by Liz Bankes
‘I never thought you’d be bothered about stuff like that,’ Max says when I tell him.
‘Neither did I,’ I say, my voice going squeaky and tears still streaming down my face. I think because I don’t cry very often, when I do, I unleash a flood. Mostly snot, it seems. ‘I just wanted to prove to people I could do things on my own and that I wasn’t stupid, so I came to London on work experience.’
‘No one thinks you’re stupid, Gabi.’
‘Your parents do. When they go on about you going to uni and being a musical genius and how I’m holding you back.’
‘Well . . . my dad’s a dick.’
‘Yeah, he is.’
I feel Max’s stomach tensing as he laughs. It’s nice to be this close to him again.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘you’re the only one out of all of us with the prospect of an actual job. You’re Julia’s favourite waitress, and that’s pretty special – she’s sacked most of the others.’
‘But, Max, you should have seen how they were all looking at me. They kept telling me I could take the rest of the shift off or take a break. Even when I got things wrong, I didn’t get told off.’
Max is quiet for a while. Then he shifts on the bed and clears his throat. ‘This summer you’ve done things on your own. Come and lived here. Done the work placement. Done the hot new TV hunk . . .’
I elbow him sharply in the ribs. ‘Shhh you.’
‘What? Are you embarrassed to be one half of a hot new celeb couple?’
‘I was embarrassed when I went to a posh hotel, threw wine over him then woke up in the middle of the night and hallucinated a dead bird. But I don’t need to worry about that any more. I’m not so sure we are a hot celeb couple now.’
I feel his arm sliding away from me.
‘Max . . .’ I warn.
‘What?’
‘Do not do the get-in dance!’
Too late.
‘Max!’ I try to hold down his arms, but I can’t stop laughing. Eventually I biff him on the side of the head. ‘Anyway, what have you been up to – hanging out with Rosie?’
He stops the dance and frowns at me. ‘Huh? Rosie’s going out with my brother.’
‘WHAT? No!’
‘Yeah, they met at this party just after you’d left. But she was really worried about telling you, I think – because she’s been round our house loads. It was nice getting to know her a little better – felt like a link to you.’
‘I thought you two were having a steamy affair!’
‘No steamy affairs for me,’ he says, ‘but you should have seen some of their messages!’ He stops when he realises that sounds weird. ‘Cal lost his phone again, so I said he could use mine.’
Once the big stuff’s out of the way, we chat for hours. The same silly things we always talked about. Eventually our responses get slower and start making less sense and at some point we fall asleep.
In the morning he gets ready to go before I wake up. He knows I’m meeting Spencer. There’s a moment before he leaves when we don’t know whether to hug or not. Then he grabs me and gives me one of his bear hugs.
‘Best friends?’ he says.
‘Best friends,’ I reply, my voice all muffled in his hoodie. ‘Well, equal to—’
‘Equal to Mia. I know my place.’
Spencer leaves me waiting for about ten minutes in the coffee shop, which is only fair I suppose.
He sits down and there’s an awkward pause.
‘Things got a bit mental for a bit there,’ I say.
‘To put it mildly.’ He nods.
Then we catch each other’s eye and can’t help a smile.
‘Oh dear,’ he says.
‘Oh dear,’ I agree.
There’s another silence, less awkward this time, and I start to speak.
‘I should have told you about Max. But I won’t even let myself think about him. He knows me so well and he saw me struggling through all the stuff with my dad and barely coping. He was the one person who knew what scared me most – that I would have a breakdown like Dad. I liked you being someone who didn’t know any of that.’
‘So you kept me at a distance,’ he says in a low voice. ‘You could give me a chance to get to know you as well as he does.’
‘It’s not just Max, it’s all of them,’ I say, finally speaking out loud the thought that came to me and when I saw Max sit down next to me on the bench. ‘All the people that know me and helped me through. My best friends. I need them at the moment and I need them to know how grateful I am. I know at some point there will be room for a new relationship. But for now it’s them I need.’
