Undeniable

by Liz Bankes

My eyes are closed at first and then a moan escapes me and I open them. For some unknown reason, as the hotel room comes into focus, the thought appears in my brain that if it were me and Max staying in a hotel, the first thing we would have done is make a pile on the bed of free stuff from the room.

  And I start laughing.

  Spencer’s hand freezes. He moves it away and then looks at me, with his other hand still pressed to the wall above me. He looks a bit freaked out and is waiting for an explanation.

  I’m still throbbing with desire, but also panic and that urge to laugh.

  ‘Sorry . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘No . . .’ he says slowly. ‘I’m not totally sure either!’

  ‘It’s just . . . it’s a risk, isn’t it? Every little thing is a risk and I could go for it and you could turn out to be a psychopath and it’s really weird because with most things I do just go for it and don’t think and now—’

  ‘Gabi,’ he says softly. ‘It’s fine. Just . . . chill. Take as long as you want to decide if I’m a psychopath.’

  ‘It’s just that this is all new, and I thought I’d be all cool with that, but I’m not. I’m mental.’

  His mouth twists into a smile. ‘Well, just so you know, I’d prefer to be with you, mental, than anyone else, sane.’

  He kisses me, gently now, understanding a little more. ‘Shall we watch films in our pyjamas and drink free tea?’

  Chapter 39

  I have no idea where I am. All the shapes in the room are strange and don’t make sense. Slowly my eyes adjust to the darkness. White hotel sheets. Spencer. I peer over the side of the bed. White floor with a dark shape on it. It looks like a dead bird. A massive dead bird. One of those black beaky ones, like a raven or a crow. Are they different?

  ‘Spencer,’ I whisper.

  He grunts and rolls to the side.

  ‘Spencer!’

  ‘What?’ His voice is muffled and sleepy.

  ‘There’s a dead bird on the floor.’

  ‘No, there isn’t.’

  ‘There is. There definitely is. Can you take it out?’

  He rolls onto his front with his face on the pillow. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Spencer, there’s a dead bird on the floor and if you don’t help me get rid of it then I’m going home. It’s disgus— Oh no, wait. It’s just my bra.’

  Now everything makes a lot more sense.

  Spencer raises his head from the pillow. ‘You thought your bra was a dead bird.’

  ‘I thought I saw a beak.’

  He puts his forehead down on the pillow again. In despair, I think. Then I realise he’s laughing.

  He looks up at me. I’m sitting up, poised in what I must have thought was a good position for dead-bird watching. He holds his arm out to me. I can’t see his face properly in the half-light, but I know he’s smiling and his eyes are sparkling.

  I slide down and fit into the crook of his body. He puts his arm round me and clasps his hand over mine. He leans over and whispers in my ear. ‘I love you a little bit, Gabi.’

  It takes all my effort not to leap out of the bed and jump up and down. But I just smile a huge, wide smile that he can’t see and squeeze his hand.

  ‘Good.’

  When I wake up he’s gone, but there’s a note.

  Have gone to get you flowers, chocolates and bacon bagels to apologise for being a dick. Would be lovely if you wanted to hang out all day with me.

  Your friendly neighbourhood psychopath,

  Spencer x

  I can’t stop grinning. I want to phone Mia and tell her everything. I jump off the bed and do a mad dance over to my bag to get my phone. Ooh, I have an email alert.

  Alert: New article on Spencer Black

  Scandal, sex appeal, stalkers: Spencer’s got it all

  Halls hottie Spencer Black, as well as getting the PopGoss team in a fluster, is causing a stir on set as well. Rumoured to be dating his co-star Heidi Adams after they shared some steamy scenes (click here to watch a sneak preview trailer of The Halls series 2!), Spencer was pictured hand in hand with a mystery lady at a cast outing. But is the picture all it appears? An insider informs us that Sexy Spence may just have attracted his very first obsessive fan.

