Chapter 19
19
Back in my room, I was suddenly so tired I could barely brush my teeth. The anticipation of seeing Joey meant I’d been exhausted before we’d even met. Then, having to channel my best self was hard.
All credit, we’d both made big efforts tonight. The way Joey had referenced his engagement party—as if everything that night had been normal—had clamped a lid on the past.
But my eye needed to be on the ball for every single moment of the next few days. The smallest lapse in concentration could send me veering off the path.
He’d said he was leaving on Tuesday. Wednesday, at the latest. I. Could. Do. This.
Claire had texted, asking me to call her. Probably just for a check-in. If there had been a disaster, even the most minor, my phone would have caught fire. It would do me good to speak to someone who wasn’t Joey.
“Claire. How’s things?”
“Yanno, busy, like always. Tending to my gut biome, ob sess ing about The Row, doing a quiz to see if I’m autistic—”
“Claire, cop on!”
“Hey, I could be. Women are woe fully underdiagnosed. But yeah, I’m probably not. So? You okay down there in M’town? Met any male poets? No? Small mercies. Have you been to the Big Blue yet?”
“What’s that?”
“A bar outside of town on the cliffs. Once you’re inside, it’s the most beautiful view you’ll ever see. Any update on Queenie?”
“Not since yesterday.”
“It’s horrific. You wouldn’t wish that news on your worst enemy—oh, Adam’s here, I’ve to go. It’s maintenance shag night.”
“ Is it? ” Adam’s voice asked, then he took the phone. “Anna, hey. How’s M’town? You’re good? Okay, I’m gonna let you go now just in case that old romantic wasn’t joking about the maintenance shag.”
Gratefully, I climbed into bed and, within moments, was pulled into the undertow of a deep sleep—only to be woken at some unknowable hour. What had disturbed me? Right on cue, the noise of bottles crashing into the skip answered my question.
I checked the time. Ten past twelve. Oh please! This was too early !
Tonight I didn’t bother going to the window. But Emilien must have seen the light from my phone because he called, quietly and apologetically, “Sorry, Anna.”
“All good,” I squeaked, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.
Seriously, though, in the morning I’d have to do something. Between the challenges of this job and spending time with Joey Armstrong, I needed my sleep. But if word got out that I’d asked to move room, the whole town would despise me. The day I’d arrived—was it really only yesterday?—maybe I should have hopped my hand up and down on the reception bell five or six times and accepted my fate as the entitled dose from Dublin.
Working with Joey Armstrong, though? How could this even be real? Would I ever have believed it, when I’d first moved to New York with Jacqui, all those years ago?
Rachel and Luke had let Jacqui and me crash in their tiny Alphabet City apartment until we found a place of our own.
One evening, early in our stay, Luke had said, “Scrabble night tonight. You in?” Unlikely though it sounded, the Real Men were big Scrabble fans. “Joey’s on his way. Shake and Gaz are coming later.”
When he was out of earshot, Jacqui groaned softly. “Luke. Costello. Oh. My. GOD! I am sweating with longing.” She wiped her forehead with her hand. “Anna, look. I’m drenched .”
I wasn’t exactly a healthy temperature myself. Plenty had happened since the night Joey had discarded me for Helen, but he’d still starred in most of my fantasies. In the A-list version, he fell for me like a ton of bricks. (And because of the intensity of his love, had become amazing in bed.) In the B-list scenario, his raw sexiness had disappeared and I got to spurn him. But version B was no fun, so I rarely bothered.
I kept it all to myself though, because my humiliation still burned.
When Joey strolled into the apartment, his sea-glass eyes scanned my face, then he gave a brusque nod.
I mumbled, “Hi.” Shite. B-list fantasy was a no-go; I still fancied him to death.
Moving on, Jacqui got a cursory full-body scan, then an abrupt dismissal, like an insect being tossed from his sleeve. As Joey went to the fridge for a beer Jacqui called, “Nice to meet you too.”
Luke took Joey by the shoulders and said, “Come on, man, basic manners, would you? You remember Rachel’s sister Anna? And this is Jacqui.”
Joey gave another curt nod.
