Nudge 3 The Wine Night
The Wine Night
The FGA
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Stands for: The Feral Girls’ Alliance.
An inseparable group of friends consisting of Raina, Devi, Kimi and Maddison, founded after a teacher at school called them feral.
‘You only got red?’ Kimi asks, face scrunched in disgust.
‘I asked if you had any preferences!’ Devi cradles one of the bottles defensively, stroking its neck as if it needs soothing from Kimi’s insults.
‘I didn’t think that you would go this wrong,’ Kimi scoffs, shaking her head slowly in dismay.
‘I like a red,’ Raina weighs in as she hands out the glasses.
Kimi grunts. ‘Nobody likes a red. They just pretend to because it sounds more mature. Red wine tastes like Ribena that’s been left out in the sun. And not in a good way.’
‘There’s a good way?’ I ask as she pouts harder.
‘So, no wine for you then?’ Devi asks, pouring them out and dodging Kimi’s glass.
Raina and I smirk as Kimi continues to purse her lips.
‘No, I’ll still drink it. I just want you to know that I am appalled,’ Kimi says.
Ever since listening to Kimi’s voice note this morning, the idea of tonight has weighed on me heavily.
Not because I didn’t want to see my darling friends, but because being an adult is more exhausting than I would like.
Between the messy morning and the draining commute, and the general fatigue that comes from sending and receiving emails, the last thing I wanted to do was slap on a smile and play happy for my friend’s near-impossible milestone.
However, after seeing Aiden again, the idea of wine in my loungewear with my best friends has never sounded sweeter.
Even if it is with the corner shop’s cheapest red wine.
‘You all right, Mads?’ Raina asks as she hands me a glass.
I swear, I could sigh from a million miles away and Raina would be able to hear it.
She is the only person in this world that I will allow to unironically call themselves an empath.
It was clear even in the formation of our friendship when she took pity on me in sixth form and beckoned me into their fold.
With ten years and six degrees behind us, you wouldn’t even guess that I was a later addition to their close-knit group of three.
‘Yeah, sorry. Work is kicking my butt right now.’ I snuggle further into the sofa.
‘So your appraisal didn’t go well?’ Raina asks.
‘It didn’t go at all, actually. Got rescheduled. Again.’
I do my best to wave the topic away, but it’s not enough. She moves to sit opposite me and stares me dead in the eyes, face scrunched with determination.
‘I know your Pippa face, Mads. This isn’t your Pippa face.’
Kimi and Devi stop their squabble to join her pursuit, each one hanging on the promise of my forced brain dump.
‘It’s honestly nothing.’
Because it has to be nothing. It has to disappear, in the same way that I hoped and prayed that he would disappear from my life before. I can’t go back to who I am when he is around. Not now. Not again.
‘We don’t have to talk about it, we can just drink,’ Devi says.
Kimi shakes her head. ‘Nope. We are talking about it. It’s something to you, Mads.’
And they’re right. As much as I would like to move on unaffected, I cannot ignore the gnawing pain in my gut. Today dragged up raw emotions I didn’t believe I was still capable of feeling.
‘Aiden Edwards showed up at my work today,’ I say into the rim of my wine glass.
I might as well have dropped a physical bomb with the way the room shakes with the sheer force of their collective gasp at my news. Kimi clutches her chest, Raina’s mouth drops open and Devi’s eyes widen, as they all stare with tender concern.
‘He was in your actual place of work?’ Kimi asks.
‘In the flesh.’
Devi stands up. ‘I’ll open the second bottle.’
‘And I can Deliveroo a third if needed – I know a place.’ Raina reaches for her phone. ‘Is he working on one of the events?’
I huff. ‘Worse. He is Evie Eesuola’s talent manager.’
Talent manager to an icon at my age, while I’m stuck booking Pippa’s bikini waxes and chasing her expense receipts. My stomach fills with a thick, sticky jealousy.
‘The Evie Eesuola? How the hell did Aiden Edwards score that?’ Devi pours out a fresh glass.
‘Knowing him, it probably just fell into his lap.’ I sigh.
‘What did you do? What did he say? Please tell me you spilled coffee on him or something?’ Kimi downs her glass and joins Devi’s second pour.
‘Unfortunately not. I chose to be an adult about it and asked him how he’d been,’ I reply bitterly.
‘Very mature,’ Raina says.
‘Did he match that energy?’ Kimi asks, eyebrow raised.
Of course, he didn’t. But Kimi knows that. They all already know that.
‘Everyone was confused, so Evie asked if we knew each other.’ I sigh again, feeling the anxiety and frustration build in me. ‘He responded, in front of my entire team, and my bosses, by saying, “I think she was maybe in my class for something at school.”’
My throat burns, the words somehow harder to swallow now than they were when he said them to my face.
We spent years at war with each other, we set each other’s blood on fire, and now he just looks right through me.
It’s borderline offensive to be reduced to just another background character in his life, especially after the way our last altercation ended.
‘That utter prick,’ Devi whispers. ‘What is it we used to call him again?’
‘The Primary School Prick!’ Raina chuckles. ‘It lost the ring to it after what happened at uni, though.’
‘Yep. That was far too sinister for any nickname . . .’ Kimi sighs.
‘Girls.’
My warning brings them to an abrupt halt, each one freezing in panic and unsure of what to say next. I watch as their eyes cautiously dart between each other, before silently agreeing on a way forward.
‘Sorry, moving on. I hope you slapped him,’ Kimi says.
I shrug. ‘I shut my mouth and avoided eye contact for the rest of the meeting.’
‘Actually, can we backtrack to this meeting for a second . . . Evie Eesuola?’ Devi asks, helping herself to another glass.
‘Oh, yeah – turns out we’re planning this year’s Summer Splash.’
This new collective gasp could power a wind turbine, blowing the last one out of the water.
‘Why, and I cannot stress this enough, why aren’t you more excited?’ Raina asks.
Kimi claps her hands. ‘I swear this is literally part of your whole five-year plan?’
Honestly, in the midst of all the drama, I hadn’t even thought about my five-year plan.
The list that has refreshed itself cyclically since I was fifteen; the list that’s got me where I need to be and will now take me to thirty.
Kimi’s right – Evie’s Summer Splash would be the portfolio gold dust I’d need to cross ‘organising an event I can be proud of’ off my list. But the mere presence of Aiden Edwards has wiped all sense and logic from my brain.
I have seen him for one day – a couple of hours at best – and I’m already starting to revert to someone I don’t want to be.
‘Maybe you can mostly avoid him. Didn’t you say your boss usually takes the lead on big events anyway?’ Devi asks gently after seeing my expression.
She’s right. Pippa has this fun little quirk where she will ask me to plan out an event, liaise with suppliers, then take my work and pass it to the client ‘for me’.
Does she tell them it’s me who did it? I’ll never know.
But I would put money on that being a no.
While frustrating, it might just be the silver bullet I need to save myself from completely losing my mind this time.
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right.’ My chest already feels lighter.
Maybe, in this less-than-ideal world, Aiden and I can co-exist purely through our bosses. I can go back to burying all the times he made me feel inferior and he can go back to pretending he doesn’t remember the history between us.