He nods and gives me a half smile. ‘Timing, eh?’
‘And anyway,’ I sip my coffee and raise my eyebrow at him, ‘you’re TV’s hot new hunk – you’ll be beating them off with a stick. Our summer fling will be a distant memory.’
‘Ha!’ he laughs. ‘Well, I guess that won’t be completely unenjoyable.’
I meet his gaze. His eyes are sparkly and his eyebrows arch slightly in the middle, like when he first asked me out for a coffee. A few images flicker in my head. His body pressed against me. His kisses going down.
I probably shouldn’t be thinking about about that now. I’m meant to be being all sensible and doing the right thing. I’ll think about something else – something totally non-sexual. Like this salt pot.
Spencer is giving me a bit of a funny look. I am staring quite intensely, to be fair.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘you are quite weird.’
‘And a stalker,’ I add.
He nods. ‘Lucky escape, really.’ There’s a pause and he runs his finger over a scratch on the table. ‘I won't forget about our summer fling, though.’
I smile at him. ‘Me neither. Best tour guide ever.’
I’m standing in the queue at the Co-op later. I rang Granny to say I was on my way back and for some reason she said not to come home yet and that it was really urgent for me to buy a bag of nuts first. Maybe I just have to accept that my entire family is mental.
I tap my thumb on my purse and then panic shoots through me. I look at my thumb. I’ve lost the ring again.
Hopefully it just fell off in bed or when I was getting changed. I need to grow bigger fingers. I’ll just hide my hand when I go inside, chuck Granny her bag of nuts and then go straight up to my room.
I see movement at the window as I come back up the path. It looks a bit speedy for Granny, but you never know these days. Then when I open the door, I have the shock of my life – they’re all there. Granny, Nish, Effie, Rosie, Max, his brother Cal, Han and some of the other girls from school, Millie, Jamie and . . . Mia!
Chapter 44
Mia didn’t properly hit her head when I knocked her over. She only knocked it on Jamie’s knee. I’m sure she’s fine. I’m certainly not letting her out of this hug any time soon. She’s trying to say something.
‘What’s that? Did you say, “I love you, Gabi”?’
I can’t believe Granny invited them all over. This is literally the best surprise ever.
‘She said, “We brought cheese”,’ says Jamie, towering above us.
I release Mia and walk over to him. ‘Ugh, you’re still on the scene, are you?’
‘You’ll have to come with us next time,’ Jamie replies. ‘Mia kept whinging that she had no one to go crazy dancing with. I did try – I wore my best dress, but apparently it wasn’t the same.’
‘Next year, for defs,’ I say, giving him a friendly punch on the arm.
He frowns and looks at me seriously. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’
‘Thanks, Jamie.’
‘Right,’ he says and walks off, no doubt to balance out his moment of being nice with lots of grumpiness.
Standing behind him is Nish.
I walk sheepishly up to her. ‘Do you hate me?’ I say.
‘Yeah, that is obvs why I’m at your surprise party,’ she says and we both smile.
‘I’m really sor
ry about the picnic. I was rubbish,’ I say.
‘Don’t apologise. We’re all rubbish sometimes,’ Nish replies.
Next I walk into Rosie and Cal, mid-snog.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, you fool?’ I say, as Rosie breaks off the kiss and goes bright red.
‘I . . . just thought you’d find it really weird, me being round Max’s house all the time. I’m sorry!’
‘Oh my God, don’t say sorry. I was a dick. Anyway, I’ll leave you to your snogging and steamy texts.’ I wink at her and Rosie goes even redder, if that is possible. I don’t say anything to Cal – I’m still wary around Max’s family, but he does smile at me. He has to be nice to me now he’s going out with one of my friends. Because if he does anything to hurt her I will kill him.
After a high-five with Han, I head over to Granny and give her a hug. She knew that the kind of leaving party I needed was one with all the people I’m coming back to and have been missing. She always knows these things. Apparently a bag of nuts was the first thing that came into her head when she was thinking of a way to keep me out of the house. I told her I hope she always says things like that and never becomes normal.
