by Andi Osho
‘Watcha doin’?’ said Simi, clattering against the siding.
‘That was a fast lap,’ Jemima stuttered, quickly pocketing her phone. ‘It was just an email – from my friend Rebecca. It’s nothing.’
‘Rebecca’s the one with the weird lisp?’ Simi asked.
‘It’s just a normal lisp,’ said Jemima.
‘You stayed with her in LA, right?’
‘Yeah. She’s been offered a twelve-month contract at their London offices and she’s thinking through her options,’ Jemima said, her words fading to nothing.
Now was not the time to discuss this. She had enough self-made dramas to handle.
‘If she comes to London, I hope she knows, you’re ours,’ Simi giggled, clutching Jemima.
‘One hundred per cent,’ she said before changing tack. ‘So, tell me more about Mo.’
‘Now, are we all happy with our dates? Jem, what do you think of yours?’ Simi asked.
‘Tim? Yeah, he’s nice,’ said Jemima.
‘You are welcome,’ said Meagan with a flourish.
‘And don’t you think he’s a good fit, you know; sweet like you, funny like you and grounded,’ Simi enthused.
‘I’m not sure I got all that from one conversation but he’s definitely nice,’ said Jemima as they skated back to the hut.
Simi’s face fell and Jemima felt bad. But what could she do? For her, this wasn’t about falling in love. This was about a much bigger picture.
‘I bet Jem’s only dating these poor fellas to get ideas for her book. She probably gets home afterwards and taps away at her little laptop,’ Meagan laughed, miming a silly impersonation of Jemima.
‘Don’t be mean,’ said Simi.
Jemima’s face drained of blood. She stopped dead in her tracks thinking, for one horrific moment, she had been found out.
‘Jem’s not that shady. She knows I’m joking,’ said Meagan as she stepped into the warmth of the hut.
‘Course,’ said Jemima, forcing out a laugh.
Despite the Baltic temperature, Jemima was sweating. Hanging back, she quickly pulled out her phone, going straight to Rebecca’s email. She needed to prepare her exit strategy and this might be the first part of it.
I am soooo interested! Jemima tapped into her phone. She hit SEND and followed Meagan and Simi inside.
Chapter 27
Simi
Simi opened one eye and then the other. The bedroom was dark but in the hallway she could see the flickering glow of a TV screen. So, this was Mo’s pad. She looked around the bedroom which was enormous, and, aside from some minimalist furniture, empty. Luxurious, long curtains hung against sliding doors that opened out onto a balcony. At the start of the evening, she never dreamt she’d end up in the bed of a famous actor, yet here she was. The night had started with early drinks and dinner at Nobu which Mo had paid for and Simi still felt guilty about. She wished she were more like Meagan who considered such chivalry reparations for the gender pay gap. Then later, outside the restaurant, when he’d put an arm around her and pulled her to him, Simi had actually swooned. But then she’d had a choice.
‘Want to come to an exhibition I’m opening next week or… you could come back to mine?’ Mo had whispered so close to her ear it felt as though he’d planted the words inside her head.
And now, here she was, in his super-king-sized bed. She looked over at his side which was empty. Perhaps he was fixing them a drink… while watching TV. Simi wondered if Meagan was having similar issues on her teetotal date with AJ. All Simi wanted was for Mo to come back to bed so they could get on with falling head-over-heels in love. While she awaited his return, she star-fished under the duvet, the brush of the silk sheets making her squeal. She looked around the room again, her eyes now adjusted. Where was all his stuff?? They’d basically had sex in an IKEA showroom. Simi spotted her crumpled dress against the cream carpet and her bra, which had somehow hooked itself onto the door handle. She sighed. If Mo wasn’t going to come to the mountain, perhaps she would have to get dressed and take the mountain to him. Unsure she wanted to be the mountain in that analogy, she kicked her feet around under the duvet trying to loop a toe through her knickers. Above Simi’s head she saw the time, projected from a digital alarm clock on Mo’s night stand. 11.05 p.m. They’d only had sex an hour ago and she’d already been abandoned. Maybe it wasn’t time to move mountains. Maybe it was time to leave – once she’d found her knickers. Simi clambered out of bed and unhooked her bra from the door handle. Any romance she’d experienced at the start of the date had been shot to smithereens, and really, she only had herself to blame. She’d been so excited about her date with Mo, checking her phone on the hour every hour waiting for his text arranging their meet-up. Her dress was fresh from the dry cleaners that morning and she’d washed and twisted her hair two days earlier so it would be at its most afro plumpness. And for what?
