‘Sure.’
I then go quiet. There’s one thing I still haven’t told her about.
‘You look shifty. There’s something else. Spill it.’
She knows me too well. I do want to talk to her about Dream Peter. I want her to comfort me and tell me it will pass. But part of me wants to ignore it. What if she thinks I like him like him? She’d never give it up.
But I can’t keep it from her. ‘IhadasexdreamaboutPeter.’
‘More slowly for those of us with human hearing?’
I force myself to say it again.
‘I had …’
A few words at a time.
‘A sex dream …’
Looking anywhere but Mia’s face.
‘About Peter.’
I sneak a peek. Mia’s eyes aren’t blinking and she’s gone really still.
‘Please go on.’
‘Do I have to?’
She breaks into a smile. ‘Yes.’
I hide my face.
‘It was good.’
‘Good, or –’ she raises her eyebrows – ‘good?’
I raise my eyebrows to mirror hers.
‘Wow, didn’t see that coming.’ Once again, it’s like Mia doesn’t know what to do with her hands. ‘OK, and what do you think this means?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
Her eyes burn into me.
‘OK, so Peter and I have been friends for so long. You know this. I was probably friends with him before I was friends with you.’ I say ‘probably’ because I genuinely can’t remember – it was that long ago. ‘And he really is one of my best friends. I can’t help what my dream brain thinks about.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you think that maybe, just maybe, there is more going on between you and Peter?’
‘No. My dream brain is my dream brain, and my actual brain knows that me fancying Peter is a bad idea.’
‘You realize you just said that you fancy Peter.’
‘I don’t fancy Peter.’
‘You just said you did. Are you sure you don’t fancy him?’
Am I sure?
‘I’m sure.’ I nod and say it again with a touch more conviction. ‘I am sure.’ His face pops into my head. ‘Ugh. I think it’s because he said something the other day about how he once asked me on a date.’ Mia makes a face at this, but I plough on. ‘And I’ve seen him a lot lately and the Colin thing has put sex thoughts into my head. And I know that my brain has taken two very separate lines of thought and mushed them together.’
‘You can’t deny that Peter is looking quite good these days.’
I can deny this.
‘I can see that all of my friends, be they male or female, are very beautiful. I can appreciate the new clothes and his more mature look, but just because I might be a bit lonely doesn’t mean he’s anything more than a friend.’
‘Do the right thing and admit that a part of you fancies him. You realize that a boyfriend is basically just a friend that you have sex with, right?’
I get a flashback to the dream, to him kissing my neck, my ear, my mouth, and me wanting him to kiss my neck, my ear, my mouth. I flashback to him breaking off the kiss, and looking at me hungrily, knowing that my own dream eyes would be looking back at him in exactly the same way.
Back in the room, I worry that Mia can tell where my mind went.
‘OK. A small part of me might fancy him.’ Mia starts to speak but I cut her off. ‘But quite frankly none of this matters anyway, because he doesn’t fancy me back and this is only a weird phase that I am going through. Besides, we’re not compatible. His family, his job, his earning potential, his intelligence. His hair! They’re all far superior to mine. It’s too much for me to go up against, and I don’t want to be the girl who gets judged for boxing well above her weight.’ Mia shakes her head. ‘And don’t shake your head at me – it’s a thing. It’s a thing that happens.’ Monologue over. ‘So that’s it. These are my thoughts. So, tell me. What do you think?’
‘I think you just spouted a whole load of horseshit.’
‘I’ve never heard you swear before.’
‘Well, your stupidity deserves it.’
Pregnant Mia is even more forthright than un-pregnant Mia.
There’s not much I can say to that.
‘Listen to me. That boy has loved you for the last ten years, and if you don’t know that, then I honestly don’t know what to say. I never brought it up because I assumed you knew. It’s so obvious. It’s so obvious that even Mark has noticed. And for the record, you two are unbelievably compatible. You round each other out. And don’t tell me that you would be punching; he’s the one that would be punching. Your dream brain isn’t getting confused, your dream brain is trying to wake you up and tell you that you like Peter as a friend and as something else.’
I’m still sat here with my mouth wide open.
‘And don’t give me any of this friends-can’t-be-boyfriends nonsense. I don’t know where you get that from.’
I think on this for a moment.
But no.
She doesn’t get it.
It’s pathetic to admit that I’m still affected by the memories made by a seventeen-year-old Bea. A seventeen-year-old Bea who had her heart crushed by Sam, her one-time best friend and first boyfriend.
It’s pathetic to admit that I had thought we were going to get married. Nobody gets married to the boy they started dating at fifteen.
It’s pathetic to admit that his parting words to me – ‘I wish we had just stayed friends’ – still haunt me to this day.
It’s pathetic to admit that I tried to console myself by remembering how his dirty sports clothes could stink out the whole house, but I still felt really alone.
It’s pathetic to admit that I cried for him even though my dad had just died.
She doesn’t get it. She’s looking at me expectantly. I should explain it to her, but I don’t want to.
‘We’ve been friends for so long. It would be too odd to be anything else now. I wouldn’t know where to start. I can’t fancy Peter, and Peter doesn’t fancy me.’
