“No,” I said, “because that’s not true.” My voice was slightly raised now.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Morgan said, matching my tone. “You fucking hate this stuff.” She flicked at a stack of papers on the end of the island, weighted down by my laptop.
“Well yeah,” I said, “but everyone hates paperwork. I like knowing that Dad can retire when he wants, and know that his business is in good hands.”
“Is it actually in good hands if those hands don’t want it?” Morgan asked, very quietly, and I narrowed my eyes at her. She narrowed hers back, and we just glared at each other for a moment. She was hamming it up: the oppositional posture, pointing her two fingers at her eyes and then at me, baring her teeth at me. She was trying to defuse the tension, and it was up to me whether I let her.
“Whatever,” I said, deciding that I didn’t want to fight with her.
Part of me wanted to dig my heels in. Because it wasn’t just this thing with my dad, was it? We still hadn’t talked about the revelation last night that she’d apparently got a promotion at work. And we definitely hadn’t caught up about what that meant for the other jobs I knew she’d been applying to. At least, I was pretty sure she had been, because why else would she be putting off looking for a place to live?
But if that meant a fight, I wasn’t ready to be the one to cause it. We’d bickered plenty when we were just friends, but we hadn’t had a proper fight since we’d got together. Probably because we hadn’t burst the bubble until now. I wondered if, now that our relationship was out in the open, this kind of spat would happen more often.
But I didn’t want to spat with Morgan. Not now, and not ever if I could help it.
I walked around the island towards her so we could kiss and make up, but she was looking down at her phone, her face completely slack save for a crease between her eyebrows. Something was wrong. A dozen possible tragedies flashed through my mind – her mum was in some horrible parasailing accident, or her house had burned down, or her house had sold, or Pablo had got sick, or Pablo had been adopted – but I refused to let myself panic until she filled me in.
“What is it?” I asked. She finally looked up at me, and her face drooped in sadness.
“Don’t have that,” she said, pointing at my beer. “We need to leave.”
“Why?” I asked, the panic creeping in anyway. “What’s happened?”
She pressed her mouth together in a line and sighed, and I braced myself against the worktop for the worst.
“It’s Fatima.”
Chapter36
Jack
The intensity with which girls rallied around each other had always made me a little jealous. Morgan hadn’t even known Fatima for a year, but the way she’d glued herself to Fatima’s side, one might have thought they’d shared a womb.
After eleven years together, Fatima and Jared had broken up. Or, if Morgan’s secondhand account were anything to go by, Jared had dumped Fatima out of the blue. When I’d questioned that – I’d been friends with Jared after all – the ferocity with which Morgan insisted that’s how it was had me backing down instantly.
I was glad that Fatima had the others, but I was worried about Jared, too. He’d seemed so tired when I’d seen him at Chloe’s party; if I hadn’t been so distracted, I might have followed up. I felt I owed it to him to give him the benefit of the doubt. So whilst Morgan worked on gala prep from Fatima’s a couple of days after it happened, I took advantage of a few minutes alone on my deck and called Jared.
“Hey, man,” he said as he answered, and if I’d thought he looked tired at Chloe’s party, he sounded like he had one foot in the grave.
“Hey, mate,” I said, sitting forward in my seat. “You don’t sound so great.”
“I don’t feel so great,” he said, punctuating with a sad chuckle. “It’s been a shit few days. Few months, really.”
“Was it the long distance?” I asked, beelining straight to the point. I knew I should have been a bit more subtle, maybe worked up to it, but the moment I’d heard the news, I’d made it about Morgan and me. About her job hunt, and the fact that we might soon be in the same position.
“Um, sort of,” he said. “I mean, it’s not been great. I really don’t recommend it.”
My shoulders sank, and I sat back against the rocking chair. “I can imagine.”
“I got the job I wanted,” he said. “Manager.”
“That’s great!” I said, but then I remembered what he’d told me at Chloe’s birthday. “Wait, wasn’t that the promotion that was supposed to bring you back? Did you leave the company?”
I heard him sigh on the other end of the line. “Not the company, mate. The country.”
It turned out that manager roles at smaller regional offices were super competitive; not only was he competing against other people from that office, but from others who wanted to move out of the city. His only hope of getting it would have been to commute to Birmingham and go for the role there, or to move to a different city. And when the opportunity had presented itself for him to transfer to America, he’d taken it. San Francisco, to be specific.
“Jesus, man,” I said, trying to sound supportive.
