by Marina Ford
“So all this,” he says, screwing the lid back on to the now-empty tube, “for our anniversary?”
“I wanted it to be nice. It didn’t quite come off as I’d planned it.”
He smiles. “No, I suppose it hasn’t.”
“Why did you have to invite Kieran?” I ask. “It’s our anniversary. Why didn’t you tell him?”
Harry sighs. “I did tell him. Before you arrived and when I’d first bumped into him, I told him I was here for our anniversary. And your job.”
“Why didn’t you tell him to bugger off, then?” I demand.
“That would have been mean.”
“No, it wouldn’t! If you didn’t want to say it, I’d have done it for you! Gladly!”
He tilts his head a little, like he wants to say, You do astonish me.
“Can’t you understand why I would feel a little awkward about it?” he asks. “We agreed to be friends, after . . . you know what. And I wanted to be true to my word. Besides, it wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was horrible. He flirted with you the entire time!”
Harry raises his eyebrows in surprise. “So what? Don’t you trust me?”
I grumble something indistinct, and he shakes his head again.
“Come on, let’s not talk about him anymore. You’re right, it’s our anniversary and he shouldn’t be a part of it. Can I give you my present now?”
“Oh!” In all the chaos of planning, I didn’t even consider that Harry had to get me something as well. “Yes, please!”
He laughs at how easily distracted I am, then reaches for his bag again and withdraws an envelope. It has a heart drawn on it. I tear it open and inside I find two plane tickets. To Jamaica.
“Woah!” I cry. “Are you joking? When?”
“That’s the bad news,” he says apologetically. “They’re for September. I can’t take too much time off until then because of the merger.”
Harry’s agency has recently been absorbed by a bigger agency because of a fuckup by Malcolm, who managed to drop a really big client. The downside of all this was that Harry was no longer top dog, but only one of many team leaders in a much larger corporation, and thus couldn’t decide his own workload or schedule anymore.
I stare at the tickets hungrily. It’s my dream to go. Of course, being mostly broke, as I usually am, this was never anything I thought I would do until much later in life.
“This is— It’s amazing! Thank you!”
I want to hug him, but I’m conscious of my slippery state, and so only kiss his lips.
“Hand me my bag,” I say.
He reaches down under the table, where I’d tossed my rucksack.
“Open the back pocket.”
He reaches inside, as instructed, and withdraws the two decorative boxes Freya made for the bracelets. They’re grey cardboard paper and are tied together with a blue and white ribbon.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“Open them.”
He opens one, then the other. The bracelets, each in its own box, look shiny and new, and somehow more precious now that Harry is holding them.
“I designed them,” I say. “And then had them made for us.”
“They’re lovely, thank you,” he says, trying his on. “Oh, those are our initials, aren’t they?” He examines the clasp.
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” he says again.
I feel suddenly sad. When I asked him to reach for them, I wanted to give him a present because he gave me one, but seeing the bracelet on his wrist now, I remember what they signified when I designed them. These aren’t just any bracelets. I’d never give something like it to anybody else.
“Bollocks,” I say, crossing my arms.
“Hm?” Harry looks up from examining his bracelet. “What did you say?”
I shake my head.
“Are you upset?” he asks, worried. “I really love it. Who made them?”
“Freya Nancarrow.”
“She’s very good. I’ll remember to thank her.”
“It was supposed to be different,” I say. “It—it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
“What wasn’t?”
I point at myself—my naked body all shiny and streaky from the cream he’s rubbed into me—and the room in such a mess.
“I was going to take you to that restaurant myself. And then I was going to make us go on the Ha’penny Bridge, only of course Kieran had to ruin it.”
He frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“The bracelets!”
“Well, what does it matter about the restaurant and the bridge?” he says. “We’re here now, aren’t we? And we did go to the restaurant, and we went to see the bridge.”
“Yeah, we did,” I say, petulantly. “We saw the bloody bridge, and it looked amazing, and I was going to ask you then, but Kieran had to shoot his stupid mouth off . . . Not that I’d have done it with him looking on, anyway. Stupid oaf. Don’t they have a law on how big a guy can grow? He shouldn’t be allowed on bridges, if you ask me. He’s a hazard to people’s safety, that’s what he is.”
“What?” Harry’s shoulders are shaking. “What on earth are you saying? Ask me what?”
I can’t look at him. Lying back, I grab a pillow and put it over my face.
“Joe, what are you doing?” he asks, in a mixture of exasperation and amusement. “Joe?”
The pillow absorbs the sounds when I say the words: “I want to marry you.”
It’s out. In the worst possible way, it’s out now. I breathe in through the pillow and hope to suffocate and die.
Then the pillow is torn away from me, and Harry, serious, wide-eyed, looks down at me.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t toy with me,” he demands, suddenly urgent. “What did you say?”
I can’t meet his eyes. “I said, ‘I want to marry you.’”
For a moment he just stares at me. I’m lying flat on my back, fully naked, and it’s the weirdest proposal ever, officially. If it even is a proposal. I didn’t ask a question, after all.