She peeped down the hall where she could now see the television in his living room. As the first-person view of a machine gun bounced around the bottom of the screen, she heard gunfire and a drill sergeant’s pained yelp. Simi’s jaw slackened. Was he playing a computer game? She leaned back onto the cold, bedroom wall. After kissing the frog in search of her prince, so often she ended up back at his lily pad. She did it because intimacy was supposed to be the start of something yet, once again, for the guy, it was just the happy ending. Was Mo the same? Was this what Meagan’s whole boundaries speech had been about? And now Simi had surrendered something precious in the hope he valued it as highly. But he hadn’t. He was playing shoot-em-ups next door while she manned a search-and-rescue for her underwear.
‘What would Meagan do?’ she whispered, pacing.
Quickly, Simi grabbed her phone from the bedside table and fired off a text.
I’ve lost my knickers! Help!
Why was this so much easier for Meagan? When she slept with a guy it made him want her more – like poor Todd. But when she did it, they disappeared off to shoot alien insurgents. Simi tossed her phone aside and crouched down to look under Mo’s bed, staring at a jumble of shoe boxes. She pushed a couple aside noticing a price tag. $400.
‘For a pair of shoes?!’ she inhaled.
She flipped a lid and inspected the contents. Inside were a box-fresh, unworn, new pair of trainers. Unable to resist, she opened one more box. Once again, there nestled among crisp, tissue paper like a couple of sleeping babies was another pristine pair of white trainers.
‘A thousand dollars!’
Just one of these shoes was worth more than her first car.
She pushed the box aside and opened another. Yet more unsullied, white trainers. Simi thought of what she would do with that much disposable income – therapy for sure and maybe a fasting retreat where you had coffee enemas and sifted through your poo for old chewing gum.
‘Simi.’
She froze, around her now several opened shoe boxes and no legitimate explanation in sight.
‘Hi…’ she spluttered.
‘Looking for something?’
Self-respect was her first thought.
‘Trouble?’ she said with a half laugh.
Mo looked at her, confused.
‘As in Elvis,’ she said, trailing away. ‘I was looking for my, you know.’
Mo sat down on the floor next to her resting his arm on her knee. He laughed and despite her abject embarrassment, eventually she laughed too.
‘Have you looked under the duvet?’
‘Yes… I…’
Mo pulled up the end of the duvet sweeping his arm from side to side. Just then his eyes widened and a terrified expression crossed his face.
‘They’ve got me!’
His head plunged under the bedding as he fought to free himself from the terror-knickers.
‘Very funny,’ Simi said, slapping his thigh.
At last his thrashing subsided and he pulled out her underwear, ceremoniously handing them to her. She slapped him again before slipping them on and r
eaching for her crumpled dress.
‘You going?’ said Mo, disappointment in his voice.
‘Well, I thought you were busy.’
Mo pushed himself up off the floor and went to one of his fitted wardrobes. He pulled out a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms similar to the ones he had on and put them on the bed.
‘Chill for a bit,’ he said before heading back to the living room.
After a moment, Simi heard him fire up the game again.
‘This is Collateral Mayhem. Over-eighteens only…’
Simi slipped on the T-shirt and jogging bottoms and looked down at her shapeless form. In the figure-hugging body-con dress he’d slipped her out of she’d looked hot. Now she looked as though she were heading to the prison gym.
‘Come, Simi, I’ve got another controller,’ he called.
‘Coming!’ she said as though even wild horses couldn’t hold her back.
