by Shari Low
Twenty minutes later – nope, he couldn’t even give me the respect of arriving on time – he waltzed in, freshly showered, and slid into the chair across from me. The waitress was at his side in a heartbeat, and even though he would be too much of an emotional fucknugget to sense her disapproval, I got it loud and clear and returned it with a subliminal nod of thanks for the solidarity as she took his order for a fresh orange juice. She was back with it in seconds, obviously unwilling to miss a moment of potential drama.
I said nothing until he couldn’t stand the silence anymore and jumped in. I took childish satisfaction in the fact that he caved first.
‘How you been?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine. Luke’s fine. Val and Don are fine. Josie’s fine. Oh and Mark’s fine. I know you didn’t get to know him but he’s actually a great guy. We’re all fine. Every single person that you used to share your life with, apart from Dee, is fine. And we’d all like to thank you for pissing off when we needed you most.’
This clearly wasn’t the conversation he expected and he immediately flipped to defensive. ‘Wait a minute, how dare…’
A collective sharp intake from behind the counter and I know the other waitress, the chef, maybe the cleaner, and anyone else in the vicinity was listening in.
For my sake – and theirs – I couldn’t hold back any longer.
‘I dare because you’re vile. You really are. And I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.’ I barely paused for breath because I didn’t want to give him the chance to interrupt. ‘Even if you wanted to leave me, how could you desert Val and Don? You practically lived at their house since we were teenagers, and look at everything they did for us. And Luke. He just lost his wife. He was your mate and you ditched him. Who does that? Ah, that’s right, you do. So I just wanted to let you know I’m rejecting your offer to buy me out and selling the house. It’ll go up for sale next week. If you want any of the furniture, you’re out of luck, because I’ve donated it all to charity. Sue me.’
I was on a roll now and it was going all the way down the Retribution Highway.
‘And by the way, I saw you and your girlfriend over there earlier. Nice show you put on. Don’t bother with your nonsense denials, you two-timing big prick. Nope, don’t start telling me the details of how it started because I do not give a fuck. I don’t care what you do with her, with the others before her. You’re not worth it. You’re really not. Anyway, can you do me a favour and give her a message from me? Tell her she could do so much better than an adulterous arse who could walk away from everyone who loved him without a backward glance.’
With that I got up, summoned every ounce of dignity I possessed, and started to walk away. I almost made it without incident. Almost. It was purely, well almost, accidental that, as I walked past him, my hand strayed from my side and flicked his orange juice into his lap. He sprung to his feet but I kept on walking.
‘He’s paying,’ I said loud enough for him to hear.
‘Certainly. You have a nice day now,’ the waitress retorted, almost weeping with the hilarity of it all. It was as close to one of those rom-com victory moments as I was ever going to get and I milked it. I swayed my arse as I strutted out the door, I jumped in my car, I played Beyoncé songs really loud all the way to Weirbank, then I screeched around the corner, stopped at the car park at the end of Val’s terrace, stormed up the path, rapped on her front door because I couldn’t stop to take the time to find my key, then ambushed poor Mark, who answered the door, with a furious outburst of ‘It’s done!’, before taking one step inside the hall, closing the door behind me, and sprouting tears like a burst water balloon.
I never did do empowerment very well.
‘Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong? What’s done? What’s happened? Oh shit, you were seeing Pete. What’s the jerk done now?’
‘Is Val here?’ I wailed. So much for the strong, composed new me. I needed Dee. I needed Val. I really, really needed Val.
‘No, she’s at Book Club with Josie. My dad’s working late. It’s just me. Oh bugger, come here.’
He opened his arms and I stepped into them, tears soaking his T-shirt in no time, his arms around my heaving shoulders. This was all too much. Way, way too much.
‘I’ll call Josie,’ he offered.
‘No! She’ll kill him. With her bare hands.’
