by Josie Silver
“Do we have enough booze, do you think?” she asks now, casting a critical eye over the bottles lined up across the kitchen work surface. No one could call it a sophisticated collection; it’s pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap supermarket-special wine and vodka we’ve been hoarding for the last three months to make sure our party is one to remember.
Or not remember, perhaps.
“More than. People will bring a bottle too,” I say. “It’s going to be great.” My stomach rumbles, reminding me that neither of us has eaten since breakfast.
“Did you hear that?” I say, rubbing my middle. “My guts just asked you to make a DS special.”
Sarah’s sandwiches are the stuff of Delancey Street myth and legend. She’s taught me her holy breakfast trinity of bacon, beetroot, and mushrooms, and it took us the best part of two years to settle on our signature dish, the DS special, named after our flat.
She rolls her eyes, laughing. “You can make it yourself, you know.”
“Not the way you do it.”
She preens a little, opening the fridge. “That’s true.”
I watch her layer chicken and blue cheese with lettuce, mayo, and cranberry, an exact science that I’ve yet to master. I know it sounds hideous, but trust me, it’s not. It may not be your average student food, but ever since we hit on the winning combo back in our university days we make sure to always have the ingredients in the fridge. It’s pretty much our staple diet. That, ice cream, and cheap wine.
“It’s the cranberry that does it,” I say after my first bite.
“It’s a quantity thing,” she says. “Too much cranberry and it’s basically a jam sandwich. Too much cheese and you’re licking a teenager’s dirty sock.”
I raise my sandwich for another bite, but she lunges and pushes my arm down. “Wait. We need a drink with it to get us in the party mood.”
I groan, because I realize what she’s going to do when she reaches for two shot glasses. She’s laughing under her breath already as she reaches into the back of the cupboard behind the cereal boxes for the dusty bottle.
“Monks’ piss,” she says, pouring us each a ceremonial shot. Or Benedictine, to give the old herbal liqueur that came with the flat its proper name. The bottle informs us that it’s a special blend of secret herbs and spices, and on first taste not long after we moved in we decided that one of those secret ingredients was almost certainly Benedictine monks’ piss. Every now and then, usually at Christmas, we have one shot each, a ritual we’ve come to enjoy and loathe in equal measures.
“Down the hatch.” She grins, sliding a glass across the table to me as she sits back down. “Happy Christmas, Lu.”
We clink and then knock our shots back, banging the empty glasses down on the table and wincing.
“Doesn’t get any better with age,” I whisper, feeling as if it’s taken the skin off the roof of my mouth.
“Rocket fuel,” she rasps, laughing. “Eat your sandwich, you’ve earned it.”
We lapse into sandwich silence, and when we’ve finished she taps the rim of her empty plate.
“I think, because it’s Christmas, that we could add a sausage.”
I shake my head. “You can’t mess with the DS special.”
“There isn’t much in life that can’t be improved by a saveloy, Laurie.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “You never know, you might get lucky tonight and see David’s.”
Given the last two blind dates Sarah set me up on, I don’t let the prospect overexcite me.
“Come on,” I say, dumping the plates in the sink. “We’d better get ready, they’ll be here soon.”
* * *
I’m three glasses of white in and definitely very relaxed when Sarah finds me and literally drags me from the kitchen by the hand.
“He’s here,” she whispers, crushing the bones of my fingers. “Come and say hi. You have to meet him right now.”
I smile apologetically at David as she pulls me away. I’m starting to see what Sarah meant about him being a grower. He’s made me laugh several times already and he’s kept my glass topped off; I’d just been considering a tiny exploratory kiss. He’s nice enough in a vaguely Ross from Friends kind of way, but I find I’m more intrigued to meet Sarah’s soulmate, which must mean that Ross from Friends would be a regret come tomorrow. It’s as good a barometer as any.
She tugs me through our laughing, drunk friends and a whole load of people I’m not sure either of us even know, until finally we reach her boyfriend standing uncertainly by the front door.