“The bracelets,” I say, because Harry is speechless, “they were supposed to be an engagement gift. On Ha’penny Bridge. After dinner. It was supposed to be romantic. Even Chloe said it would be. And Siobhan cried like a baby when I told her. I was going to look fit, in a suit and with a new haircut. It was going to be epic, I promise. And if you like it, we could do it again. Maybe Paris this time. I’ll find out where Kieran is going to be and we’ll go in the opposite direction to that. My hair could grow back a little. I’ll book everything in advance. It’s my first time planning anything ever, so you have to cut me some—” I don’t finish, because Harry grabs my face and kisses me, hard. When he stops, abruptly, he turns away, stands, and rushes to the bathroom. I rise up onto my elbows and feel a little bereft. Isn’t he going to say anything? I mean, it’ll break my heart if he says we’re not there yet, or that he doesn’t see himself married to me, but that would still be better than if he just pretends I never said it.
“Harry?” I ask meekly.
I hear him blow his nose. When he comes back, his eyes are red rimmed. He clears his throat and returns to the side of the bed as before.
“I’m fine,” he says, taking a steadying breath. “Sorry, I didn’t expect that. I—I didn’t know.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I didn’t say it to upset you.”
“No, of course not.” He laughs, his voice trembling.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I rush to add. “I mean, I know I didn’t ask properly, but I won’t if you don’t want me to. Honest, I’ll never say another—”
“Joe.”
“Yes?”
“I love you,” he says. “And I want to marry you too.”
“Oh.” I smile. “Oh, okay then. God, that’s a relief.”
I fall back on my pillow, laughing. He’s laughing too. It doesn’t feel quite real yet. But the relief d
oes.
Harry leans down towards me.
“Careful: the salve, your nice shirt!” I say.
“Fuck the shirt,” he mutters, before descending on me.
It was the first time I’d ever planned anything in my life, and it’s the best, most successful plan, I think, anybody’s ever had.
Five Years Before the Big Day
I didn’t particularly want to board the plane to Las Vegas. But what could I possibly achieve by not going?
Thoughts of Harry and Kieran together, sitting far away from each other at family dinners, ignoring each other at parties, calling each other “compadre” raced through my brain. The lady sitting next to me on the plane watched me warily, because I sat, staring blindly at the movie playing in front of me, tapping the table with a pen.
I imagined what might have happened the evening before. Kieran arriving at Siobhan and Ollie’s was scene one. Those two would not have turned him away. If Harry had wanted to send him off, they’d have encouraged him to stay. Yes, it was their fault. I hated them both with a passion.
What next? Well, that overbearing giant would have forced Harry to sit there, guilted and harassed him into compliance. He’d have been all like, “Seven years!” and “Down the drain!” and “Your mother and your sister and everybody who knows me!” and “Seven years!”
I imagined Harry standing up to him, righteously indignant, crying, “I love Joe!”
The scene in my head turned into a cartoon. If Harry loved me, that scene would not have ended with the two of them agreeing to try again.
Jesus. It came to me now, like someone shutting the car door on your fingers, except it shot all through me. This was what Harry wanted.
If I featured in this scenario at all, it was likely more in the tones of “But what do I tell Joe?”: a complication and a nuisance; a bump in the road of Harry and Kieran’s grand romance.
As soon as I picked up my luggage in the airport in Las Vegas, drowsy from a nervous nap I fell into during the last hour of the flight, I was faced with another problem. I had a hotel room booked, but it was booked under Harry’s name, since I was going to share it with him. The thought of hearing his voice again made everything inside of me clench. I rang Frank instead. This was about him, after all, and I needed to, for a couple of seconds, think about something else.
He picked up but whispered, “I’m in a meeting right now. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to tell you I’ve landed.”
“Grand!” he said. “Gabriella is going to pick you up.” He turned away from the phone and spoke to someone in the background, and then quickly returned to me, “Okay, Joe, I’ve got to run. You have a good time. I’ll see you tonight.”
Gabriella was waiting for me at the gate, just as he said. She looked bigger and bouncier than ever, like a ray of flowery sunshine which, frankly, I was in no mood for. She saw me approach, her smile turning into a worried frown.
“Are you all right?”
“Bumpy flight,” I said, to ward off any questions.
I wanted to be alone. She’d hired a car and after locating it and driving into the busy Vegas traffic, she asked me where I was staying.
“Er, that’s . . . that’s still up for debate,” I said. “I was going to bring someone. He had the hotel reservations.”
“Oh,” she said, a little surprised. “Well, you can stay with Frank and me, if you like. Our suite is enormous. I mean, honestly, it’s like a little flat, anyway. There’s a sofa. Or you can take the bed and Frank and I—”
“No, no, that’s all right,” I said, hastily. I had not listened to Frank’s excessively blunt accounts of their sex escapades not to know what went on in any room those two were let loose in.
“It’s the Palazzo,” I told her. “If you can drop me off there, I’ll figure out the rest.”
“You sure?” she asked, concerned. “I can help you find another room.”
“No, that’s all right, thanks.”