He smiled his infectious smile and then that thing happened where you’re laughing and crying at the same time and it’s a toss-up which one will win the day and…
I don’t know what happened. I really don’t. Some cosmic force lifted me up on to my tiptoes and I kissed him, right on the mouth. Not just a peck. Suction. And then, to my complete shock, I realised he was kissing me back. He slowed it down so that it went from frantic to holy crap, this is amazing. It felt so good to be in someone’s arms again, to feel wanted. All the tension went, my shoulders relaxed, then his hand went from my shoulders to the side of my face, cupping it and… A vision of Pete, kissing Arya, touching her face. I pulled away, the moment most definitely, absolutely gone, and I groaned, ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I really didn’t.’
His hands went down to my sides now, holding me, so our faces were still close enough that I could feel his breath when he spoke.
‘Trust me, you really don’t have to apologise. I was definitely halfway culpable on that one.’ He was teasing me, just being gorgeous, funny, flirty Mark, the guy that could make dozens of my customers blow two hundred quid on a cashmere jumper they’d hide from their husbands in the back of their wardrobes.
And I’d kissed him. Guilt and mortification were the first two emotions to arrive. What had I just done?
‘I’m going to go…’
‘Don’t.’
I wasn’t sure if it was him or the bit of me that wanted to kiss him again that said that.
Him. Because he said it again.
‘Don’t go.’
I nearly didn’t, but this was messing with my head way too much. I didn’t do spontaneous, or rash or wanton. I just didn’t. I thought for a week before I bought a new pair of shoes. Two weeks if they were for a special occasion. This was the kind of stuff Dee did, not me.
Dee.
Oh God. I’d just kissed her brother. She would be horrified.
That thought came straight out. ‘Dee would be horrified.’
Mark went for an incredulous, ‘No, she wouldn’t.’
This was one of those moments in life where there was a decision to be made and I felt woefully under-prepared to make it. On the one hand, hadn’t Dee’s passing shown us that life was short and had to be grabbed by the balls? Not literally. Kissing was enough to send my inner moral compass into a spin cycle. On the other, this was a really bad idea. Val and Don were the closest thing I had to parents and this was their son.
‘I can’t.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ he countered.
Was it wrong that part of me was too?
I backed up, opened the door. ‘Sorry,’ I said… and then I left, running to the car, in a completely different state than I was half an hour ago.
This so wasn’t me. Dee had always been the wild one. I did predictable. Balanced. Stable. Measured. All of which were missing in bloody action right now.
My stomach was churning all the way home. Mark. Of course he was attractive, but he wasn’t my type at all. My type was… Pete. That was it. I’d been out with one guy in my life so that was all I had to base my preferences on.
My car stopped and I saw that I was already outside Luke’s house. I’d driven the whole ten minute journey on autopilot. I wasn’t ready to stop freaking out over this. Why did we all have to live so bloody close together?
Please be out. Please be out. Please be out.
As soon as I opened the door, his head popped up from the couch.
‘Hey! I was getting ready to rustle up a posse of Josie and Val and come looking for you. How did it go?’
‘Not as expected,’ I wh
impered.
He sat bolt upright, face full of concern.
‘Why? What happened? I swear to God he’s such a…’
‘I kissed Mark.’
Chapter 30
Luke
‘You what?’ I couldn’t have heard that right. No way.
‘I kissed Mark. Shit bollocking crap.’
She crossed the lounge, kicking her shoes off as she walked. Even that was out of character. Jen always took them off, picked them up, then took them upstairs to her room. I mean, the spare room.
Instead, she left them where they fell and kept on going until she reached the sofa I was half-sitting, half-lying on. She plumped herself down on the edge of the coffee table so she was facing me, and put her head in her hands.
‘I have no idea what I’m doing, Luke. None at all.’
I was going to say something along the lines of ‘none of us do’, but she had more to say so I just kept quiet and let her go on.
‘I feel like everything is out of control and I’m second-guessing myself. Should I sell the house? Should I not? Should I be living here?’
‘Of course you should,’ I replied.