“Laurie,” Sarah is jittery and bright-eyed. “Meet Jack. Jack, this is Laurie. My Laurie,” she adds, for emphasis.
I open my mouth to say hello and then I see his face. My heart jumps into my throat and I feel as if someone just laid electric shock pads on my chest and turned them up to full fry. I can’t get any words to leave my lips.
I know him.
It feels like just last week I saw him first—and last. That heart-stopping glimpse from the top deck of a crowded bus twelve months ago.
“Laurie.” He says my name, and I could cry with the sheer relief of him being here. It’s going to sound crazy but I’ve spent the last year wishing, hoping I’d run into him. And now he’s here. I’ve scoured countless crowds for his face and I’ve searched for him in bars and cafes. I’d all but given up on ever finding bus boy, even though Sarah swears I’ve gone on about him so much that she’d even recognize him herself.
She didn’t, as it turned out. Instead she’s presented him to me as the love of her life.
Green. His eyes are green. Tree moss vivid around the iris edges, warm amber gold seeping in around his pupils. But it’s not the color of his eyes that strikes me so much as the look in them right now as he gazes down at me. A startled flash of recognition. A dizzying, headlong collision. And then it’s gone in a heartbeat, leaving me unsure if the sheer force of my own longing made me imagine it had been there at all.
“Jack,” I manage, thrusting my hand out. His name is Jack. “It’s so good to meet you.”
He nods, a skittish half-smile flickering over his lips. “Laurie.”
I glance toward Sarah, crazy guilty, certain that she must be able to sense something amiss, but she’s just grinning at us both like a loon. Thank God for cheap wine.
When he takes my hand in his, warm and strong, he shakes it firmly, politely almost, as if we’re meeting in a formal boardroom rather than at a Christmas party.
I don’t know what to do with myself, because all of the things I want to do wouldn’t be okay. True to my word, I don’t orgasm on the spot, but there is definitely something going on with my heart. How on earth has this colossal fuck-up happened? He can’t be Sarah’s. He’s mine. He’s been mine for an entire year.
“Isn’t she fabulous?”
Sarah has her hand on the small of my back now, presenting me, actually propelling me toward him to hug because she’s desperate for us to be new best friends. I’m wretched.
Jack rolls his eyes and laughs nervously, as if Sarah’s obviousness makes him uncomfortable.
“Just as splendid as you said she was,” he agrees, nodding as if he’s admiring a friend’s new car, and something horribly like an apology creeps into his expression as he looks at me. Is he apologizing because he remembers or because Sarah is behaving like an overeager aunt at a wedding?
“Laurie?” Sarah turns her attention to me. “Isn’t he every bit as gorgeous as I said he was?” She’s laughing, proud of him, as well she should be.
I nod. Swallow painfully, even as I force a laugh. “He certainly is.”
Because Sarah is so desperately keen for us to like each other, Jack obligingly leans in and touches his lips briefly against my cheek. “It’s good to meet you,” he says. His voice matches him per
fectly; coolly confident, rich, shot through with gentle, knowing wit. “She never shuts up about you.”
My fingers close around the familiarity of my purple pendant, looking for comfort as I force a laugh, shaky. “I feel as if I know you too.” And I do; I feel as if I have known him forever. I want to turn my face and catch his lips with my own. I want to drag him breathlessly to my room and close the door, tell him that I love him, strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him, drown in the woody, clean, warm scent of his skin.
I’m in hell. I hate myself. I take a couple of steps away from him for my own sanity and grapple with my wretched heart to stop it from banging louder than the music.
“Drink?” Sarah suggests, lighthearted and loud.
He nods, grateful to be thrown a lifeline.
“Laurie?” Sarah looks at me to go with them.
I lean back and peer down the hallway toward the bathroom, jiggling as if I’m in dire need of the toilet. “I’ll catch up with you.” I need to get away from him, from them, from this.
