Reach for the Stars

by Kathy Jay

  ‘Are you avoiding them?’

  ‘Way to go Sherlock.’

  Ignoring her feeble sarcasm, he curved his arm around her waist. She stifled a yelp of protest as he propelled her across the floor to where Joe and Lainy were holding court in the midst of a group of friends. Instant silence descended. Someone cleared their throat. Someone else suggested more drinks. She shook her head, well aware that off-her-face at her ex’s party wouldn’t be a good look. In a split second the circle of friends vanished leaving just the two of them facing the bride and groom.

  For the sake of any eavesdroppers she turned her charm setting to maximum. ‘Lovely party Joe.’ She switched to Lainy and they air kissed without a hint of awkwardness. ‘It’s so good to meet you. You two were made for each other.’ Translation – You’re much too good for him. Like a nodding dog her head swiveled back to Joe. ‘Good luck with everything. Have a nice time in Newquay.’

  ‘I love your dress Layla.’ Her attention bounced back to Lainy who sounded sincere, not at all like she was sizing her up.

  ‘Oh, this?’ She played down the designer dress. ‘I found it at the back of the wardrobe. It’s something I’d forgotten I had.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping that telling a white lie to save face wasn’t horrible.

  Lainy linked her arm through her husband’s and leant into his side. Emily passed out champagne, Joe’s father called for hush, and Layla backed away melting into the shadows with Nick, side by side, bodies almost touching, silent.

  ‘Raise your glasses, please, in a toast to the happy couple. Lainy and Joe!’

  The room echoed with the mumble of Lainy and Joe. Overhearing someone mistakenly announce Layla and Joe, she exchanged a look with Nick, and held her glass high.

  ‘The happy couple!’ Her words rang out a little too loudly. She pressed her champagne glass to her lips. Inhaling the aroma, she sipped the bubbles. Nick touched her shoulder with one finger and trailed it the length of her arm. His free hand covered hers, their fingers meshing neatly. On the far side of the restaurant the groom kissed his bride and they posed for photos by the wedding cake. Layla looked on with the detachment of someone watching the scene on a cinema screen.

  ‘Come here.’ Nick spoke in a husky whisper. Warm salty air wafted in through open doors which led to decking overlooking the beach. Unresisting, she followed. Outside she practically swigged her champagne, remembering a second too late that she was meant to be pacing herself with the booze. She set the champagne glass on the wide wooden surface of the deck rail. ‘It’s lucky you’re here. I don’t think I could have done this without you. You’re keeping me grounded.’ He’d been more than a distraction, she’d gained perspective. ‘You’ve helped me sort myself out. I can’t believe I’m saying this but Joe and me … we were perfectly okay together,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You were happy?’ He tensed, and they stood not looking at each other but out into the twilight to the place where the red sun had dropped into the sea. A bank of cloud hung low above the horizon, its edges glistening pink and golden.

  ‘I wouldn’t go right to happy. I wasn’t unhappy. I’d settled. We both had. The things we shared weren’t enough. We were perfectly okay but we weren’t perfect. When I saw him tonight I expected to feel something.’

  ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘Sad or numb. Instead I felt nothing. If he hadn’t let me down when he did, it would have happened another time. Maybe a worse time.’

  Nick stared at the sea. He didn’t speak.

  ‘You know what,’ she said. ‘I’m sick of defending him, being polite, saying nothing. My mother’s accident was a seriously bad time. The worst. The doctors couldn’t say if she’d be okay. He swept it aside like it was nothing. He’s a selfish pillock. He sent me a text from the airport to say he wanted to be on a break, didn’t bother to ask how Mum was. So I texted back that we were over.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ Nick turned to her, incredulity on his face. ‘About the break?’

  ‘I didn’t swear to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth. It’s a tiny detail. It didn’t matter. He went away when I needed him to stay and if I had feelings back then I don’t any longer. They’ve gone. You should know that.’