‘I know I’m so much happier than when I was at my house, but I’d hate to upset Val and Don, or anyone else who got the wrong idea…’
‘They won’t.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t want to risk it.’
I understood that. In truth, I felt the same.
‘Until tonight I wasn’t sure if I was really done with Pete,’ she admitted.
That one took me by surprise. ‘I had no idea there was any doubt. If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have called him all those names.’
That at least made her smile. ‘They’re all true.’
‘Indeed they are,’ I agreed, glad the two furrowed lines between her eyebrows had relaxed just a bit. ‘So what happened?’
‘I had to watch him making out with Arya in the middle of the street.’
‘Pete?’ I was incredulous. ‘But he hates public displays of…’
‘I know! He doesn’t bloody hate them now. People were having to swerve around him while they stood there like the last scene in a bloody Hugh Grant movie. Honestly, it was unbelievable. Then the waitress more or less told me he was a serial shagger…”
“What?” he countered, astonished.
“Ok, well, not quite. But she did say he’d brought other women to the café. So when he eventually unhanded his latest girlfriend and he came to meet me, I told him he was a spineless, treacherous arse and I was selling the house, then I stormed out all proud of myself. Drove home listening to Beyoncé, decided to go see Val, got there, crumbled into pieces, Mark answered the door because Val was at Book Club and I kissed him,’ she went on.
‘Christ.’
I didn’t know Mark that well, but from what I did know, he wasn’t the kind of guy to take advantage of a situation. It struck me that Dee would be loving the drama of all this if she was here. This was the kind of stuff she thrived on. There wasn’t a reality show she didn’t watch or a piece of gossip she didn’t want to hear.
I didn’t posses the same skills. I had a sudden tightening around the chest area, completely unsure how I was supposed to react.
“I don’t know what to say, I blurted. “This crosses over a line to stuff I’m not equipped to discuss.” I wasn’t lying. I did surface level, irrelevant and sport. I’d been friends with blokes for years and not realised they’d married or divorced in that time.
‘There’s nothing to say. I’m just so glad I’m going to Barcelona tomorrow. I couldn’t face him.’
‘You’re going to have to sometime.’
‘I know. God, I’m hopeless.’
‘You are.’ I didn’t mean it but it made her smile again and it was better than patronizing shite. ‘But Dee would be loving this.’
‘I miss her so much, Luke. I’d do anything to rewind the clock and have her back.’
‘Me too.’
I leaned over and gave her a hug.
‘Careful,’ she warned, ‘apparently when men try to console me I instinctively kiss them. Who knew?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be ready to duck,’ I assured her.
‘I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman. How can my life suddenly be so much of a mess, Luke?’
If I had the answer to that I’d have applied it to myself. Treading water at work. Welling up when I least expected it. Living with a pal because I couldn’t stand coming home to an empty house. I had no idea how to fix myself, never mind anyone else.
I might be rubbish at depth and emotional trauma, but I decided to give it a go. Dee would be proud. ‘Because we’ve been pretty much pissed on by life this year. This time last year we knew where we were at and where we were headed but everything has changed and we’re just swimming against the tide…’
‘Drowning,’ she interjected.
‘Maybe. But we just need to stay afloat…’ I broke off and changed tack. ‘Am I using too many swimming references? Because I feel like I am. Sorry, I’m rubbish at this.’
Her smile was only slightly tinged with sadness. ‘You’re doing great. Thank you.’ She got off the table and turned around so she was sitting on the couch next to me. She put her head on my shoulder. ‘What should I do about Mark? Is it going to be really uncomfortable now?’
‘I’m sure he’ll cope,’ I told her, pretty positive I was judging that one right. He didn’t seem like a guy to take things too seriously. He’d been seeing Callie’s pal Lizzy on and off since that night in the pub, and Callie told me they’d agreed it would be a casual thing. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but they both seemed cool with it.
‘I need to go pack,’ she said, but didn’t move. ‘Tell me we’re going to get through this, Luke.’
