Rachel Ryan's Resolutions

by Laura Starkey

  Some while and several drinks later, Rachel found herself chatting to Will. Anna was telling Greg and Carlos a story that kept cracking them both up, and Tom had disappeared – maybe to the bar.

  ‘Having a good night, Rach?’ Will asked, slinging an arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘But sorry if this whole … thing is a bit weird.’

  Will scrunched up his nose, dismissing the idea. ‘It all looks pretty natural from where I’m standing.’

  ‘That’s good, I guess …?’

  ‘Yeah. Ooooh, look, your other man’s up to sing.’

  Will was right: Jack had stepped onto the stage and was adjusting the microphone. The sound of keyboards and percussion filled the room, and Rachel recognised the opening bars of ‘Common People’ by Pulp.

  ‘Oh no,’ Will said. ‘Terrible song choice.’

  ‘Why?’ Rachel asked, perplexed. ‘This is a great tune.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Rachel. Surely I don’t need to explain to you of all people that someone who went to Harrow has no business singing about renting a flat above a shop. Anna would call this “cultural appropriation”, and – do not tell her I said this – she’s right. I wouldn’t dare sing this song as if it meant something to me. I’d be murdered.’

  Rachel laughed, but as Will’s words sank in she felt the truth of them. As far as she could remember, Jack hadn’t even needed to take out a student loan – he’d lived off an allowance from his parents the whole time they were at York.

  This was definitely a bit rich, she thought, as he belted out the lines about working-class hardship in his RP accent.

  He was really going for it, though. As she looked around, Rachel noted that there were plenty of women who seemed entranced – and in no way politically affronted – by his performance. The irony of it was clearly lost on them, but Rachel wasn’t sorry Will had brought it home to her.

  Jack bowed and then sauntered off stage, heading straight for them. Rachel’s stomach swooped – as if she were standing on a high ledge, about to jump off.

  Before he could say anything, Will pointed. ‘Ah. Tom’s up – this’ll be worth hearing.’

  Rachel looked up at him in surprise. ‘Will it?’

  Will nodded and grinned. ‘The man’s a dark horse. Irritatingly good at almost everything.’

  Tom shook hands with the compère, who slapped him on the back as if he were an old pal he hadn’t seen in years. Rachel remembered what Anna had said about him knowing the people who owned this place. Then, to Rachel’s surprise, the band’s keyboard player vacated his stool so Tom could sit on it.

  ‘What the …?’ she started. But before she could finish, the beginning notes of a song she knew rang out of a nearby speaker: a mellow, familiar piano riff. And Tom was playing it.

  And then there were words: ‘It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday …’

  ‘Ugh. Billy Joel? “Piano Man”?’ Jack snorted. ‘I suppose tonight’s cheese course is served.’

  Rachel felt a sudden urge to hit him, but limited herself to hissing, ‘Shut up.’

  Will was smiling serenely. ‘This isn’t cheesy, it’s classic. And this is a piano bar, mate – he’s going to bring the house down.’

  Tom’s voice was right on the melody and full of character. His singing wasn’t showy, but every word he uttered was authentic – believable. Rachel’s skin started to prickle, goosebumps breaking out on every exposed inch of flesh.

  By the time Tom got to the chorus it seemed that everyone in the bar, including the staff, was singing along. Rachel joined in too – though she discovered that the line about a drink called loneliness couldn’t get past the lump that had formed in her throat.

  Will had been right. When Tom sang the final words of the song, the whole place erupted – people were clapping, stamping and shouting for more. Tom motioned for the keyboard player to take his seat again, then placed the microphone back on its stand at the front of the stage and stepped back into the crowd.

  ‘I’m going to go and see where Anna’s got to,’ Will said.

  Rachel gave him a thumbs up, then realised that Jack must have slunk off partway through Tom’s performance. Huh. She hadn’t noticed.

  Tom was walking towards her, and she shuffled forward through the mass of bodies to meet him. As soon as she was close enough, she threw her arms around his neck. It was pure and instinctive, and she hadn’t thought it through. As their bodies collided, Rachel registered that she was a little drunk, as well as suddenly emotional.