CHAPTER 26
The most productive thing I did on Monday following my impromptu lunch with Mia was find a good deal on a spa weekend. Our friendship back on track, we decided to pamper ourselves and get facials that we – well, I – can’t afford, and wear extremely large, towely bathrobes all day long. I am so happy to have her back. Even my mum can tell that my mood has improved. Her morning messages have finally eased off.
Thanks to my productivity, a few weeks later I’m precisely as I hoped I would be. In a bathrobe that is perfectly towely and far too large, sipping a summery Aperol Spritz – very fitting for July – and sitting on a lounger next to a miraculously unoccupied pool with Mia by my side. I am very content. It was a great idea to escape the city.
‘So, tell me. Why haven’t you met up with Colin the hot boiler guy again? What’s been stopping you? Your love for Peter?’
I roll my eyes. Subtle. ‘No. And stop it. That was quite a while ago now, and we fell out of touch. I’ve been very busy. I haven’t been able to schedule in any admin time, let alone time to actually see him.’
‘Admin? You need to file papers to have sex?’
‘No – admin. My bikini line. Admin.’ It was bad enough when we had sex before. Now it’s taken on a resemblance to Hagrid.
‘Ooooo, admin. I don’t have time for that.’
Mia isn’t very hairy, so it probably doesn’t make a huge difference if she relaxes on her hedge trimming.
‘But back to Peter.’ She reaches into her bag and pulls out a stack of paper at least an inch thick. ‘I had some down time at work this week, and thought I would do some research. At lunch the other day you mentioned that you wouldn’t even know where to start with making Peter something more than a friend. From what I read, your situation seems to be quite a common one. You’ve put him in your “Fr
iend Zone”.’ She thumps the stack of paper on the table, dangerously close to my drink. ‘This research should help you get him out of there.’
I look at it.
‘I made some notes and highlighted the sections I found most interesting. I’ve also written up the key findings on the top couple of sheets, but it’s well worth reading the whole thing.’
I flip the edges. ‘Mia, there must be two hundred pages here.’
‘Two hundred and ninety-three actually, but some of them are double-spaced.’
I stare at the pages for a while, too stunned to be able to read any of the words.
‘Thanks, I guess.’
My phone beeps.
‘Bea! You aren’t meant to have your phone on you! We’re meant to be relaxing.’
‘I know, I know, but I’m conditioned to be more stressed if I don’t have my phone on me. It’s like a new kind of Stockholm Syndrome.’ I’m also very grateful to have a reason to put her research down and ignore it.
The text definitely distracts me. I am entirely unprepared for what it says.
‘Holy shit.’
‘What?’
‘No way.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Tell me, or I’ll take the phone off you and look myself.’
‘Tilly’s engaged.’
I feel so guilty that I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since before the fair. We don’t have the type of friendship that needs constant feeding, but I feel completely out of the loop and it’s all my own doing.
‘Hold on, hasn’t she been going out with that guy for like, a second? How much do we know about him? Are her parents OK with this? Do we need to stage an intervention? Or are we happy for her?’ It’s really easy to forget that Mia and Tilly have never met.
‘Well, she spoke to me about wanting to marry him, but I didn’t get the impression that it was imminent, so I didn’t think a huge amount about it. But I guess I should have.’
‘It seems very quick.’
Not even trying to hide the illicit phone any more, I’m texting madly to find out more details. My messages are littered with spelling mistakes, but in times of peak excitement, a couple of spelling errors are acceptable. ‘Holy shit.’
‘What?’
‘That can’t be right.’
It’s Mia’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘Not this again. Tell me.’
‘They want to get married on New Year’s Eve. This New Year’s Eve.’ Thinking back, she did lap up every detail of Mia’s wedding, and was bizarrely concerned with some of the more boring logistics – lead times for suppliers, increased prices for New Year’s Eve, issues with travel. Maybe she was doing preliminary research.
‘Are you serious? That’s five months away! Does she know that everywhere gets booked up for New Year’s Eve years in advance?’
‘I guess she doesn’t care. Or maybe she has a plan. Maybe she already has it all sorted.’
‘Don’t offer to help.’
I grimace and look sideways at Mia.
‘Too late.’ I’m hoping my offer to help will go some way to make up for being an absent friend in recent months.
She simply sighs and puts her head back on the lounger. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
I spend another couple of minutes excitedly texting, and then decide to hide my phone when the chat dies down. I paid a lot of money to be here. I want to be here.
And I’m due to be called through for my first treatment – the outsourcing of my admin.
I look at Mia. Her eyes are still closed, but she must be able to sense that I’m free from my captor.
‘We still need to come up with a plan for you to confess your undying love to Peter.’
‘OK, let’s calm down. I do not love Peter. I said that a small part of me might fancy Peter. But I’m not going to do anything, now or indeed ever. Peter and I are just friends.’ The reality is that I’m much better friends with Peter than I ever was with Sam; should anything ever happen between us I imagine the hurt would be that much worse. He’s often the one who helps put me back together when I need it, but if he’s also the one to break me, what happens? Who would I go to? ‘I’m not going to flush our friendship down the drain because a small part of me might fancy him.’
