Nudge 13 The Bet #2
We eventually find the bar – the biggest of the tents, stretching long and wide across one of the edges of the grounds.
There are three other bespoke cocktails according to the picture menu, each of which looks as terrifying as the last, boasting an equally unnatural, glittery colour as the Pink Dream rip-off we started with.
I can’t stomach another. Not on a Monday, when I still haven’t recovered from Friday night.
Luckily, Aiden seems to be on the same vibe and returns from the bar with two bottles of Coke Zero.
‘So, what’s your issue today?’ he asks as we continue to stroll along the grass. ‘You’ve barely spoken two words to me since we got here.’
I swivel my neck the second his gaze turns towards to mine, repelling his stare like a magnet.
My eyes land on a new tent with an open front, showcasing tons of glowing women and men sat beaming as aproned professionals jab needles into their veins.
Trust Brooke’s party to have an IV-drip station, all in the name of wellness, I suppose.
The mere idea sends a chill down my spine but I’d rather look there than at Aiden.
He stops us in our tracks, grabbing my hand and checking for a pulse.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks sternly.
His hand feels warm against my wrist, fingers twisting around it, sparking the blood underneath.
I feel it fizzle at the new, foreign feel of his fingertips as they brush over the delicate skin.
It’s too much. I shrug my wrist out of his grip, but it doesn’t stop him from staring and waiting for my answer.
‘Why did you do that?’ I ask.
‘Check your pulse? You haven’t spoken much, and after Friday I just—’
‘This morning, when you lied to Gus and Pippa. Why’d you do that?’
His face shifts instantly from concern to a more tightly wound confusion.
‘Oh, that? That was nothing – just seemed like you needed it.’ He shrugs.
‘And they needed humbling. Don’t know how you deal with that every day.
’ He smiles back at me. I’m not smiling.
In fact, my scowl renders him visibly shocked.
‘Look, I just thought I was helping you out. If it’s that deep, I won’t talk to them again. ’
‘It’s not that. It’s just . . .’
I look up at his big brown eyes, deep and apologetic and rooted in concern. It makes me dizzy. I can barely hear myself over the music and chatter and the decorations and him . . . It’s all too much.
I drop my gaze immediately, looking around for something, anything, that could help me out, and spot a wooden arrow labelled Private Meditation Tents pointing far south of the garden.
Perfect. I start to walk, pacing across the green and trying to ignore the footsteps directly behind me.
He is relentless. What’s his problem, and why must it involve me and making me talk about what’s going on in my head?
‘You can’t leave it there,’ he says, meeting me at my side.
I don’t let it stop me. That tent will be mine.
‘I just don’t see why you’d go through all that trouble to lie when I know that you agree with them,’ I say as I walk.
‘Who said that? Agree with them about what?’
‘You, literally all the time. You think I’m this boring, predictable girl who owns too many notebooks.’
We reach the meditation corner – a series of eight single-sized tents, tucked away from the rest of the party in the lower eighth of Brooke’s garden.
The music’s quieter here, the air slightly cooler and the light so much dimmer thanks to the shade of the trees.
I press my eyes shut and breathe for a sweet, tranquil moment, before opening them to address the man in front of me.
His forehead crinkles in confusion for a moment before something clicks in his brain, piecing my words and his from Friday night together.
‘Seven notebooks is too many notebooks, Maddy,’ he says, a slight tease in his tone.
‘I got it the first time,’ I sigh.
His lips twist as he studies the dip of my brow and the defeat in my eyes. Eventually he sighs too, shoving his hand in his pocket before casting his eyes back over my face.
‘You remember that trip we took at the end of Year Six? With that old crusty river in the middle of nowhere?’
‘It was a brook. And it was less than ten minutes from our campsite,’ I say.
‘Which explains its crustiness – my point stands. Anyway, remember when we found it? Everyone was so excited because it was mad hot and we were desperate for anything to cool us down.’
His face contorts into a smile at the mere recollection of his silly, rambunctious days as a youth. It’s endearing, sweet, even, or at least it would be if the day in question hadn’t been the epitome of stupid.
‘I remember. Everyone started kicking their shoes off and diving headfirst into that filthy pond water.’