  ‘That’s Gabi Morgan. She’s a runner on the show who’s got a major crush on Spencer,’ says our source. ‘She follows him everywhere and basically won’t leave him alone. He found it flattering at first, but he’s starting to get annoyed to say the least – it’s really affecting how things are going with Heidi.’

  And it could be more worrying than just a celeb crush. The girl openly admitted to our photographer that she’s ‘obsessed with The Halls and everyone in it’ and referred to Spencer as her ‘sort-of boyfriend’.

  ‘There are rumours circulating among the cast,’ our source tells us, ‘that she is mentally unstable and they are questioning if she should have been allowed to work on the show in the first place.’

  There are five pictures of me and Spencer coming out of the restaurant and I do look a lot like a stalker. One of them was taken just as he pulled his hand away from mine, so I’m reaching after him and I have red eyes.

  Then I scroll further down the page and my eye catches on something in the comments at the bottom.

  Kz<3lolz552: Spencer Black soooooooo fittttt I <3 him to

  DEATH.

  DeeLuvsTheHalls: Stalk me!

  Anon: OMG, Google Gabi Morgan. Looks like being a nutbag runs in the family!

  The link goes to the article from the local paper last year about my dad.

  Local man ‘mad with grief’ at death of father in supermarket breakdown.

  Chapter 40

  A reporter came to the house when only Dad was in. He’d just been discharged from hospital and Mum had gone out to get some food. The reporter told Dad he just wanted to give his side of the story and so Dad chatted to him, like he does to absolutely everyone who knocks at our door – we usually have to send Millie out to stop Dad from signing up to some scheme or becoming a Mormon. Dad invited the journalist in for a cup of tea and told him everything. The journalist stole a picture of Grandpa and one of Dad from the night we all went to a Sing-a-long-a-Sound-of-Music and he was dressed as a brown paper package tied up with string. They didn’t even explain that when they ran the article, which made people think that he had his breakdown while wearing a cardboard box.

  When Millie and I got in from school we could tell immediately that there was something dodgy about the man. We shouted at him and chased him out of the door. In the article he said that, as well as dealing with his grief, Dad was struggling to control his two rampaging teenage daughters, which must have contributed. It went into loads of detail about him flinging tins of beans around the supermarket, tipping over stalls of flowers and trying to tear at his own clothes. And there were interviews with people – someone in the supermarket who’d been hit by a flying potato speculated on what Dad would have done if he’d had a knife, and a mum from our school said she wasn’t surprised because Dad had always been weird.

  I told Granny that when sad things happen I let everything build up and pretend I’m fine – just like Dad did. And that I’m worried I’ll end up doing something mad like him. She said that the thing that annoyed her most about the article was that it made out there was such a thing as ‘mad’ and ‘normal’.

  ‘Everyone has something,’ she said, ‘and everyone deals with life in different ways. I can’t promise you’ll always be okay, but I can promise that you will always have people around to help you.’

  And I will. Unless I break their heart and push them away.

  I storm out of the room and walk straight into Spencer in the lobby. He has an armful of flowers, a paper bag and a box of chocolates in his other hand. Up until that point I’ve been telling myself that the comment could have just been some random person from home who saw the article when it came out. Then I see his face.

  ‘I’m s
o sorry. My agent was asking me about you and I told her your name. I thought it would be some story about a love triangle on set – you, me and Heidi. I didn’t think it would make you out to be crazy.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘You knew it was coming out?’

  ‘My agent told me yesterday. She said it would up my profile to have a few stories on gossip sites. But I swear I didn’t know it was going to be that. It’s a stupid article about nothing – no one will even spend two seconds reading it.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Spencer.’

  ‘Come on – most people who read it won’t know you and won’t care.’

  ‘I said it’s not the point! You let it happen. I should never have trusted you.’

  ‘So you just expect me to trust you then? Even though you haven’t bothered to mention that you went out with someone for three years and only broke up with him two months ago?’