  From inside the restaurant applause drifted out, along with the ripple of laughter. She looked in through the wide-open doors in time to see everyone gathering around Joe and Lainy, hands joined around a silver cake slice, ready to plunge the shiny blade into their cake. Her dad was standing behind Joe. Across the distance he caught her eye and for a comical half second held up the palms of his hands as if poised to give Joe a shove. He wouldn’t have done it in a million years but the idea of Joe face planting his wedding cake was a funny one, and she appreciated the silliness of his dad joke.

  ‘I’m tired of the Porthkara pressure cooker. Mum might be able to handle it. But I’m not sure I can. Is it too soon to slope off?’

  ‘Say Joe made a mistake, he wants you back. What then? Would you have him?’

  Emotional confusion twisted her insides. ‘That’s irrelevant.’ She shook off his question. ‘I’m different. I’m not the person he left behind.’ Wide-eyed she gestured towards the restaurant. ‘And, anyway …’

  Nick searched her face as if he’d anticipated a different reaction. He filled the void. ‘I’d say the jury’s out on whether he can step up to the plate for Lacey.’

  ‘Lainy!’

  ‘He’s going to let her down. I’d put money on it.’ In the darkening light his face was moody. ‘A leopard doesn’t change its spots.’

  ‘Cynic.’

  He nodded towards the couple inside the restaurant. ‘Watch this space.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the bride and groom.’ The words fused with the sounds of the sea and the cry of a gull.

  High over the cliffs Layla spotted the first shining star in the darkening sky. Inside the restaurant, the tables had been pushed back to make space for the wedding band. She wondered uncharitably how good they could be given their availability at short notice. Joe took Lainy by the hand and led her onto the dance floor.

  Layla’s heart wobbled, not because she’d lost Joe but because she felt wistful for the love they’d found. She hoped they were the real deal, despite everything. Despite Nick’s cynicism.

  A loud twang from the lead guitarist got everybody’s attention.

  As the band struck up, cheers, clapping, and a shrill wolf whistle made the initial bars of the couple’s first dance difficult to recognize. Layla’s cheeks burned. Was she hearing wrong? She listened more closely. It was their tune.

  ‘How could he?’ she gasped unable to contain her reaction. ‘Why did he pick my song?’ I-told-you-so was written on Nick’s granite features. She recovered her composure struggling not to lose it completely while Joe twirled his bride around the dance floor like John Travolta.

  ‘Whatever! Life’s too short.’

  ‘And too long to spend with the wrong person.’ Nick slung a protective arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out with you and Toni. Moving on is hard.’

  Inscrutable, he snatched up his champagne glass. ‘I’m not having the slightest difficulty moving on.’

  They fell silent.

  She picked up her glass and twirled the stem between restless fingers. ‘I – um – happened before my parents were married. I was a broken condom baby.’

  ‘Ouch. Nobody should know that much about their conception.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.’ Her parents hadn’t made the break years ago, because of her. Her dad was always off somewhere, out late, doing who-knows-what with goodness-knows-who. All smiles and charm in the outside world, while at home when things got tense they gave each other the silent treatment. Deadly silences got to her so much more than people hurling words around. ‘Silence makes me twitchy.’ It hadn’t compelled her to lose
control of her family secrets filter before.

  ‘Did they really tell you that? Are they completely crazy?’

  She shook her head. ‘They don’t know I know.’

  ‘So how in the world did you find out? Did you read your mother’s diary?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ The words came out witheringly. ‘One of my grans told me.’ She pictured Granny Rivers painting at her easel in the drawing room window of the big Edwardian house that had become the B&B. While she’d alternated between dabbing paint at her canvas and staring at the grey sea merging with the sky Layla had sat at the table eating a cupcake from the village bakery and sipping tea from the best china. ‘It was the day after my sixteenth birthday – a warning not to let it happen to me.’ A shiver ran through her. ‘Well meant, but plain wrong.’

  ‘How did your grandmother even know that?’

