Chapter 63
Josh
On Andrea’s thirty-eighth birthday, we go to a new bar to celebrate. It’s one of those subterranean speakeasies, all velvet and no lighting and cocktails that taste even grimmer than they sound. I feel out of place, even as a supposed twenty-something.
When I get there – late, because my college class overran – Andrea is deep in conversation with Polly. But Rachel is alone, looking at her phone, so I take a seat next to her.
I glance at her martini glass, which is garnished with a pickle. Ever since Giles let slip that she and Oliver have been trying to conceive, I occasionally find myself checking to see if she’s drinking, wondering if today might be the day she tells me she’s pregnant again.
Misinterpreting my curiosity, she nudges the glass towards me. ‘Try it. It’s actually not bad.’
‘No, thanks. Think I’ll stick with the most disgusting drink I’ve ever had.’
She lets out a laugh, though it’s almost lost to the noise of the bar. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Headline ingredients are chocolate and absinthe.’
‘That sounds dangerous.’ Her brown eyes meet mine, just for a moment, then she looks away, sips the pickle-martini. ‘Hey, do you have any book news for me?’
I’ve told her before that I’ve been working on something. But she doesn’t know yet that I have something pretty big to share with her.
I finished writing my latest novel just a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been out on submission less than twenty-four hours.
And now – after being apathetic for so much of my career that I’ve sometimes wondered if he’s died without anyone telling me – my agent, Melvin, has apparently pulled off the impossible.
The news came in this afternoon, via a rare phone call: a sizeable pre-empt has landed, from one of the Big Five publishers.
When he told me, I dropped to the floor in shock and promptly hung up. Then I lay flat on my back and stared at the ceiling.
Bloody hell.
It’s already earned me more than my first five novels put together. It is, as my mum would say, silly money.
Rachel covers her mouth when I tell her. ‘Oh, my God. Josh, that’s—’
‘I know.’ I can’t stop the smile from breaking over my face. ‘I know. It’s mad.’
‘It’s better than mad. It’s bloody brilliant.
’ She puts her arms around me, buries her face in my neck.
She’s had a drink, and maybe she wouldn’t be hugging me like this if Oliver were here.
He’s not, though: he’s in London at some entrepreneurs’ networking back-slapping thing, which means for once I can chat to Rachel without feeling pickaxed by his gaze.
Anyway, tonight, I don’t care. Rachel was there through so many of my writing ups and downs. She helped get me where I am tonight, and I want to share this with her.
We hug for a couple of moments. Her gold hair is spilling through my fingers. It’s still long enough to reach halfway down her back, has barely changed since she was twenty.
Suddenly, my skin senses that someone is watching us, from across the room. And I know without having to look that it is Andrea.
Releasing me, Rachel springs to her feet, then dashes to the bar, orders three bottles of champagne. ‘We are celebrating, now.’
Which is when Andrea comes over to ask what’s going on, and I tell her, and she just stares at me, like, What the fuck?
We get back to my flat at around midnight.
After four years of dating, Andrea and I still haven’t moved in together.
Eventually I stopped asking, and tried to appreciate what Andrea kept saying about the flexibility of having two separate places, especially where writing is concerned.
She spends much of her working day wandering about making coffee and talking to herself and getting her beta readers on the phone.
I am more of a headphones-on, do-not-disturb kind of guy.
So it is probably better, on balance, that we do have two flats, albeit they are in different parts of town.
I switch on the overhead light, just in case Andrea has been thinking I’ll try to incognito my way out of this.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, before she can speak. ‘That isn’t how tonight was supposed to go.’
‘The biggest moment of your career, and you tell Rachel – no, in fact, you let her tell the entire bar – before you tell me. I mean, it was actually quite impressive, as a territory move. Announcing your news as if it was her own.’
I swallow. My mouth still tastes of that dodgy cocktail, a horrible combination of absinthe and the kind of non-chocolate you find in health food shops.
It is unforgivable, I know. Aside from anything else, I have no doubt that Andrea’s influence on my writing has helped get me to this point. And she’s my girlfriend, for God’s sake. I owed her at least the basic courtesy of sharing the news with her first.
‘Has she read it?’
I shake my head, then try to take her hand, light sparking against my watch as I do so. To this day, Andrea has no idea it was my thirtieth gift from Rachel. Thankfully, though, she’s never asked.
But she warns me off trying to touch her with a headshake. Her red hair is wild and loose now, making flames around her face. She takes a step back, folds her arms.
‘I assume you’re aware she still has feelings for you?’
At this, I stiffen. I have sensed coolness occasionally, between Rachel and Andrea since we’ve been together. But I’d assumed that was normal in these situations. Like the standoff I share with Oliver, who will never not be itching to schadenfreude me, the very first chance he gets.
But Andrea hasn’t ever intimated that she’s been thinking this.
‘Andrea, she doesn’t. She’s with Oliver.’
‘Mmm. He wasn’t there tonight, though, was he, while she was all over you?’
I could respond by saying Rachel’s just tactile, which she is. But that would amount to a shifty attempt to invalidate Andrea’s feelings, and I don’t want to do that. So I try to tell her what I think must be the truth.
‘Rachel always wanted this for me. And she’d had a couple of drinks, and honestly – I think she just forgot herself. But there was nothing in it. I swear.’
Andrea tilts her head. Spots of pink have erupted on her pale cheeks, her green eyes turned almost acidic. ‘You didn’t speak up, though. You’re not the innocent party here, Josh.’
I swallow, chastened. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I know how shitty that must have made you feel.’
‘You made a beeline for Rachel before you’d even said hello to me.’
I shake my head. ‘Only because you were talking to Polly, and Rachel was on her own. I didn’t think.
I wasn’t thinking, the whole time. My mind was all over the place.
Today’s been pretty nuts. Please, I love you.
If I could reverse tonight and do it all over again, I would.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. ’
For a couple of moments she just gazes at me. ‘Does it ever occur to you to wonder why you spend so much time regretting the choices you make?’
Touché. But I don’t clap back. She has every right to be annoyed.
Andrea doesn’t say anything else after that. She just walks out of the living room and leaves me standing in the middle of it, feeling elated and completely crushed, all at the same time.
I don’t end up following her to bed. Partly because my phone doesn’t stop buzzing with texts and emails and social media notifications.
Offers from foreign publishers have started to land now.
Melvin must be ninety per cent caffeine at this point, putting in the shift of his life.
He’s probably communicated with me more during the past twelve hours than he has over the course of nearly three decades.
I decide to compose a message to Wilf. I want to tell him my news, even though he never got back in touch, following my visit to Spain.
I’ve fallen down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole of late, watching videos of Wilf crushing his opponents in various poker tournaments.
It’s been hard to believe, sometimes, that I’ve had to turn to social media to keep up with what he’s doing, these days.
But in the end I have no idea what to say, really.
So I decide to junk my message to him. He might not welcome a cloud-nine update from me when his own career has ended up being poker or nothing.
I think I have long known, deep down, that our friendship is over.
And maybe it’s time for me to accept it.