‘We are. And look, tonight was progress. You put Pete in his place and you know for sure that it’s over, so you’re moving forward. I hate that expression, but it’s true. One step in front of another. One day at a time. OK, now I’m using too many AA-meeting clichés. You’re romantic life will still be fucked but you’ll never drink again,’ I told her, making her laugh again.
‘You are so, so bad at this,’ she answered, feigning sorrow. She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, that was just a thank you. I appreciate it, Luke. Being here, having you. I think we just need to hold on until we come out the other side.’
‘I think you’re right. Good night luvly. What time are you leaving in the morning?’
‘About 5.30.’
‘OK, so you’ll be gone by the time I get up. Have a safe flight and text me when you get there.’
‘I will,’ she promised, climbing the stairs at the other side of the room. ‘Maybe being away will give me some clarity.’
‘Maybe it will,’ I agreed as she disappeared out of sight.
I lay back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Clarity. How come I had an uneasy feeling that – to stick with my newfound emotional depth and swimming analogies – I was starting to be carried down an unexpected stream.
Chapter 31
Jen
Looking out of the cab window, I saw the hotel long before I reached it. Ten minutes from the airport, in the Hospitalet area on the outskirts of Barcelona, The Renaissance Fira looked to be about twenty-five stories high, but what distinguished it from any other hotel I’d ever been in was that the windows were in the shape of trees.
As I entered through the glass doors, I automatically took mental notes of the surroundings for the blog. Marble floor, leather seats in the foyer, a bar over to the right-hand side. Polite check-in. This time I’d called ahead and changed the name on the reservations, so while it was still booked under Sun, Sea, Ski, they knew I was coming instead of Dee. I didn’t explain why. I pushed down the memories of New York that were threatening to bubble to the surface. I’d closed that door. Shut. With a bang. There was no point revisiting thoughts or events I’d never be able to explain.
I was handed a k
ey card and directed to the elevator lobby. Glass, chrome, black, but the strangest thing was the black trees behind the glass walls. As the lift rose, I realised the building was a hollow square, four sides, and in the middle, going right up through the structure, were jungle-like areas full of trees and bushes. I was detecting a theme.
The lift stopped at the twenty-third floor, and I exited, turned to the right, walked along the edge of the garden to my right, a black wall to my left, a few strategically placed neon pads indicating the positions of the doors. My key card worked first time, a bit of a rarity in my experience, and when I went inside I stopped to take it all in and commit it to memory. Unusual, for sure. Minimalist. Postmodern. And, especially rare for a hotel, all white. The tiles on the floor could have been marble or granite, I wasn’t sure. White walls. To my left a white wardrobe, then a low shelf that ran the whole way along the wall to the glass frontage, a huge window that was opaque, apart from the huge leaf-shaped area in the middle which was clear.
To the right, there was a magnificent – I committed ‘magnificent’ to memory for the blog as it truly did sum it up – white bed, with voile curtains that could be pulled around it to give privacy from the seating area between the bed and the window. It was so beautiful, so romantic, that I found myself wishing for a second that Pete was here, before I remembered that Pete and romance definitely didn’t belong in the same sentence any more. I wasn’t sure that they ever did.
I checked Dee’s iPad. This was a quick visit, flying in this morning and then home on the last flight tomorrow night. There was only one thing in the calendar and that was dinner tonight, at a restaurant about five minutes from here. I thought about going out now and jumping on the metro into the city centre, but Dee had done many blogs from Barcelona, and I’d come here a couple of times with her so I’d already experienced the tourist stuff. To be honest, I didn’t fancy the chaos. What I did fancy, was relaxation, solitude, and a few hours respite from having to think about anything or anyone. Dee would marvel at my enjoyment of being alone and doing nothing, while I would watch in admiration as she refused to sit still for a minute, constantly chasing new experiences. Within ten minutes of arriving anywhere, she’d be talking to people; within a day, she’d have a gang of friends. I loved her for it, but it wasn’t me.