‘Well, I don’t see how you can stay where you are either, so you might as well try.’
She has a point there. It’s possible that even the thought of potentially fancying Peter has changed my ability to remain his friend.
Bollocks.
All of a sudden, I wish I’d opted for a massage instead of a wax.
But Mia has to be wrong. There’s a reason Peter and I have never been anything more than friends, and that reason is because we shouldn’t. My plan is clear: I will stop fancying him.
‘There are some good tips in there,’ she says, pointing to the stack of paper.
My phone pings again.
‘You really should turn that thing off.’
‘I’ll quickly read what it says and then I promise I’ll turn it off.’
I’ve been thinking about that favour you owe me.
The text is from Peter. I feel my face redden.
I’d like to cash it in. I have a work function coming up that I really don’t want to go to but can’t get out of. Come with me and save me from my colleagues? There will be free food and all the prosecco you could want.
Mia was right. I really should have turned my phone off.
CHAPTER 27
‘You haven’t replied to my text.’ Peter doesn’t even bother with a hello before getting straight to the point.
It is Summer Games Night and someone has already taken the emergency strawberries out of my hands before I have even been able to cross the threshold. Apparently, someone mistakenly put all the non-emergency strawberries into the Pimm’s, leaving none over for the Eton Mess. What a disaster. Luckily I was late and could pick some up on the way.
‘Oh, sorry. Mia and I were on a spa day and I didn’t get any messages until later, and then by the time I looked at my phone I was all dazed. I didn’t mean to not reply.’ Of course this is exactly what I meant to do. I ignored the message in the hope he would forget that I hadn’t replied and would then find someone else to take to his work event. Before I can stop myself, I keep going. ‘I would love to come though.’
At this he gives me a hug, and I don’t know how to feel.
I break the hug off a little abruptly.
I try to hide my discomfort by digging into my bag. ‘Your birthday card.’ It isn’t his birthday until next week but I know he’s away with work then, and he’s not the type to think about having a party. I pass the card to Peter, along with my traditional present – highly overpriced American sweets, the small red fish that contain all the E-numbers but taste absolutely delicious. I give them to him every year, and every year he opens them up straight away and gives me the first one.
This year is no different.
I take the sweet quickly before he shields them from everyone else.
I can barely hear his thank-you over people nagging him.
‘Come on, Oddly! Just one. I only want one.’
‘Thanks, Bea. This is my favourite present every year.’ I smile back at him, until I see Mia looking at me from across the room, dice in hand, ready to roll. Her eyes are saying a lot.
I avoid her gaze and instead look around the room. We always optimistically hope to play outdoor games for our summer meet-up, but obviously everyone is busy for most of the summer, so we’ve missed the month of sunshine and now it’s raining again so we’ve been forced back inside. I don’t know what game I want to play, but I gravitate towards the card table, abandoning Peter whilst he continues to defend his fish. It looks like they’re playing Racing Demon. It’s quite a fast-paced, aggressive card game. Often we only get through a couple of rounds before the shouting starts and we have to split up.
I sit down and start shuffling the pack o
f cards in front of me. Everyone else can shuffle like a professional card dealer in Vegas, whereas I just smear the cards around.
‘So, Bea, are you going?’
Rahul, sitting to my right, disturbs my card-smearing reverie. He’s the best cook out of all of us, and although he isn’t hosting today, he often brings delicious snacks. A part of me decided to sit next to him in the hope of preferential treatment.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t listening. Am I going to what?’
‘Our ten-year History reunion.’
‘Oh God, no.’
I continue to ‘shuffle’.
‘Yes, you are. You bought a ticket.’ This is Mia, who is shouting from the sofa, collecting someone else’s money. I’m not close enough to count, but I can see wads of fake cash on her side of the board and assume she’s winning, and winning comfortably.
‘What? No I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. We bought the tickets together.’ It must have been way back at the start of the year. Too long ago for me to remember.
I go back into my memory box and search it for anything that resembles me buying a ticket to a night of unnecessary emotional torture.
‘Nope, I don’t remember this.’
‘Check your emails. The ticket is in there.’
Ah yes, the email inbox. A better, more reliable memory box. I put aside the badly shuffled cards, only for someone to immediately pick them up and shuffle them much more proficiently, and get my phone out from my pocket.
Bollocks. As soon as I see the email, I remember the terrible (yet part of me is jealous that I didn’t come up with it myself) reUNIon logo pun.
‘Ugh. Why did I say I would go?’
‘From memory, you were hoping Rupert MacWhatshisface would be there.’
At this I blush.
‘Rupert MacDonald. And you remember his name – stop trying to pretend that you didn’t notice him when he stretched and his T-shirt would ride up a little.’
A couple of the girls nod in agreement and my eyes immediately go to Peter. I hope he doesn’t think that just because I would ogle Rupert MacWhatshisface I only find muscly physiques attractive. Because I don’t. I mean, I do but … argh.
Just Friends Page 14