She suggested taking me to lunch, but I pleaded a headache and jet lag, and so, reluctantly, she left me in the enormous lobby of the Palazzo, giving me her number and insisting I ring her when I was ready. Before going, she looked me in the eyes and said reverently, “I’m so happy!”
With that, she swept away, and I had to determine whether nights in the desert were warm enough to sleep rough on a bench somewhere, or whether it was the sort of thing the good people of Las Vegas would frown upon.
In the centre of the opulent, golden-coloured hotel lobby, there was the centrepiece—a marble statue of antique-looking figures, which changed colour every couple of minutes, surrounded by flowers and plants and further encircled by four purple columns. It was like good taste just sort of fell asleep on that one. I took a seat on the edging of the weird little garden and considered my options.
There was a room in this very hotel booked for me. If Harry hadn’t cancelled it (if it wasn’t too late to cancel) he was going to get charged for it. Harry would probably refuse to pay for it, and so the whole cost of it would fall on me. I’d already spent all of my money on the flight here. It would be stupid, surely, not to at least sleep in the room I was going to pay for and couldn’t afford?
On the off chance that it might work, I approached reception and asked whether they had a booking for Harry Byrne. They did. But then they wanted to see the credit card with which the booking was made, and I had to ask them to excuse me.
Fuck.
My options unfolded before me: sleep rough in a city I’d never been to before. Sleep in a room with my horny best friend and his sex-fiendish vicar’s daughter. Ring Harry. I took out my phone and stared at his number. Then I put my phone away and sunk my face into my hands.
My phone rang. It nearly fell out of my pocket when I tried to reach it.
It was Harry.
“Yes?” I sounded too eager. Inside, my stomach was flipping over.
“Joe?” Harry was keeping his voice down, as if not to be overheard.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that his voice immediately made me think of the way his body felt underneath those white crisp shirts he wore. Hard and warm. It wasn’t fair that it made me want to touch him again.
“I just remembered . . . I’ve got your room reservation. Or did you get another room?”
I don’t know what I was expecting. Something less like This horrible thing I told you before is still on, I’m just checking we can all move on from there in a peaceful and civil manner.
A childish part of me wanted to dramatically declare that he shouldn’t worry about it, and in a tone that would give him every reason to be worried. But I didn’t have the energy for that.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Can I email it to you?”
“Er, no, they’re asking for your credit card. Can you just tell me the number? I’ll . . . I’ll write it on my arm or something. The battery on my phone is pretty low.”
He huffed a little laugh. “Of course it is. Are you familiar with chargers? You know what they do?”
I didn’t make a noise, and he must have caught on that this wasn’t an oh that Joe moment for me.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. You just wait five minutes, and then go to reception, all right?”
“Okay.”
There was a pause. He asked, quietly, “Are you all right? Was your flight okay?”
“Sure, fine, thanks.”
“Er, is the hotel nice?”
“Don’t you have stuff to get back to?” I asked. I didn’t want to sound as tetchy as I was, but seriously? What the hell did he think we were going to chat about? He’d just dumped me for that caveman who was going to make him miserable again and— I stopped myself from reeling down that way.
A moment’s pause. A sigh. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. Give me five minutes.”
I hung up.
An enormous man in a baseball cap pushed past me w
ith his equally barrel-shaped family, and I returned to reality. I was in Vegas. On my own. About to witness the union of two zanies. I was ravenous and tired, and I desperately needed a room. Figuring that enough time had passed for Harry to do whatever he meant to do, I proceeded to the reception. Whatever Harry had told them seemed to have done the trick: they gave me a key, a floor and room number, and asked me to enjoy my stay.
When I reached my room, all I could do was close the door behind me, take off all my clothes, and throw myself onto the bed. My head was spinning.
I had to call him. I had to apologise for being a dick, for everything, beg him to reconsider, beg him to take me back. I threw myself across my bed, hunted for my phone and . . . it was off. Battery had died. Of course.
I took a shower. A cold, sobering shower would sort me out.
The sickening thought of Kieran walking into a shower cubicle with Harry came to me. I banged my head against the shower door. It was like they were right there, arms around each other.
I’d been a side character in their love story. A thing they had to overcome to find each other again. The truth of it seared. He’d told me I was a rebound. I remembered it now as distinctly as if it had been yesterday. He’d told me, and I hadn’t listened.
I showered, patted myself dry, and returned to bed.
Staring at the ceiling, I thought about how fucking stupid I was.
There was a knock on my door. I wrapped the top cover of the bed around me like a cape and padded over to the door.
A uniformed young man greeted me with a bright, “Hello! Is everything to your liking, sir?”
No. Nothing is to my liking and everything is awful. What do you want?
“Yes, thank you.”
“We just want to make sure you have everything you need.”
“I suppose I do.”
“Would you like to have your lunch now, sir?”
I didn’t stay in fancy hotels a great deal, but even I knew this was an odd thing for them to ask. Usually one arranged one’s own lunch, didn’t one? Then it occurred to me that this had been organised by Harry, and it would’ve been entirely his style to have thought of us being too tired to go out for lunch and instead eating in.