  ‘That was … I don’t even know what that was. It was amazing,’ she said, staring up at him. ‘How did I not know you could sing? And since when can you play the piano?’

  ‘I had lessons as a kid,’ he said, pushing a dark-blonde wave off his forehead. ‘And you don’t know everything about me, Rach.’ He raised one eyebrow and made an exaggerated Bond-villain face. ‘I have my secrets.’

  Rachel gave a short laugh, then registered the presence of Tom’s hands on either side of her waist. Their noses were only centimetres apart.

  She knew she should find some way to move, open up a gap – spin around playfully and pull him towards their friends, perhaps. Holding hands so they could pretend to be a couple felt fairly innocent, but this full-frontal closeness did not.

  She could feel his chest rising and falling, pressed up against hers. His breathing seemed shallow and too quick – maybe from the exertion of playing and singing. Rachel realised her pulse was racing too, but she had nothing like Tom’s excuse.

  What was this? What was she doing? She didn’t know. They were still looking at each other.

  Then, in a matter of seconds – maybe less than a second – something shifted between them. Rachel marvelled at the thousand shades of blue and grey in Tom’s eyes: sea, sky, storm clouds. Cornflowers, turquoise, stone.

  Greg had been right: they were beautiful. She felt like she’d never seen them properly before – never looked at them in the right light.

  ‘So …’ Tom whispered. ‘Do you think we have everyone convinced?’

  ‘I reckon so.’ Rachel nodded. But neither of them moved.

  Tom dipped his head and something inside her lit up like a flare. She tilted her face, arching her neck back and throwing her weight onto her tiptoes. He spread his hands on her back, pulling her further in.

  Tom touched his lips to Rachel’s. Lightly. Too lightly. This was the merest pressure: the sort of force you might use for brushing a feather off bare skin, or lathering shampoo into a baby’s downy hair.

  She kissed him back harder, without hesitation, pushing her hands into his sandy hair and opening her mouth. He drew away almost immediately, moving his hands to her upper arms so he could steady her.

  He was right to. Her head was swimming.

  The look on Tom’s face was incomprehensible. Was he shocked? Embarrassed? Angry?

  Without thinking about what she was doing or why, Rachel moved forward, closing the distance he’d just opened up between them.

  Tom kept his head up, several inches out of the way of hers. He wouldn’t look at her, let alone kiss her – but he let her bury her face in his T-shirt as she held on to him. God, he was tall … And he really did smell good.

  Rachel’s legs felt less solid than they were supposed to, and she let herself collapse against him a little. He absorbed the extra weight without comment, not even shifting his feet.

  When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find they were still in the piano bar. Nothing and no one had changed and – while she wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything different – that somehow seemed surprising.

  ‘Feeling a bit wobbly?’ Tom murmured.

  ‘Yes, actually,’ Rachel said, nodding her head. It was still resting against his chest.

  ‘I daresay endless birthday fizz and industrial quantities of amaretto have got something to do with that,’ he said into her hair. He was smiling, though; she could hear it in his voice. Rachel didn’t ar
gue, but she wasn’t sure tipsiness alone could explain why her legs felt like they’d liquefied.

  ‘Maybe we should get you home,’ Tom said. ‘It looks like people are starting to head off anyway, and this place will be closing soon. I’ll go and find Anna. Let’s sit you here for a minute.’ He twisted around, then helped her onto a nearby chair – so subtly and gently that nobody watching would have noticed she wasn’t totally stable.

  Then there was a large, cold glass of water next to her and Tom was on the other side of the room, extracting Anna and Will from their conversation with Theo. They looked grateful.

  Greg and Carlos, she saw, already had jackets on, and Kemi was scrabbling under a table for her zebra-print coat. Good, she thought. Rachel was ready to go home, but it was never a good look to get so lashed that you had to leave your own party before it was really over.

  Suddenly, and without warning, Jack pulled up a chair beside her – so close their knees were touching. He was also ready to leave, his jacket back on but unbuttoned over the fine-knit V-neck jumper he was wearing.