In the safety of the bathroom, I slam the door and slide onto my backside with my head in my hands, gulping air down so as not to cry.
Oh God, oh God. Oh God! I love Sarah, she’s my sister in all but biology. But this…I don’t know how to navigate safely through it without sinking the ship with all of us aboard. Hope flares bright in my chest as I fantasize running out there and just blurting out the truth, because maybe then Sarah will realize that the reason she’s so drawn to him is that, subconsciously, she recognized him as bus boy. God knows I’ve all but drawn him for her. What a misunderstanding! How we’ll laugh at the sheer absurdity! But…then what? She graciously steps aside and he is my new boyfriend, easy as pie? I don’t even think he recognized me, for Christ’s sake!
Lead-heavy defeat crushes the delicate, ridiculous hope as reality creeps in. I can’t do it. Of course I can’t. She has no clue, and Jesus, she’s so happy. It shines from her brighter than the star of fucking Bethlehem. It might be Christmas, but this is actual life, not some crappy Hollywood movie. Sarah is my best friend in the entire world, and however much and for however long it kills me, I’ll never silently, secretly hold up signs to tell Jack O’Mara, without hope or agenda, that to me he is perfect, and that my wasted heart will always love him.
DECEMBER 19
Jack
Fuck, she’s so beautiful when she’s asleep.
My throat feels like someone shoveled sand down it and I think Sarah might have broken my nose when she smacked her head back in bed last night, but right now I can forgive her anything because her scarlet hair is strewn out around her shoulders on the pillows, almost as if she’s suspended in water. She looks like the Little Mermaid. Though I realize that thought makes me sound like a pervert.
I slide from the bed and fling on the nearest thing to hand: Sarah’s dressing gown. It’s covered in pineapples, but I’ve no clue where my own clothes went and I need headache pills. Given the state of the stragglers last night I wouldn’t be surprised to find one or two of them still strewn across the living-room floor, and I figure pineapples will offend them less than my naked ass. Shit, it’s pretty bloody short, though. I’ll just do a quick dash.
“Water,” Sarah croaks, flinging her hand out toward me as I skirt around the edge of the bed.
“I know,” I murmur. Her eyes are still closed as I lift her arm and carefully tuck it back under the quilt, and she makes a noise that might mean Thanks and might be For God’s sake help me. I drop a kiss on her forehead.
“Back in a sec,” I whisper, but she’s already slid under the fog of sleep again. I don’t blame her. I plan to climb back in there and do the same thing myself within the next five minutes. Glancing at her again for a long second, I back quietly out of the room and click the door shut.
* * *
“If you need paracetamol, they’re in the cupboard on the left.”
I pause for a beat, swallowing hard as I open the cupboard door and root around until I spot the small blue box.
“You read my mind,” I say, turning to Laurie. I force a casual smile, because in truth this is really fucking awkward. I’ve seen her before—before last night, I mean. It was just once, fleetingly, in the flesh, but there have been other times in my head since: random, disturbing early-morning lucid dreams where I jolt awake, hard and frustrated. I don’t know if she remembers me. Christ, I hope not. Especially now I’m standing in front of her in a ridiculous pineapple-strewn ball-grazing dressing gown.
Her dark hair is piled high on her head in a messy bun this morning and she looks as if she’s as much in need of medication as I am, so I offer her the box.
Sarah has gone on about her best friend so much that I’d built a virtual Laurie in my head already, but I’d got her all wrong. Because Sarah is so striking, I’d lazily imagined that her choice of friend would be equally colorful, like a pair of exotic parrots perched up here in their cage. Laurie isn’t a parrot. She’s more of a…I don’t know, a robin, maybe.
“Thanks.” She takes the tablets, popping a couple out into her hand.
I run her a glass of water and she raises it to me, a grim “bottoms up” as she knocks the pills back.
“Here,” she says, counting how many are left in the packet before she hands it over. “Sarah likes—”
“Three,” I jump in, and she nods.