She padded through to the living room feeling the lush, deep carpet under her feet. Perhaps this wasn’t a total wipeout. Mo wasn’t indifferent. He just wanted to share his passion – for gaming. If she could learn to ride a bike with Oscar, shooting insurgents would be easy. And weren’t sharing your interests one of the building blocks of a relationship? Meagan and her boundaries were all well and good but if she’d followed that advice would she be here with Mo playing Collateral Mayhem? Sometimes, love wasn’t all hearts and flowers. Sometimes it was covering someone with a suppressive fire while they reloaded. Perhaps, Simi daydreamed, once the dating game was over, something real might be possible with Mo.
‘Grab that grenade!’ he instructed.
‘Love to!’ She beamed as her gaming character discharged its weapon aimlessly into the sky.
Chapter 28
Meagan
Meagan laughed, bemused that she hadn’t checked her phone for three whole hours. She scooped up her arbitrarily selected ‘lucky’ bowling ball and rammed her fingers into the holes. Here was another first. She was bowling. She held the ball in both hands before swinging her arm back so far, she was barely facing her lane.
‘Woah, woah, woah!’ said AJ lowering her arm. ‘Not such a high swing.’
Somehow, bowling had passed Meagan by. As a teen, her and her friends had spent most of their time trying to pass for 21 and get into nightclubs. And though Meagan was terrible at it, chucking something heavy, it turned out, was very much up her street. AJ gently manoeuvred Meagan into position, pulling her hand back for balance. She nestled into his body.
‘Now what?’ she said.
‘Allow yourself a little half-swing forward, pull back and then release.’
Meagan bit her lip in concentration as she swung her hand with full force. Her arm soared over her head and the bowling ball sailed off her fingers. She yelped as it crashed onto their table behind them sending fries and soda everywhere. She and AJ froze, everyone’s eyes on them.
‘We’re alright,’ he said with a placating hand as Meagan stared at the chunk that had been knocked out of the flimsy, Formica table.
‘Ooops,’ she laughed, flinching at the damage.
A couple of staff members scurried over to survey the wreckage and issue the kind of frail reprimand only teenage part-timers can. After they’d wiped what remained of the table and cleaned the food up from the floor they scuttled back to the reception desk. Meagan clamped her hand over her mouth and dived into their booth, AJ nestling in beside her.
‘Do you know what the problem is?’ she said hoisting up her foot. ‘It’s these minging shoes. If I was in my heels, I’d be killing it right now.’
‘You’d be killing something,’ said AJ.
Meagan dug her elbow into his ribs. He nudged her back and she looked at him, surprised. She’d never had a date like this, like she was with a mate.
‘I’m gonna get my shoes. You’ll see,’ she said sliding out of their booth and heading to the reception desk.
She dumped her bowling shoes on the counter, the shoe-stench radiating from the shelves almost flooring her. She’d rather be a blind knife thrower’s assistant than deal with other people’s footwear. The team member handed over her suede boots and she stroked them like a beloved pet newly released from quarantine. The Universe’s natural order restored, she trotted back to AJ.
Meagan flopped into the booth and thrusted up her feet. ‘Prepare to meet thy doom.’
‘With those?’ AJ said, pointing at her boots.
Meagan elbowed him again and before he could jab her back, she put up a defensive block and stuffed some fries in his mouth. Their eyes locked and she smiled. Much to her surprise, this night had been pretty decent and a total contrast to her evening with Bruno. How had they got so familiar in just a few hours? She’d had no booze, she’d eaten on a date, something she never did and she’d removed her heels in public. Was it too early to call the Guinness Book of Records?
‘Want to try again?’ said AJ pulling her up by her hand.
‘You bet your arse I do.’