  ‘I know, right?’ She cringed. ‘My dad was meant to go away to study architecture at uni. He didn’t go because of Mum being pregnant with me.’ Her head and heart spun. The party had condensed years of deeply buried stuff. It bubbled over like a witch’s cauldron spilling out of her mouth. ‘I’ve never told anyone. Not Joe. Or Maggie. After Granny Rivers died I overheard a relative at the funeral say she’d called me Layla La Trap, but I can’t believe she’d have been that cruel. She never said it to my face. Do you think she blamed her disappointment on me?’

  She knocked back the last drop of champagne. He took the glass from her hands, drained his own and set them down.

  ‘I doubt it.’ A tower of strength he drew her close. Softly, silently, his lips brushed the top of her head. ‘What you heard was a rumour. Chances are your grandmother didn’t say it. And just supposing she did, people sometimes say things they regret.’

  ‘Dad’s motto is “fake it till you make it.” He took it too far, like he wanted to prove my grandmother wrong, so he pretended to be happy when he wasn’t. Things looking right was so important. He threw me fancy birthday parties with bouncy castles. One year he hired a magician. He made a rabbit come out of a hat. Granny Rivers didn’t come to the parties. She got invited, and she always accepted. Then on the day she’d come up with an excuse and not turn up. When I was old enough to realize I wanted to hide. I felt terrible, thought she hated me.’ He tightened his arm around her, holding her closer.

  She stopped abruptly but the emptiness compelled her to keep talking.

  ‘I sometimes wonder how my parents’ lives would have turned out if that condom hadn’t broken.’

  Inside the party her father gyrated on the dance floor to an eighties disco classic with his wife-to-be. Her heart lurched. He’d taught her the names of the planets and where to find the constellations in the night sky. He’d taught her to think big, shown her how to transfer her art skills into murals. And he was Mr Unfaithful – the man who didn’t love her mum.

  ‘You shouldn’t think like that.’ His arms a strong cocoon, Nick held her, his chin gently resting on her head. ‘It won’t change anything. It was a twist of fate. A good one if you ask me.’

  ‘I know that now.’ She pointed to the sky trying to find her way back into the bubble they’d been in before Joe came home and stirred everything up. ‘That’s the Plough.’

  She had a lump like a beach pebble in her throat. Glancing back into the party, she spotted her mother dancing in the kaleidoscopic lights with Mervin, off-duty, out of uniform, shirt sleeves rolled back, totally chilled. Tall and lean, his dark hair was sprinkled with grey, especially at the temples, quite handsome.

  Mum and Mervin?

  ‘The policeman’s flirting with your mother.’

  ‘I’m so glad you said that. I thought it was just me. Now I know I’m not hallucinating.’ Shelly was smiling and boogying on down. ‘How embarrassing to have a mother who thinks she can bop for England!’

  ‘Don’t be mean!’ Nick’s eyes darkened. ‘You know my mother has done some outrageous things but I never hold it against her because I’ve seen her at rock bottom. I admire how she got her life back on track. I’d forgive just about anything as long as she’s well.’

  ‘Including dodgy dancing with your favorite policeman?’ She half-closed her eyes because she couldn’t quite bear to watch.

  ‘Even that! I bet a few months ago you’d have been overjoyed if a doctor had told you that by summer Shelly would be grooving on the dance floor like her accident never happened.’

  Her heart filled with gratitude to him for reminding her what was important. She shivered again. Nick pulled off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. Still warm from his body, and imbued with his scent, she slipped her arms into the soft sleeves and lost her hands and fingers because they were much too long.

  Standing behind her, his body acted like a shield between her and the party. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and she leaned back into his chest, a wall of rock.

  ‘I used to think it was up to me to figure out how to fix my parents’ unhappiness. I desperately wanted to please them.’ She’d lie awake in bed at night, listening for her father’s key in the lock, and dreaming up an imaginary world where she lived in the old farmhouse above the beach and their home wasn’t filled with the unexploded tension of unspoken words.

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. Children aren’t made of glue.’

  ‘From now on I’m giving myself permission to feel what I feel. Even when I feel sad.’

  Cut off from the noisy party Nick turned her in his arms to face him. ‘Don’t torture yourself. We’ll go. I’m sorry I made you sad. I shouldn’t have pushed you into coming here tonight. If I could snap my fingers and magically stop your heart breaking over this …’ He clicked his fingers, as if it was worth a try. ‘… I would.’