“Three.”
I feel a little as if we’re competing to prove who knows Sarah best. She does, of course. Sarah and I have only been together for a month or so, but Christ, it’s been a whirlwind. I met her first in the elevator at work; it jammed with just the two of us inside, and by the time it moved again fifteen minutes later I knew three things. Firstly, she might be a fill-in reporter for the local TV station now, but one day she’s likely to take over the world. Two, I was taking her for lunch as soon as the lift got fixed, because she told me so. I was going to ask her anyway, for the record. And lastly, I’m pretty sure she stopped the lift herself and then released it once she’d got what she wanted. That mildly ruthless streak is a turn-on.
“She’s told me a lot about you.” I fill up the kettle and flick it on.
“Did she tell you how I like my coffee?”
Laurie reaches for some mugs out of the cupboard as she speaks, and I hate the reflex that sends my eyes down her body. She’s in PJs, more than respectably covered, yet still I observe the fluidity of her movements, the curve of her hip, the navy polish on her toes.
“Erm…” I concentrate on hunting down a teaspoon, and she stretches across to tug out the drawer to show me where they are.
“Got it,” I say, reaching in at the same moment as she does, and she jerks her hand away, laughing to soften the suddenness.
As I start to spoon the granules out she folds herself onto a spindle-backed chair, one foot tucked underneath her backside.
“To answer your question. No, Sarah didn’t tell me how you like your coffee, but if I had to guess, I’d say…” I turn and lean against the counter to study her. “I’d say you take it strong. Two spoons.” I narrow my eyes as she watches me without giving any hint. “Sugar,” I say, passing my hand across the back of my neck. “None. You want to, but you deny yourself.” What the actual fuck am I saying? I sound like I’m coming on to her. I’m not. I’m really not. The last thing I want her to think is that I’m a player. I mean I’ve had my share of girlfriends, a couple even edged toward serious, but this thing with Sarah feels different somehow. More…I don’t know. I just know I don’t want it to end any time soon.
She pulls a face, then shakes her head. “Two sugars.”
“You’re kidding me.” I laugh.
She shrugs. “I’m not. I take two sugars. Two and a half sometimes, if I’m in the mood.”
The mood for what, I wonder. What makes
her need more than two sugars? God, I really need to get out of this kitchen and back to bed. I think I’ve left my brain back there on the pillow.
“Actually,” Laurie says, standing up, “I don’t think I want coffee right now after all.” She backs toward the door as she speaks, and I can’t quite read the expression in her tired eyes. Maybe I’ve offended her. I don’t know. Perhaps she’s just exhausted or maybe she’s on the verge of hurling. I’ve been known to have that effect on women.
Laurie
“Well? What do you think?”
It’s just turned four when I slump next to Sarah at the pale-blue Formica kitchen table. We’ve finally got the place back to something resembling normal and now we’re both nursing huge mugs of coffee and the remnants of our hangovers. The Christmas tree we lugged up the stairs between us a couple of days back looks haphazard, as if a gang of cats has attacked it, but aside from that and a few broken wineglasses we’re pretty much as we were. I heard Jack leave around midday—okay, I failed miserably in my attempt to be cool about the situation and watched him walk away down the road from behind my bedroom blind like some kind of horror-movie stalker.
“It went well, didn’t it?” I say, deliberately misinterpreting Sarah’s question to buy myself some thinking time.
She rolls her eyes as if she thinks I’m winding her up on purpose. “You know what I mean. What do you think of Jack?”
And so it begins. A hairline crack has opened up in our relationship that Sarah isn’t even aware of, and I have to work out how I stop it from widening, how to prevent it from opening up into a chasm we’re both going to tumble headlong into. I’m conscious that this is the one and only chance I’m ever going to get to come clean; this single, solitary opportunity is mine to take, or not take. But because Sarah is looking at me with such hope, and because by now I don’t even know if I was imagining the whole thing, I silently promise to forever hold my peace.