he worked hard and could be funny when he wanted to be. I knew he was a bit too tall but he was handsome and had quite nice hair. He was blunt and a know-it-all but he was kind and generous and caring when it mattered. And I knew that when we’d danced, I’d desperately, desperately wanted him to kiss me which made no sense, because … Patrick.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said when we had both been quiet for altogether too long. ‘Camille said she was “the wife” so, obviously, I thought … I didn’t know about the rest of it.’
‘Really must get Camille to add “ex” into her title,’ he muttered. ‘Force of habit, she’s known her for years.’
‘She didn’t seem that keen,’ I added and John showed a hint of a grin. ‘It must be really hard for you, to have to work with your ex.’
‘Well she gives about as many fucks about the business as she did about our relationship,’ he replied, before shaking his head at himself. ‘But I cope. I’ll be able to buy her out someday. Not all of us get as lucky with our exes as you did.’
He began to walk on again and I prised my heels out of the recently watered grass, trying not to break my ankle in the process.
‘Do you want to get back together with her?’ I asked, trotting after him. I was starting to feel too warm once again in my Zara midi dress. Seriously, I should have burned it after the first time I wore it but I was still short on wardrobe options and would be until I got my first proper paycheck.
John looked at me over his shoulder and laughed out loud. ‘Kate? Christ, no. We never should have got married in the first place. We weren’t right for each other from the start but we were young, I was so sure she was the one. You know what they say, when you wear rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags are just flags.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘People don’t change, you know, no matter how much time you give them. You just start to lower your expectations until, eventually, you’re on the floor.’
John moved underneath a big oak tree. I stopped a little way away, just outside of the tree’s shadow, and squinted up at him.
‘That’s not true,’ I murmured.
‘I’m not talking about your boyfriend,’ he said stiffly.
‘Yes, you are,’ I replied. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t expect Patrick to change, I don’t want Patrick to change. I want things to be exactly how they were before.’
‘But you can’t turn the clock back, Ros.’ He shook his head sadly and scratched his nose. For moment, I thought I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes but in the next moment, they were gone. ‘Trust me, I’ve tried.’
‘You’re not me, you don’t know,’ I said firmly. It was true, it was true, it was true. I had everything I wanted, everything I’d longed for. Patrick, my friends, my job.
‘Ros, what’s going on?’ John stretched up to wrap his hands around an overhead bough. ‘You’re upset.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I answered as I snapped a leaf from one of the low-hanging branches, following its veins with my fingernail. ‘Why would you say I’m upset?’
‘OK, not upset,’ he replied. ‘You seem angry. I’m not like Patrick. I don’t play games, I’m not clever with words and I don’t say things I don’t mean.’
‘You’ve met him twice,’ I reminded him, my temper beginning to flare. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I was angry. ‘You don’t even know him.’
John let go of the tree and took a step towards me. ‘And does he know you?’
I crunched the leaf in my hand.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that when you’re on your own you’re funny and interesting and kind and I want to know everything about you. But when he’s there, you’re awkward and weird and always deferring to him,’ he said, coming closer. ‘If I had to choose, I think I preferred it when we first met and you were just rude.’
‘I wasn’t rude when we first met,’ I replied, too heated to hear him. ‘I was embarrassed. You were –
doing what you were doing, after all.’
‘I was referring to the part after that but good to know you haven’t forgotten,’ he muttered, eyes shifting awkwardly towards the sky. ‘I don’t like him, Ros. He’s rude, he’s pretentious and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.’
‘Thank fuck no one’s asking you to go out with him then!’ I yelled, shocked at the fire in my voice. ‘And he does care about other people, he cares about my friend and he cares about me.’
But as the words came out my mouth, my conviction trailed off. Did Patrick care about me? As much as I cared about him?
‘Right, if he’s so brilliant then why are you standing out here, talking to me, instead of sitting in there and listening to him?’
I looked up at him, one, maybe two steps away from me, dark hair falling in front of his dark eyes that were more hazel than brown in the sun. I heard the sound of ragged breath and realized that it wasn’t coming from me. Or at least, not only from me.
‘Did you know it was me last night?’ John asked quietly.
‘No,’ I answered honestly, my anger seeping away. ‘Did you know? That it was me?’
He replied with a nod.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about you,’ he said, stepping closer.
I searched the grass for any response he might accept and that I could live with. From the moment I’d left Sumi to the moment I’d finally fallen asleep, I hadn’t thought about anything else. And when I closed my eyes, it was John’s face I saw in front of me, not Patrick’s.
Neither of us said a word, neither of us moved an inch.
Even though we weren’t quite touching, I could feel him through the heavy summer air. Last night we’d been pressed together, hip to hip, heart to heart, but he felt so much closer now. His hand reached for my face and I felt the very tips of his fingers graze my cheek.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, breaking away and taking one small step backwards.
Then another, then another.
‘I’m really sorry, John.’
He opened his mouth to say something but, before he could, I bent over to take off my shoes, turned back towards the Carriage House and ran.