“Are you deaf too?” Jacqui asked, over-enunciating wildly. “Or just mute? Because I can do sign language.”
After a tense pause, Joey said, “Let’s see it.”
Jacqui pointed at him. “You. Are. An.” She turned and directed her index finger towards her bum. “Asshole.” She grinned her irresistible grin.
He didn’t even crack a smile, just stared, then got into a deep and meaningful talk with Luke. But I kept sneaking glances. During the intense chat, he absent-mindedly rubbed his stomach, shifting the cotton of his T-shirt. Suddenly there was a glimpse of tight abs, followed, for the briefest moment, by the sharp jut of one hipbone—the skin pale and perfect—which disappeared below the waistband of his low-cut black jeans.
I felt sick with want.
Later that night, when Jacqui and I were trying to sleep, I asked, into the darkness, “What do you think of Joey?”
“That fool!” Her derision was glorious. “The rudeness. Those men who think being mean is sexy? Like, fuck off! Get yourself a personality.”
“Totally.” Working hard at nonchalance. “Yeah.”
—
In a few short weeks Joey became irrelevant as my life took off with a roar. Jacqui and I both got great jobs—Jacqui as a concierge in a luxury hotel, me blagging my way into McArthur on the Park.
It was such an exciting time—we were young! Ish! (Thirty was young, we kept telling each other.) We had boundless energy and we needed it.
Eventually, we found our Manhattan apartment, a crumbling single room, with the shower in the kitchenette. Humbled by countless other viewings, we considered ourselves unusually blessed.
And everywhere—everywhere!—were men. The quality was variable but the variety was enormous. Best of all, it was acceptable to simultaneously date as many as you liked.
“A smorgasbord of men,” I said.
“A pick ’n’ mix,” Jacqui replied.
“A buffet! You see something, you don’t recognize it but you try it as it’s free and if you don’t like it, you just go back up for something else.”
Between our jobs and the Men Buffet, it was months before I met Joey again, when all I got was another curt nod, which seemed to be his trademark. The new, savvy me got it: Rachel was right. He was too sour. Sexy mouth or no sexy mouth, lean snake-hips or no lean snake-hips, if he couldn’t be nice then I didn’t want him.
But he must have had a sixth sense that I’d lost interest, because next thing he was standing beside me. “Hey, Anna.” An appreciative up-and-down scan followed. “Looking gorgeous as always. How’s tricks?”
“Um…tricks are excellent, Joey. You?”
“They suddenly just got a lot better.” Slowly, he smiled.
My heart rate accelerated.
In hyper-aware silence, he fixed his stare on my mouth, before glancing at my eyes to check he had my attention, then back to my mouth.
My nipples hardened and my lips felt swollen. But I was indignant: he’d chosen Helen, subsequently ignored me and was now giving it full-on cheese. I walked away.
It became a regular thing, Joey subjecting me to a wordless, intensely sexy stare whenever we met. Which really wasn’t often—my path crossed with that of the Real Men only every couple of months.
But he never made a lunge, or asked me out, like a normal person might.
Until one night I said, “Are you ever going to actually do something, Joey?”
That surprised him. He asked, his voice soft, “Is this an invitation, Anna?”
Resentment flared. He had so little respect for me.
“Just say yes,” he said. “And I’m yours.”
I took a breath. “All you ever do is play with me.”
His inbreath was harsh. “Play with you? Jesus, Anna. You can’t even imagine.”
“The thing is, Joey, I’m a person, not a toy.”
“What? No, wait—”
Dropping my eyes, I slid away from him, immediately bumping into Jacqui. “What the hell was going on there?” she demanded. “You two looked like…Anna, do you like him?”
“I am of sound mind, Jacqui. Of course I don’t.”
“Anna.” She was doubtful. “Should I be worried about you?”
“Look. A long time ago when I was a much younger woman, I found him…rideable. If he was even ten percent less obnoxious maybe I’d do a one-night thing now. But he’s awful. I deserve a much, much better man. So. Never going to happen.”
Shortly afterwards, I met Aidan and everything changed. This— he —was different. He asked questions about me—so much rarer than you’d think—and remembered the details of my answers. After about four dates, he had strong likes and dislikes about all the people I worked with, even though he hadn’t met any of them.
