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“Seriously, though,” says Mhairi earnestly. “When we were at school, all the girls wanted to be you. You were so cool and pretty. And then when you got with Jett Carter!”
She opens her eyes wide and pretends to be fanning herself. I grin widely, then feel my face fall as I remember that I’m not with him anymore. Not that Mhairi seems to care, mind you. She thinks I’m still Old Lexie — or Cool Lexie, rather. And I’m starting to think I still could be.
“So, what will you do next, do you think?” she asks. “Now you’re not going to be working at Emerald View? You could do modeling, maybe? You’re definitely pretty enough.”
I consider this as I finish my drink. I had assumed I’d have to try to find more bar work, somehow; maybe even apply to Mum’s soft play if I couldn’t find anyone else brave enough to take me on. Now that I’m at least three drinks in, though (Or is it four?), and surrounded by people who don’t seem to hate me, I’m starting to wonder what else might be out there for me. I know it’s not modeling, like Mhairi’s suggesting; Mum tried to push me into that when I was younger, and I was always told I was too short. But there must besomethingI’d be good at?
“The world is my oyster!” I declare, slamming the glass back down on the table. “I can do anything I want! I just have to figure out what it is first!”
“That’s right, lass,” says Bella, patting me on the back. Mhairi and Florence both cheer. I suddenly want to hug them all.
“You guys are all so nice,” I say, slurring my words only very slightly. “Who needs Jett Carter when you have friends like these?” ??I gesture around the bar, taking in Bella, Ian, and Jimmy, plus these two women I didn’t even know existed until a couple of hours ago, but who I now feel are destined to be my friends for life.
“I’ll take him, if you dinnae want him,” says the woman next to Mhairi, who I was right to assume was her mother. “He’s right fit, that Jett. But dinnae you worry about Violet King. She’s no’ match for a Highland lass like yourself.”
I remember seeing Mhairi’s mum at the protest; she was the one who said I might be a bitch, but I was at leasttheirbitch.
“I’m your bitch!” I yell, raising my glass a little too enthusiastically and sending the last dregs of the cocktail flying through the air. “No one puts Lexie in the corner!”
“Yeareactually in the corner, lass,” begins Bella, pedantically, but I’m not listening. Ian’s just delivered another drink to me (Dull green this time, like snot), and I’m having the broken-hearted time of my life.
“Maybe this isn’t an end, but a beginning,” I tell the women at my table. “Maybe I had to lose Jett to find myself?”
They all nod, solemnly.
“And where were ye?” asks Florence, wide-eyed.
“I… don’t know that yet,” I admit, waving my glass impatiently. “But I’ll find out. That’s the whole point. At least, I think it is.”
I raise the glass to my lips, ignoring the nagging sadness that keeps tugging at my heart, whispering traitorously that this, too, is just an act; and one that I will surely regret in the morning, when I wake up and realize that, actually, I’m still every bit as alone as I ever was, and no amount of drunken conversations in bars is going to change that.
And I’ll still miss Jett. I’ll miss him when I wake up tomorrow morning, and I’m probably going to miss him for the rest of my life. It’s going to take more than a few of Ian’s suspiciously-colored cocktails to change that.
For now, though, the cocktails are doing the trick. I don’t think I could describe myself ashappy, exactly, but I’m making a pretty good show of it; so much so that I’m almost convincing even myself.
It’s possible that I’ve had more to drink than I realized.
“Oh my God,” says Mhairi, interrupting me just as I’m about to sing ‘So What, I’m Still a Rockstar?’ by Pink on the old karaoke machine that passes for entertainment in here. “Did you know about this?”
She passes me her phone, and I take it automatically, blinking down at the screen in confusion. At first I think there are two phones in my hand, but when I blink again, the screen comes into focus and I find myself looking at a blurry (Although that could be the drink, to be fair) photo of Jett and Violet standing outside one of those gorgeous new houses that are nestled into the hills outside town; the ones so expensive that no one fromaround here — well, with the exception of Jack Buchanan — would ever be able to afford one.
Although the photos have obviously been taken from some distance away, with a telephoto lens, I can see that Violet’s hand is tucked into Jett’s arm, and she’s snuggled against him as he talks to a man in a suit, who I don’t recognize.
My good mood fades as quickly as it arrived.
“JETT AND VIOLET’S HIGHLAND LOVE NEST,” says the headline of the article accompanying the photo, which goes on to explain that the two have apparently been viewing houses near Heather Bay, with the aim of buying one.
“This isn’t true,” I say, handing the phone back to Mhairi without bothering to read the rest. “It can’t be. Violet would never want to move here.”
“It says they’ve fallen in love with the area while they’ve been filming here,” says Mhairi, scanning the article. “There’s quotes from some estate agent who’s been showing them property. He says they’re really serious about it.”
“It’s not true,” I insist, looking around for my drink. “It just not, okay?”
Mhairi shrugs and wanders off to show the article to her mum. I sit there, my head spinning from both the alcohol in my bloodstream and the news that Jett and Violet might be moving in together; and somewhere close to here, too.
I still don’t think it’s true.
What if it is, though?