  His eyes are flashing angrily and his face is red.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You’re not exactly private with what you put up on your Facebook. And while we’re there, you’ve written a load of stuff about wanting to stalk people from The Halls, so you might want to watch that.’

  I barge past him and hear him drop everything as I go through the door. It would look all dramatic and like a film, I think, if the flowers weren’t mixed up with bacon.

  I walk around for ages feeling like I’m going out of my mind. Hours pass, and I even forget all about lunch.

  I end up on the bridge over the Thames right next to the London Eye. So I find a bench near it and sit down. I try calling Mia but it won’t connect. My thumb hovers over Nish’s and then Rosie’s name, but I haven’t spoken to either of them since the picnic.

  I know the one person I want to call. But I can’t.

  So I call Granny.

  I’m alone again for a while and then I feel him sit down beside me.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Max?’

  Chapter 41

  I swallow. I feel like I’ve got a rock in my throat again. My eyes hurt.

  ‘Your granny called me.’

  He puts his arm around me. I only have to move my head a bit to the side and it fits in the crook of his shoulder like it always did. He squeezes my arm and stands up, pulling me with him.

  ‘Come on,’ he says gently, ‘we’re eating.’

  ‘I can’t at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Let’s go.’

  We’re in a Chinese buffet having dinner and I go to pick up my fork but get the sick feeling again and put my hand back down. Max already has a forkful of noodles and he points it at me as he talks.

  ‘I’ve seen you eat, Gab. You’d usually hoover this down and then start on mine.’

  I breathe in to try to speak and then stop because I can feel that my voice is going to come out all high and weird.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’ he says softly.

  I swallow again. It hurts. Stupid rock. ‘Just . . . worries.’

  Usually words fall out of my mouth before I’ve had the chance to think about them. But now they’re locked in. I meet Max’s big brown eyes.

  I’m thinking about how the same thoughts go round and round in my head and they trap me and I can’t ignore them long enough to do anything normal, like just talking to people. And I’m thinking about how the thoughts are circling my stomach and squeezing it so I can’t eat. Or speak.

  He’s just waiting. That’s what he’s like – no pressure. He lets me be me and just waits. I take a deep breath.

  ‘I worry that I’ll end up losing control like Dad did. And I’ll push everyone away.’

  He looks at me steadily. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. You never will.’

  I look down at the plate.

  ‘I’ll always be around,’he continues. ‘Even when you get bored and run away to London.’

  I look up then and he’s smiling. I grin back and a couple of hot tears drip over my lip and into my mouth. I’ve started crying. I never do this. I blink rapidly to try to get rid of them.

  ‘You can always come back and hang out. As friends or as whatever. Just as us.’ He hands me a tissue. ‘But maybe when you’re a bit less snotty.’

  As if on cue, I give a large sniff.

  ‘So . . . What’s been going on?’ he asks.

  He wants me to tell him about Spencer and when I ask if he’s sure he wants to know, he takes a deep breath in.

  ‘Hit me. I can take it.’

  I tell him about how I never know where I am with Spencer, and how at first it was exciting, but at the same time I don’t know how much I can be myself.

  ‘Maybe I just need to grow up,’ I say miserably.

  ‘Please don’t,’ says Max. ‘I want you to always be the girl who interrupted a wedding by laughing when the priest said “loin”.’

  ‘Ha, and when he said “sexual union”, putting loads of emphasis on sexual.’

  ‘My cousin was so not happy about you laughing at her wedding.’ Max smiles.

  ‘She should have done the registry office one then – they don’t say loin or sexual in that one!’ I tell him.

  Our laughter is interrupted by my phone going off in my bag.

  I have fifteen missed calls from Spencer and a text. When I open the message a whole load of writing comes up and it looks like the longest text in the world. While I read it, Max sits there and looks at his plate.

  So I’ll start with sorry. I’m really, truly sorry. I got caught up in the whole fame thing and I didn’t think.