AJ rolled Meagan’s ‘lucky’ ball aside handing her a smaller, lighter one. She wanted to cut him some side eye but he was probably right. She stepped up to the line, staring down her lane. AJ tucked himself beside her and Meagan began to wonder if she might like this guy. He had a very grabbable butt, that was for sure, and sexy eyes that were also nice, like he’d care if you orgasmed first. Deals had been broken over less. But then, she scoffed at her silliness, almost forgetting her plan. No one was going to distract her from that. Meagan felt AJ’s hand rest on her side as he pointed to where her ball needed to land. He was closer than he needed to be. She inhaled. If smells were edible his cologne was fine dining. But it didn’t matter how lovely he smelt or how good he looked. This wasn’t the plan.
‘Are you okay, Meagan?’
‘Hmmm, yeah. So, what am I doing?’ she said trying not to inhale anymore AJ.
‘Bend the knees, breathe, swing, release and remember…’
His warm breath brushed across her face.
‘Don’t kill anyone.’
Ignoring his deliciousness, Meagan let the ball swing in her hand before releasing it. It thumped onto the lane, then veered in the direction of the gutter. AJ winced as it rumbled towards certain death but then miraculously bananaed away from the edge.
‘You’ve put some spin on it,’ AJ gawped as the ball rolled on, now almost centred.
Meagan held her breath as the ball careered into the middle pins sending them flying, knocking all ten down. The pin-setter cleared the deck and their scoreboard broke into a celebratory cacophony. STRIKE!
AJ pumped his fist then hoisted Meagan into the air.
‘You did it! And no one’s dead!’
‘I told you, it’s the heels!’ she laughed.
As she let him spin her around and her laughter ebbed away, she felt vulnerable. It wasn’t horrible but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. AJ placed her back on terra firma and she looked up at him, his face catching the light in just the way Todd’s did. She put a hand on his cheek, pulling him to her and they kissed.
AJ and Meagan sat in their booth watching the staff close the place down. They all looked like students who’d taken this job to get through uni but forgotten to go to uni.
‘Can I call you?’ AJ asked taking up Meagan’s hand.
Her heart thumped in her chest. The hand that AJ was holding usually held her phone and she hadn’t looked at it for five hours. She pulled it from the side pocket of her bag, horrified at the stack of notifications. Meagan switched to autopilot working through the backlog. Her solicitor, some clients, Antonia De Silva, Todd, Glenn and a weird text from Simi about underwear.
‘Fuck it,’ she said.
This was what happened when you allowed others to distract you.
As she typed with one hand, she pushed the other into the sleeve of her jacket, chasing it around her seat. AJ reached over and helped her into it as she continued to tap away at her phone, barely noticing. She switched typing hand as he
fed her hand into the other sleeve, the only sound the ticky-tak of her texting and the staff vacuuming in the background.
Can we talk.
A text from Todd. More distractions. Unless it read, ‘I’m hard. Get over here’ it was pointless.
I’m on a date.
She pinged back at him.
That should put the kibosh on his love lunacy. To put a final nail in the coffin Meagan grabbed AJ and took a selfie. Ideally, she would have preferred him not to look like a Pitbull licking a stinging nettle but the photo would still do the trick. Todd needed to know she only wanted one thing from him, good old fashioned, ancient Roman screwing. Nothing more. Nothing less. The photo swooshed off and she got up to leave.
‘So that’s it?’ said AJ.
‘Sorry, babe, I’ve gotta help my friend find her knickers,’ Meagan said before heading for the exit, emailing and texting as she went.
Chapter 29
Jemima
‘Jeeeeeehm, it’s Eeeeeeeeve,’ said Eve.
Jemima listened to the rumble of Eve’s exhaled vape mist down the phone and braced herself. Yesterday she’d sent over a draft and since then her phone’s every ping, pop and whoosh had given her palpitations. After filth fest, Jemima needed this draft to win so big it obliterated that fateful mistake from Eve’s memory. If Hudson Hicks jettisoned her due to her penchant for writing pornography it would not be good. If she got a reputation for being ‘trouble’, even the Ordnance Survey people wouldn’t want her. This call was make-or-break. Jemima just wished she wasn’t standing outside Highbury and Islington tube station to take it. The station staff were trained for emergencies but an author’s dreams being crushed was probably outside their remit.