  ‘Thanks for inviting me,’ he said. ‘This was fun – though Anna doesn’t seem to have missed me much.’

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Rachel replied, ignoring his reference to Anna’s frostiness. ‘And for my birthday present too. That was lovely of you.’

  She waited for him to say goodbye, then stand up and go. He didn’t. Instead he let out a huge sigh, as if he’d just lost a fight with himself.

  ‘Tom seems decent enough,’ he said.

  ‘Decent?’ Rachel snorted. ‘He’s so much more than decent. He’s wonderful, and …’ She didn’t complete the sentence out loud, but in her head she said, ‘… and he doesn’t deserve to be used like this.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Jack muttered, waving his hand as if to bat the thought of Tom away. ‘He’s madly in love with you. Any fool could see that. He looks at you like you’re the sun coming up. But I’m not giving up on you. There’s something between us, and he doesn’t get to win without a fight.’

  Rachel realised her mouth had fallen open. Jack smiled, confident that this brazen statement of intent was responsible for her shock. Then he kissed her – technically on the cheek, but far closer to her mouth than anyone reasonable would have deemed appropriate.

  He got to his feet, then said, ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

  Rachel stared after him. He was gone before Anna, Will and Tom reappeared.

  27

  Rachel woke up early, parched and feeling a little sick. Within seconds she realised she had a very special hangover on her hands: a morning after the night before that would require careful, deliberate management.

  Too much water, drunk too fast, might lead to vomiting – and if she began being sick, who knew when she’d stop. On the other hand, if Rachel drank too little water, the throbbing at her temples would worsen.

  Paracetamol, she knew from experience, must be approached with caution. Painkillers sometimes irritated her stomach, so she decided to put them off until her queasy gut had accepted a peace offering of toast.

  Rachel glanced at her phone’s home screen for the time: 7.53 a.m.

  She shuddered. This was a foul time to be up on a Sunday, especially after going to sleep so late; it must have been after one when she got home.

  It was only when she sat up in bed that Rachel realised she couldn’t remember how she’d got there in the first place. Her last recollection was of being in a black cab and telling Anna, Will and Tom how much she loved them.

  Tom.

  FUCK.

  She’d kissed him. Or he’d kissed her … He’d started it, technically – she was going to cling to that.

  And Jack had been there, and he’d been jealous. He’d actually been a bit of a wanker, if she was remembering right. He’d said something too: something about her and Tom that seemed important.

  She couldn’t remember it now, but perhaps she would when her insides started functioning properly again.

  She needed that toast. She needed something to drink.

  Rachel stood up – definitely a little shaky on her feet – and stumbled across the room to retrieve her dressing gown.

  God only knew how she’d ended up wearing pyjamas. A quick check revealed she still had her bra on beneath her floral button-down top. This suggested Anna had been involved in getting her out of her clothes and into her nightwear.

  Memories – some fuzzy and others all too clear – began bursting across Rachel’s consciousness, exploding one after another like tiny fireworks. She pulled her star-print towelling robe around her shoulders, then leaned her head against her closed bedroom door and took a deep breath. Reluctantly, she let her mind’s eye zoom back in on the thing she knew for sure was true, but which she’d been trying to keep out of focus.

  In her head, she could see herself doing it: standing on tiptoes so she could properly reach Tom’s lips – necessary even in heels. Throwing her arms around him without a second of consideration. Sort of – oh God – launching herself at him, only for him to pull back in total amazement.

  Yes, he’d put his mouth on hers first – but he’d jerked away as if she’d tasered him the moment she began to respond. That much Rachel definitely remembered.

  The reality of her situation began to dawn on her. Multiple pieces of the puzzle seemed to float in the air, then begin arranging themselves in slow motion. Watching the awful picture emerge was like waiting for the inevitable SMASH! after knocking over a glass; it seemed to take forever, but it was always going to happen. Rachel turned to lean her back against the bedroom door. She shut her eyes, confronting the ugly conclusion she’d now come to.