  She stared up into the eyes she could lose herself in. ‘That’s sweet,’ she whispered. ‘But you can relax. I’m not sad. And you don’t have to fix me. It turns out I’m okay. My future’s my own. Things are clear in my head now.’

  ‘That must have been awfully good champagne.’ His voice rolled through her with a hint of mockery. Delicious tingles zipped down her spine.

  ‘The best. The point I’m making, Mr Hollywood,’ she said, retaliating, ‘is that I realized something important today. I’ve been drifting.’ She’d been locked in a pattern left over from childhood, too mollycoddled to see it, suffocated, convinced that everyone would be lost without her, when all along they’d been her safety net, helping her, giving her work, not because they didn’t want her to be independent, but to ensure she’d have enough money saved to make her dream a success. ‘It’s finally dawned on me that I’m not responsible for anyone’s happiness but my own.’

  ‘Does this mean you’re kissing goodbye to your people-pleasing tendencies?’

  Reacting to his teasing tone she spun around the deck flaunting her disco moves, totally out of time with the music and not even trying to match the rhythm. ‘I’m not giving them up entirely. Just aiming to use them more effectively.’

  ‘Good to know.’ He caught her in his arms. His devilish smile curved across his face. ‘How about starting with pleasing yourself?’ He trapped her against the rail with his body, their eyes locked.

  She met his smile with bubbly anticipation. ‘I only care about right now, with you, and the ways we please each other.’

  The notes of a slow, sexy love song drifted out from the party, the beat clashing with the steady break of waves on the beach.

  ‘Dance?’ Nick drew her into his arms, where her body met hard muscle. Strong, powerful, possessive, he held her, moving in time. She lay her head on his chest and followed his lead, absorbed in the rhythm of the music and his pounding heartbeat. When the music stopped they stayed fused together, silent, lingering, listening to the indecipherable hum of party chatter and the shushing of the receding tide. His face was in the shadows, but her body responded to his touch.

  Breaking the stillness Nick dipped his head and took her lips in a deep, burning kiss. On the verge of l
osing all sense of time and place, her mouth opened up to him, softly, hotly exploring him. His fingers caressed her neck and she melted into the moment, alive with new possibility.

  ‘Hey Layla.’ Joe walked onto the deck and they split apart like they’d been cut in two with an axe, the beautiful synergy shattered. ‘I meant to say earlier – you look lovely. Like you belong in a magazine.’ Her insides squirmed. He stared at them, his eyes adjusting to the darkening twilight, and cleared his throat loudly. ‘I left some things at your place.’ He looked around as if she might have stashed his belongings somewhere conveniently nearby. ‘I don’t suppose you thought to pack my stuff up and bring it down?’

  ‘No Joe, I didn’t. Because I don’t suppose there’s any etiquette guide in existence that covers turning up at your ex’s wedding celebration with a load of binbags full of his assorted crap.’ Straightening her shoulders, she looked him over like she was a trawler-man disappointed with a particularly poor catch. Pausing for impact she scanned the party to check that Lainy was out of earshot. ‘Apart from anything else Lainy seems quite nice, so I wouldn’t want to spoil her night.’ His mouth gaped and she reined herself in. ‘If you want your stuff, come and get it yourself.’

  ‘Cool.’ Conspiratorial, he lowered his voice. ‘She thinks we were over a long time ago. She doesn’t know we were living together – you know, before I went travelling.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘Just so as you know.’

  ‘No Joe, I think you’ve mixed me up with your wife. She’s the one who should know,’ she said, determined to stay calm but close to failing. ‘Because if you don’t tell her someone else probably will.’

  Joe’s shoulders twitched and he looked at his feet. He shuffled awkwardly, scraping the toe of one shiny shoe in the sand that had drifted onto the deck until it turned dull and scuffed. ‘Look,’ he said, avoiding meeting her eyes, ‘Lainy just happened. Alright? It was lonely out there. First off, I missed you. And one thing led to another. You know how it is.’