4
Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover
I hung up.Christ on a stick. First Marcie and now this?Someone was smiling down on me. I looked around the office to see if anyone had noticed that their editor was hyperventilating. They were all crowded around Ayisha, our digital editor, who was playing a video of a sleeping puppy whose ears were being blown about by a desk fan. I forgave all her non-work-related surfing because traffic to our site had skyrocketed since she’d taken over three months ago, when her previous role as my assistant had been made redundant by Octagon. Last month, she’d managed to make a story we’d run about festival food go viral – we’d even had a write-up in theTelegraph.
Instead of heading straight out, I detoured to the toilets. After checking the cubicles were empty, I rang my best mate Georgia. She’d listened to me talking about Simon endlessly at uni, and was the only person who knew I’d carried a torch for him.
‘Fuuuuuck!’ was Georgia’s reaction after I’d filled her in. ‘Simon fucking Baxter. No fucking way.’
Since the birth of her twins ten months ago, Georgia had stopped swearing at home and now made up for it by swearing all day at work. I’m not sure how happy her law firm was with the arrangement, but seeing as her billables had gone up, I suspected they were fine with it.
‘That was sort of my reaction, too,’ I told her.
‘When are you meeting him?’
I checked my watch. ‘In about five minutes.’
‘What are you doing wasting time talking to me, then? Get a bloody move on!’
Things were always so black and white for Georgia: you liked someone, you told them, they liked you back – wham! You got married – albeit several years later. That’s what had happened with her and Dean. They’d got fresh at the freshers’ ball and had been together ever since.
We said our goodbyes and I hung up. I’d been pacing up and down, but now stopped to assess myself in the mirror. I’ve never been one for preening, especially at work, but I wanted to make sure I looked presentable.
The black cargo pants and white V-neck T-shirt I was happy with. My hair, less so. I hadn’t had time to wash it this morning, so instead I’d piled it on top of my head with a crocodile clip. Stray strands had fallen onto my shoulders, and the ends sprouted over the clip like the top of a pineapple. On a good day I’d consider it windswept and insouciant; on a bad one, messy and neglected.
But what was it today?
Should I send a selfie to Georgia and ask her opinion?I held up my phone to click, but then stopped myself.
This was crazy – my hair was fine; it was just the lighting that was terrible. I rummaged in my bag for powder to blot my skin, wiped away some stray mascara and then left before I lost more time.
Striding down Great Marlborough Street and feeling the sun on my arms snapped me back to my normal self and not a moony teenager.
When Simon had first visited during the school holidays a year after he’d left, I’d barely slept the night before, and waiting for him had been agony. I had been in my bedroom pretending to readGuitarmagazine when he bounded in with a goofy grin on his face. He was a foot taller and sporting cowboy boots and a much more pronounced American accent. To a seventeen-year-old girl he could not have been more alluring. But I was older now; I’d evolved past the point where fancy footwear and a New York drawl were aphrodisiacs.
Five minutes later, I was standing at the entrance to the hotel. I stared up at the building and the warehouse-style windows stared right back. One of those bedrooms was Simon’s. The thought sent a jolt through me.
Oh God. Perhaps I hadn’t evolved at all.
I followed the hum of slackers starting their weekends early and found the restaurant. It was only half full; the noise was down to five or six drinkers slouching by the bar. The room was dotted with people, some with drinks, some with food, but no sign of Simon. Then I rounded the corner and there he was.
He was relaxing on a bench by the far wall, lost in his smartphone, tapping his fingers on the table to the music. His skin had a golden glow that belied his Scottish ancestry and his dark blond hair was cropped like aGI.
How could someone look so familiar and yet so alien?
He’d been on the wrong side of the Atlantic for years, and now that he was a few feet away, I couldn’t move.
What if we had nothing to talk about?
I gave myself a stern metaphorical finger-wag. We might not have seen each other for five years, but we communicated on social media. I’d send him suggestions of bands he might like, and he’d start Twitter storms with me about how overratedGame of Throneswas. A couple of birthdays ago, he’d even sent me the twentieth anniversary Blu-ray ofTitanicbecause somehow, unofficially and in a totally ironic way, ‘My Heart Will Go On’ had becomeoursong.
I forced myself to take a step towards him, and at the same time, as if he’d felt a ripple in the space between us, he looked up. He broke into a wide smile that lit up the room.
He stood as I reached his table and drew me into a hug. The muscles of his back stretched under my fingers as he squashed me against his neck. His skin was warm and smelt of citrus.
He pulled back to hold me at arm’s length. ‘It issogood to see you, Frixie.’
‘It’s good to see you too, Si,’ I said, marvelling at how his eyes sparkled. That effervescent energy was still there. It explained why he could eat desserts in the middle of the day and stay so lean.