  Now I’m sitting alone (smelling of bacon and flowers, by the way), realising that the highlight of my summer wasn’t getting a part in the show. It was meeting you. You’re ridiculous. And you’ve made me laugh pretty much non-stop. And when you care about someone you tell them properly. I left it too late to tell you that I fell for you the moment I saw you fall off a train.

  You want me to know you, and I don’t yet. But I want to. And I think it will be an adventure.

  If you want to join me, meet me at the London Eye at 8.

  I’ll be the dickhead in the suit holding champagne – how’s that for a finale?

  Spencer x

  Max looks up.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s . . . he’s waiting at the London eye with a glass of champagne. Like in the show.’

  Max manages a sort of smile and nods. ‘He’s good.’

  The bill comes, which breaks the tension for a moment and soon we are back outside again. The London Eye looms in the distance on the other side of the river.

  ‘So, you probably need some time to think,’ says Max. ‘I’ll . . . head off. But, you know, if you need anything . . .’

  I want to tell him that I don’t want time to think. I want him to chat to me and to not have to think at all. There’s a pause when we don’t know whether to hug. Then Max puts his arm out to do a fistbump instead. We laugh and then I grab him and hug him. I cling on, burying my face in his chest, and then we break apart.

  As I watch him walk away, I get a sad pang when I notice he’s wearing the hat I got him. I wish I’d got him the one he really wanted.

  Going along the bridge, it feels like everyone else is coming the other way. They’re walking lazily in the afterglow of a hot day and it seems like everyone I pass is in a group of friends, chatting and laughing. I thought that’s what I’d get from the summer, but it hasn’t really turned out like that. Because I’ve been focused too much on Spencer?

  But this is a person I could have adventures with.

  I see Spencer in the queue for the Eye, wearing a suit and trying to open the champagne bottle at the same time as holding the glasses. People keep looking over and pointing at him, maybe wondering if he is proposing to someone. Or perhaps they’ve seen The Halls.

  In the show, Harry was dressed similarly and got into a pod, looking at his watch as the music got more dramatic. Then he saw Jen, standing on the grass. Sh
e shook her head and the pod moved off and the credits rolled. And it was such a shock, because you’d seen her running and you really thought she would go to him.

  It makes me decide. I do the same. I run.

  I get there only just in time. He was about to go. I grab the back of his arm and he turns around. He looks surprised.

  ‘Look, would you come back with me?’ I ask him. ‘I just want someone to be with me and listen to all the crap I talk and just hang out.’

  Max laughs. ‘Sounds amazing.’

  Chapter 42

  Granny has gone out for dinner, so I lead Max over to the ladder to go up to my bedroom. He follows me up without saying anything.

  In the bedroom, I get into my pyjamas and walk over to the bed. He takes off his T-shirt and then starts undoing his jeans. Then he looks up at me.

  ‘Oi! No peeking – face the wall.’

  I smile at him and turn around.

  My phone lights up in my bag. I told Spencer I would explain in the morning. I don’t know if he’ll want to see me. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I read his reply. It says, Okay.

  Max and I slide under the covers and lie side by side.

  ‘I love you,’ he says, looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘I love you, too.’

  And I know, whatever kind of love it is, we do love each other.

  I don’t need to be in his arms to feel that he’s there for me. I turn my head to the side and so does he. And I talk about everything.

  Chapter 43

  It’s such a relief to be honest with him. When all the stuff happened with Grandpa dying, and with Dad, I just used Max to distract me. I wanted everything to be the same. I went out most nights and spent as little time at home as possible. And everyone was saying how well I was doing – how it was great I didn’t let things get me down. But I felt like I’d turned into a joke. I was doing what everyone expected of me – getting drunk, just saying stuff without thinking, getting engaged too young – and they thought that was all I was. I thought everyone was laughing at me and Max behind my back, just like they were laughing at my dad. And I started blaming Max for how I felt people saw us.