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My pride it seems is my Achilles’ heel—I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She rushes forward and grabs me into her arms, squeezing me tight, huffing the air out of my lungs with a death grip, and possibly crushing my biscuits. “Where have you been? Where did you go? Oh my god, Amber. I could kill you.” She looks good. Fresh, mature, grown up. I shift uncomfortably in my jeans and vest top decorated with bleach splatters; an outfit which stands as an endless homage to the same style I’ve worn all my life.
I open my mouth to say something, but she carries on. “Why the hell didn’t you call, you bitch?”
I hesitate. I’m not sure what to say to that, I don’t really want to spill my secrets in the local shop. I’m not sure I want to spill my secrets at all.
My ability for sane conversation is flying away, with fairies scattering pixie dust, because I can only think one thing. One terrible, burning, might make me want to rip the universe apart, thing.
I could ask anything.What have you been doing for the last ten years?How are your mum and dad? Did you pass your A-levels all those years ago?But instead, I just blurt, “Mrs Bale now, hey?” like an idiot.
An idiot because it’s stupid and pathetic and makes me feel about an inch high. While stature isn’t my thing, an inch is teeny tiny, and I deserve it for being a moron.
A moron who can’t stop being an obsessive loser over a man who gutted her with a teaspoon of heartbreak.
That’s me. Amber ‘loser, possibly-unhinged’ Williamson.
Dani looks me straight in the eye, one eyebrow raised. My inch height shrinks to millimetres in the time it takes me to swallow down my dry throat.
Please don’t have married him.
Please don’t have married him…
Even though that makes me… well… I think we’ve covered what that makes me.
“Really,” she asks, arms folding like a shield against me, her idiot old best friend. “That’s the first thing you have to say?” Her lips purse, eyes rolling, an expression I remember all too well. Funny how some things you don’t forget.
Nibbling on my bottom lip I scrunch my face. “Maybe,” I offer eventually when all other words in the English language turn to gibberish in my brain. The only thing my brain is saying isstab her with the cling film, the bitch deserves it.
But then who would look after Mum and Isaac?
“I would have invited you to the wedding, but I guess it might have been a bit awkward, you know.” All nonchalant she assesses her nails which are glossy and perfectly manicured.
“Maybe awkward.” I manage to squeak, hiding my own nails from her view. Oh my god. She married him? I don’t know whether to laugh or stab her to death with the nearest blunt instrument to hand…stab her with the cling film.
She marriedhim.
And she looks perfect: grown-up, smooth and sophisticated, hair sleek, like she drinks Chablis in a mansion, while I’m still…still…me.
I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I test my lungs, pulling in a tentative, corner shop tasting, bite of air. Nope. Lungs are finito.
Dani laughs while I struggle with basics like not murdering my once best friend. Is she laughing because she’s Mrs Bale and I’m not? Or is she laughing because I’m not Mrs Bale and she is?
I mean it’s not (officially) my business. I left, never came back… But there’s a sisterhood code that shouldn’t be broken and that includes never marrying your ex-best friend’s first love.
Christ, I think I need to sit down. The cereal boxes are whizzing around my vision like a waltzer.
“I married Grant, you bloody idiot. You would have known if you hadn’t dropped me like a lead balloon when you had your mental breakdown and ran away like Little Miss Scaredy Pants.”
Mental breakdown?
To be fair I could be having one now “Y-you married Grant?” I don’t want to… I hate myself for doing it… but I finally breathe a sigh of relief and the terrible sick feeling making my stomach feel like an overloaded washing machine subsides. My grip on the boxed cling film lessens.
Phew. Although also… UGH. My face must be registering my emotions quicker than I am because her lips curve at the edges.
“He improved with age,” she says, coy, and making my stomach turn for different reasons.
“Jesus, Dani, he’s not a cheese.” I wrinkle my noise. If I remember correctly—and I know it’s been a decade—I distinctly remember Grant Bale having a distinctly cheesy smell, like that teenage boy funk of unwashed socks.