I look around the room at everyone. Mia showing Rosie and Cal pictures from France. Jamie and Max standing awkwardly next to each other and not speaking. Nish and Effie in their own little world. For the first time in months I feel totally relaxed. Nothing hiding at the corner of my mind to worry me.
Once Granny’s given me a sangria, even though it’s only lunchtime, we drink a toast.
‘To Grandpa!’
Chapter 45
‘So, Gabi,’ Julia says, her arms crossed. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
‘I want to come back. I’ve had a totally awesome summer. Well, mostly. But Radleigh Castle is what I know. And I’m good at it. And . . . Oooh, Dan’s back!’
He gives me a thumbs up and a grin as he disappears into the kitchen.
‘You know he’s all totally in love now with this Polish girl he met when he was travelling?’ I say. ‘There were about a million photos of them on his Facebook.’
‘Lovely,’ says Julia dryly.
We walk along to the restaurant in silence. Julia picks up the rota from behind the bar and starts looking through it.
Suzy is polishing glasses and showing off a sparkly engagement ring to one of the other waitresses. I remember with a gulp that I never found Granny’s ring. I haven’t told anyone and am totally panicking about how I can replace it. Where do you buy old, irreplaceable, priceless rings? I distract myself – as I’ve been doing every time I think about it – by talking, and I tell Suzy how nice the ring is and how good it is that big Welsh Scott with the beard finally proposed. She thanks me and asks if I’m coming back to Radleigh.
‘Yep!’ I say. ‘I mean . . .’ I look over at Julia. ‘Hopefully. I think so . . .’
‘We’d love to have you back, Gabi.’ Julia smiles.
‘Thanks so much!’ I think I’ll hug her, but as I lunge towards her she holds her hand up.
‘But! I don’t want you to still be here next year.’
I stop mid-lunge. ‘What?’
‘I want you to do something else,’ Julia says. ‘You could go to uni, or—’
‘Do you think I’d get in?’
She looks at me sharply. ‘If you don’t go, then it will be because you’ve chosen something else. You can if you want to. Or you can do something with this TV experience. Or the same job you do here – but you won’t do it here. And if in five years you want to come and be my wedding planner, then give me a call. But go and have some adventures first.’
When I do hug her, Julia looks like she might die of shock.
I walk back along the river into town. My first shift is tomorrow. One more year and then . . . who knows? I might start looking things up when I get home. I’ll get Mum to help me – she always gets overexcited about that sort of thing.
Oh my God, if I did some sort of course in writing for TV then all my hours of watching soaps and dramas and reality shows and anything with fit people in would actually be research!
When I’m waiting to cross the road at the top of town, a car pulls up to the lights. It’s Max’s mum’s.
Today is the day he’s leaving for uni. The backseat is heaving with stuff, with Max’s Jurassic Park duvet lying across it. Max’s mum gives me a sort of smile from the driver’s seat and then Max leans round from the passenger seat and sees me. He points to the top he’s wearing and grins at me. It’s his Barcelona top. I never gave it back after we had that argument, but I took it with me when I went to say goodbye to him a few days ago and sneaked it into his bag of clothes.
We are still grinning at each other as the car pulls off.
When I get home, I hear Mum squeal from the kitchen. She comes running through, holding out a little bag.
‘Someone dropped this off for you!’ she says and winks at me.
‘Who?’ I say, taking it.
‘Now that would be telling,’ says Mum.
Millie sticks her head over the banister. ‘It was Max.’
Dad walks through the hall on his way upstairs. He narrows his eyes suspiciously and mutters, ‘Boys.’
Inside the bag is the little blue box with the gold clasp. The one that Granny gave me. Inside the box is the ring, but as I take it out a delicate gold chain comes with it.
Max’s note reads:
So you’ll stop losing it.
I can’t wait to see you next week in Leeds.