‘And Mrs May was screaming, and I stained my white vest and got a bollocking from my mum, but it was totally worth it,’ he says. ‘Do you remember what you did, while we were all jumping?’
Of course I do, but I’m surprised that he still does all these years later. Especially since he was out in the middle having fun with his friends, far, far away from me.
I shrug. ‘I dipped a hand in to test the depth and when the teachers gave the go-ahead, I waded in up to my knees.’
It sounds really lame when I repeat it back, but at the time it made the most logical sense.
Who jumps willingly into a pool of murky green water?
People with no home training, that’s who.
There was a wave of illness after that too, nasty rashes and stomach bugs sweeping through everyone who went on that trip.
‘Yeah, you did, because that’s the kind of person you are,’ he says, a somewhat fond smile on his face.
‘Some people wade in until they know what’s out there for them, and some people dive in, headfirst, not knowing what’s at the bottom.
You’re a wader. You always have been and there’s nothing wrong with that.
You still get there eventually. That’s the important part. ’
‘But you think I’d get there sooner if I dived in headfirst?’ I ask.
‘This isn’t a lake, Maddy – it’s life. It’s not a competition.’
And of course I know that, but deep down I think we can all admit that life feels like it is.
Everywhere I look, someone I know buys a house or gets married or makes a thirty-under-thirty list and leaves me in the dust. Even Aiden – a boy with every start that I had – is a talent manager to an icon, and probably goes to events like this all the time.
How am I meant to compete with the quick divers and jumpers who already have their houses and six-figure salaries while I’m still dipping a toe in the shallow end?
‘I can be a diver,’ I say in protest.
He chuckles again. ‘No, you can’t, and that’s fine. You don’t need to be.’
He’s resolute in his tone – far too set in his beliefs for a person who barely knows me.
We’ve been in each other’s lives for nearly two decades but these last three weeks are the most we’ve ever spoken.
How dare he take twenty-one days of contact and use that to determine who the hell I am?
I don’t know if it’s the residual hangover from Friday, or Gus and Pippa this morning, or the overstimulation of this event, but I can’t be around him and his weird pseudo-psychology anymore.
My shoulder brushes against his as I make a beeline for one of the empty meditation tents.
I sigh, long and deep, the second I’m inside, back resting lightly against the flimsy canvas wall. For a piece of cloth, it has semi-decent soundproofing. I shut my eyes tight and let the party fade into the background.
‘That was supposed to make you feel better.’ Aiden’s voice cuts through the quiet.
I guess the soundproofing doesn’t work that well if somebody stands right outside.
‘Well, it didn’t!’
‘I’m coming in.’
‘No, you’re not!’
A quick zip and a shuffle, and there he is. Who buys a privacy tent you can unzip from the inside and the outside? What, exactly, is so ‘private’ about that?
The second he enters, it’s clear that these supposedly private meditation tents are specifically designed to fit one person and one person only.
And, likely, a person of Brooke’s five-foot-nothing stature – something Aiden does not resemble.
His head bends forward against the curve of the tent ceiling, pushing his nose closer to mine.
This is a squeeze. A tight one. His trainer tips brush my boots as he moves around in an attempt to find some comfort.
‘You need to stop doing this.’ I can only describe his tone as akin to a fed-up headteacher. ‘It was never that deep. You are who you are, and I am who I am, and you don’t need to try to be anything else.’
It’s meant to be sweet, I think, or helpful, or something of that sort, but it does nothing but fill me with a hot, burning rage. He doesn’t know me. He never has and he never will, and he certainly doesn’t get to think that he does because he witnessed one panic attack and a drunken confession.
‘OK, yeah, I like to plan things and I always have . . . I’m a wader by nature and everyone knows it,’ I say. ‘But, of course, I know how to dive. I’ve been known to, actually. On many occasions. Witnessed by people I actually spend time with.’
A snort rushes from the back of his throat, his lips clasped tightly in an effort to trap it inside. I squint up at him coldly in return as he attempts to look me in the eye, the muscles in his cheeks working overtime to stop a stupid grin forming.
‘OK, I get it – you can be spontaneous.’
I huff. ‘But you don’t get it. I can tell that you don’t believe me.’
‘That shouldn’t matter.’