He didn’t mess me around, he didn’t play cruel games and, God, he was funny. His one-man version of Zoolander was pitch-perfect. When he was shaving he used to sing like a Smurf, making me literally cry with laughing.
He was so normal, it was almost suspect. He’d had a mundane middle-class upbringing in Boston, he worked in IT in a bank, he loved his parents and younger brother and had had the same best friend—Leon—since the age of five.
Because he so obviously had my back, I was afraid Jacqui would dismiss him as a Feathery Stroker, but after meeting him, she concluded he’d be “a hard dog to keep on the porch.”
In other words, Aidan was just dangerous enough.
For the first time I saw the appeal of a regular life, where there was enough money for nice things. Where we could own a home, maybe a car. Possibly a dog. Unexpectedly, even the idea of having children wasn’t terrifying.
I was almost disappointed in myself. But Aidan got it. “We don’t have to move to the suburbs and get a station wagon. We can do it our way.”
I’d burnt out on New York’s mixed bag of men. The variety had once been fun but I’d grown weary of perverts, liars, screwballs and mad bastards. Looking for a decent guy in the five boroughs was like roaming through a wasteland, searching with your bare hands in mounds of smoking debris, while fighting off hordes of other desperate women.
Speaking of mad bastards, Jacqui was in love with a terrible man called Buzz. Like everyone she fell for, he’d started out perfect. On their second date he told her he would take her skiing in January (it was August at the time). In the space of a week he sent so many flowers, which rotted quickly in the summer heat, that our tiny apartment looked like an art installation. “A meditation on beauty and decay,” I said. “We could sell tickets.”
“If anyone could fit,” Jacqui said.
Like all her boyfriends, Buzz curdled fast. He’d tell her to meet him in a restaurant and wouldn’t turn up, then insist she’d got the night wrong. Within moments, though, he’d turn the conversation to Thanksgiving and hint heavily that she’d be spending it with his family.
He was a chronic gaslighter but this was back in the mid-aughts, when we didn’t yet know the term. Words like love-bombers, narcissists, future-fakers and, yes, gaslighters were all ahead of us. (It didn’t mean there were any fewer of them; we just didn’t have the language.)
“Dump him,” I begged her. “You deserve so much better. You. Are. Fabulous!”
Jacqui had really grown into her looks: long-limbed and smiley and, oh my God, her clothes . To be fair, she could wear anything. But the VIP guests in her care regularly gifted her with designer stuff. It was a part of her job to take them to stores like Barney’s for after-hours sprees; with so much spendy adrenaline splashing about, the VIPs usually bought her something beautiful.
Meanwhile, quietly, steadily, Aidan and I were falling in love. We began to meet each other’s friends, slowly exploring each other’s lives. Eventually Aidan was introduced to Joey, who outdid himself with offhand froideur.
“That’s the guy?” Aidan exclaimed, delighted. “The—what’s the word, Anna?—‘Narky’ one?”
This made everyone collapse. “Yep, that’s Joey. He doesn’t know how to be nice.”
It was at Shake’s house-warming when Joey finally made a move. Aidan wasn’t there—maybe Joey thought we’d broken up? Or maybe he didn’t care either way?
I’d been admiring the insides of Shake’s new fridge, then turned to find Joey, a smile on his mouth and a glint in his eye. Softly, he said, “Hey.”
“Hi, Joey.” My tone was cheerful.
“I’ve been looking for you.” Again with the soft voice.
“Well, here I am.” I was even more cheery.
“Sooo.” He moved closer and I let him walk me into a corner. There, he slid the palm of one hand high on the wall, bracing the muscles in his arm. His other hand, he placed beside my waist. “Anna,” he said, “I’m crazy about you. This has gone on for too long. Come home with me tonight.”
“No.” I slipped out, under his arm.
“Your loss,” he called after me.
“Not from what I’ve heard,” I called over my shoulder.
“Hey.” He caught up with me. “What do you mean?” He looked confused. Hurt, almost.
“…Nothing, Joey. Forget it.”