  That soft kiss on her lips was the final act from Tom’s ‘Be the Perfect Fake Boyfriend’ playbook. It was just part of his frankly incredible performance. She’d thrown herself at him because the line between truth and lies had become blurred in her head – much to Tom’s horror, it seemed.

  Rachel contemplated blaming it all on the fact that she’d been drinking. That was certainly the spin she’d have to put on things when she spoke to Tom – though, at this point, she didn’t know how she’d even be able to look at him without melting into a puddle of shame.

  She traced her top lip with her index finger, trying to put herself back in the moment – trying to make sense of what had happened. A shiver rushed down her spine. It was like she’d tasted something strange but lovely and couldn’t accurately describe it, even to herself. At least, not without trying it again …

  STOP, Rachel told herself, just as her stomach rolled over, finally threatening mutiny. She straightened up, deciding to obey her body’s demand for carbs.

  She plodded to the bathroom, used the loo and brushed her teeth, then looked in the mirror and scrubbed away the remnants of last night’s make-up. There were bruisy shadows under her eyes. She looked terrible.

  As Rachel walked into the kitchen, she yelped and clutched her throat in shock.

  Tom was there, sitting at the table with his head bent over a spy novel. There was a mug of black coffee in front of him.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Rachel moaned, then sank into a chair. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Well, good morning to you too,’ he said, his mouth hitching up in a wry smile. ‘I’m here because after we let the taxi drive off it started to rain. I didn’t fancy walking home in it, and Anna said it was okay for me to kip on the sofa.’

  A cursory glance at Tom confirmed he was wearing the same jeans and navy T-shirt he’d had on last night. He looked slightly mussed, Rachel thought, but nowhere near as dishevelled as she’d be after a night of sofa surfing. From some cheeky corner of her brain came the message that unkempt early-morning Tom was kind of hot. Annoyed, she moved it to her mind’s trash folder.

  ‘Coffee?’ Tom asked, standing up. He gestured at the half-full cafetière on the worktop. Where the hell had he even foun
d that? She’d never seen it before.

  ‘Can’t face it,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m ruined.’

  She could hear him laughing as he rooted around in the fridge.

  ‘Here,’ he said, placing a can of cold Coca-Cola in front of her. ‘Drink this. And maybe have a couple of these.’

  He fished in the front pocket of his battered chestnut-coloured satchel, which was hanging from the back of his chair. Then he threw a dog-eared box of painkillers onto the kitchen table.

  After a few slurps of Coke, Rachel rested her head on the shiny wood of the tabletop, breathing in the sweet, almond scent of the polish Anna must have used on it yesterday. She heard the sound of a cupboard opening, the rustle of plastic packaging, the click and twist of the toaster dial and the depression of its four bread trays.

  ‘Peanut butter? Marmite? Jam?’ Tom asked. ‘Or is this a “tiny scraping of butter in case everything comes back” situation?’

  ‘The last one,’ Rachel mumbled, without looking up.

  Perhaps she drifted off, because it seemed only seconds later that a plate of lightly buttered toast was being put down in front of her. Delicately, she took a bite. Then another. She washed down each mouthful with Coke.

  She didn’t feel better by the time she’d finished, but her stomach was calmer and it was no longer a painful effort to hold her eyes open. She picked up Tom’s packet of Panadol and swallowed two pills with the last of her drink.

  After closing the box she pushed it across the table to Tom, who’d been quiet all this time – regularly turning pages in his book while munching on two slices of crunchy wholemeal, thickly coated with peanut butter.

  Now the bodily effects of her hangover were receding, Rachel was left with plain, undiluted mortification. Embarrassment bloomed in her chest, intense and abundant; she wished she could disappear. She imagined herself shrinking away to nothing, like the Wicked Witch of the West when confronted with a bucket of water.

  Rachel wanted to look at Tom, but didn’t dare. She couldn’t examine his features or test her reactions to them – not least because she didn’t want to be caught in the act. It was bad enough that she’d tried to plant an unwelcome snog on him; the last thing she needed was for him to think she was still mooning after him the next day. She averted her eyes from his bottom lip, which he was nibbling softly – presumably in reaction to some exciting passage in the John Le Carré he was reading.