Mx
Gabi: Best. Weekend. Ever.
Mia: What did you do?
Gabi: I ran down a road in my underwear surrounded by naked men.
Mia: Of course you did. What else?
Gabi: Well.
1. So Max’s flatmates are all girls – Katya, Rach, Zannah and Laura. He is very happy about that and kept grinning. I told him that he’s not allowed to fancy any of them until I’ve checked them all. I’m not having him go out with anyone crap. He said he doesn’t think he’ll go out with anyone for a while. We had a little bit of a moment then and maybe kissed, but only a bit. The flatmates seem nice though. I gave them all biscuits to try to make them be my friends. Laura tripped up and fell headfirst into a door when she arrived so I think she is my favourite.
2. Rach has dyed red hair, so I thought I would see if she would let me call her Mia and dress her up as you. She didn’t say no. Or yes. She didn’t actually say anything.
3. NUDITY. We went out to the Student Union and they had these drinks called Snakebite Black that were only a £1 and didn’t taste of alcohol so I had six. Then we were walking back to the halls and saw AN ENTIRE RUGBY TEAM running naked down a path. Apparently it was some sort of initiation thing. It was the happiest moment of my life. Then Max said, ‘Don’t!’ because he knew what I was thinking – how funny would it be if I joined them?? Answer: very. So I did. There are photos.
4. I almost died on the train home. I felt so ill. I was sitting there and rocking and moaning. So when I got into London I went in search of coffee. And the coffee stall I found was Taste of Spain – there was one near the uni when I was on my internship. And it was the same guy serving that I’d met before, this guy called Felix. When I got my coffee I realised he’d written his number on the cup!
5. I got another email alert about Spencer – there’s a rumour that he and Heidi are going to star in their own reality show called Hencer . . .
So I am nearly back now and will stop writing because I will soon be talking to you. We have big plans to make for my amazing 18th extravaganza. You had better be waiting for me at the station or there will be trouble. Ooh, actually I am pulling in now and can see your face. YAAAAY.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :)
Acknowledgements
There are many, many people who made writing the difficult second book so much easier. Thank you to all of you!
Firstly, Anne, my agent, for loving Gabi as much as I do.
> Everyone at Piccadilly Press, especially Brenda, who has made it all possible. Melissa – Best. Editor. Ever. – for knowing exactly what I wanted to do with this story and for helping me get there.
Then to all the lovely friend-and-family people who gave me so much support and enthusiasm when Irresistible came out. Mum, for equipping every single member of my family with a copy of the book. Dad, for not teasing me too much about my ‘steamy’ status. Edd, for being the person I knew I could email when I needed a pretentious sentence about Ancient Greece. Granny and Grandpa, for more things than I could possibly fit on a book page. Ruth and Eloise, joint best cousins ever. Hazel, for cheering me up no end with chats over bloody steak, and a winky face ;). The TWGGS massive: Emily, Han, Laura, Lorna and Lizzie, for making me laugh through school and ever since. The lads: Claire, Tanya and Hazel, for hilarious email chains, full of comedy gold. Non, best boss ever. And Tess, Anna, Celia, Nadia and Ryan, for support, awesomeness, wine-drinking and humour.
Finally to all the bloggers, writers and readers who wrote lovely things about book one, particularly Luisa Plaja for the Chicklish review, Siobhan at Bookalicious and Polly and Amber from my old school TWGGS – it would be really cheesy if I told you just how happy I was to read your words and we’d all end up feeling a bit awkward, so, you know, THANK YOU.
And you (I wouldn’t forget you) – thanks for reading!
Have you read ...
Mia’s new summer job at a posh country club is hard work, but fun, especially when a romance develops with hunky Dan.
But Mia is drawn to Jamie too – sexy, rich and bored, he’s got everything he could ever want, but gets his kicks messing with people’s lives.
Even though Mia knows that getting involved with Jamie is a bad idea, there’s something so dangerously exciting about him, she just can’t resist.
piccadillypress.co.uk/teen