Chapter 15
‘You should call him.’
I gawped at Alice, mouth open. As if she’d just suggested I jump off Beachy Head stark naked.
‘Call who?’
Alice rolled her eyes, her pursed lips confirmation that she wasn’t willing to play this game. She took a sip of her wine, suddenly very interested in her nail beds. She was waiting me out and I knew it, but it didn’t make it any less annoying.
‘Why would I call him?’ I huffed eventually, dropping the I don’t know who you’re talking about act.
I wiggled the third and fourth fingers of my left hand, a habit I’d developed ever since I’d found my ring lying forgotten on my bedside table when I got home from Luca’s gig.
The metal band felt cool and reassuring against my skin.
‘Because you haven’t stopped thinking about him since Saturday night.’
‘Because you just gave me vodka instead of gin,’ Jacob spluttered, grimacing as he returned his glass to the beermat in front of him.
‘Because you’ve been polishing that same pint glass for fifteen minutes.’
I put the glass pointedly down on the bar, watching it sparkle under the lights as I tucked the tea towel under the tie of my apron.
‘Because your face is the colour of a tomato right now.’ Jacob grinned. He was enjoying this game way too much.
‘Because—’
‘OK!’ I held up both hands in surrender, cutting Alice off before she could add yet more fuel to the already-blazing inferno. Alice swapped her half-full glass of Chardonnay for Jacob’s vodka tonic much to his delight, a snail trail of condensation marking their silent exchange.
‘What’s the big deal anyway? You see each other practically every week already.
’ I’d always envied Alice’s ability to view everything in black and white.
Occupational hazard for a doctor, I guess.
But this thing with Luca was so far from black and white.
It was an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colours, some of which I’d never even seen before.
The heat I’d felt on Friday night when his fingers had touched mine was a blistering hot red.
The sense of happiness I’d started to feel at the prospect of seeing Luca at the community centre, a bright sunshine yellow.
The ripples of green when I clocked Harry’s mum purposefully drop her car keys in front of Luca, her Pilates-toned derriere angled in his direction as she bent down in slow motion to retrieve them.
A washed-out grey-blue surrounding the whole picture, a swirling mix of confusion and sadness.
‘He’s a friend , right?’ The probing lilt of Alice’s voice confirmed she thought otherwise, but she knew me too well to dive right in and say what we both knew to be true.
Luca wasn’t a friend. I wasn’t sure what he was , of anything really, but after Saturday night, I was certain he wasn’t a friend.
I blinked, processing.
‘I guess.’
‘So, friends phone each other and thank them for a fun night.’
I rolled my eyes at her, grateful for the sight of Old Sam, one of our regulars who’d had a full head of brilliant white hair for as long as I could remember, approaching the bar.
Some things at least never changed. I busied myself with pouring him a pint of Guinness, not needing to wait to hear his order which had been the same for the past fifteen years.
As the dark, stormy liquid swirled in the glass, I glanced back over at Alice who was hunched over her phone, her face illuminated with a soft blue glow as she scrolled purposefully through something on the screen.
Jacob was leaning over, whispering something intently in his sister’s ear – although she simply shook her head, batting him away when he tried to snatch the phone from her.
‘Keep the change.’ Old Sam smiled, pressing a crisp ￡5 note into my hand.
He was probably the only patron left who still paid in cash.
As I slotted his ￡5 note neatly into the designated section of the till, I frowned.
The spot at the side of the register where my phone always sat while I was on shift was empty.
I patted the back pockets of my jeans, rooted around in the front pocket of my apron.
Empty. A lump lodged itself at the back of my throat as my eyes darted back to a suspiciously pleased-looking Alice.
She had my phone in her right hand, the name Luca appearing on the screen as a ringing tone buzzed aggressively through the speaker.
‘Give me that!’ My feet left the floor as I performed a full-body lunge across the bar, swiping the still-ringing phone from Alice’s hands.
‘Hello?’
His voice took me by surprise, the phone slipping through my fingers onto the floor with a clatter. For one panicked second I froze, all three of us looking down as though it were a grenade about to explode, before Luca’s voice buzzed through the speaker once more.
‘ Hello ?’
I dropped to the floor, all fingers and thumbs as I hot-potatoed the phone from one hand to the other, before eventually managing to take it off speaker. My thumb hovered over the End Call button, all red and enticing. But I knew he’d only call back, so I raised the phone to my ear.
‘ Yo! ’
Jacob spluttered most of his drink over the bar top, Alice almost falling off her stool. I’d never said yo in my entire life, so God knows why that was the first word that popped into my panicked brain.
Luca sighed impatiently, clearly not recognising my voice, which wasn’t surprising considering the whole yo debacle. ‘Sorry, who is this?’
I winced.
‘It’s Jenny. Jenny Thompson.’
There was a pause.
‘Hello Jenny. Jenny Thompson.’
My grip tightened around the phone, every second of silence that ticked by more painful than the last. Why was this so awkward? It’s not like anything happened the other night. We’d walked. We’d talked. Nothing more. Maybe the fact nothing had happened was the issue?
‘Did you just phone to say hello, or—?’
‘Yes. I mean, no. I was .?.?. I was just phoning to .?.?. Apologise. For. The. Other. Night.’ My voice was almost robotic as I followed along with the words Alice was mouthing at me across the bar.
‘No apology necessary,’ Luca said simply, and my heart slowed a fraction in my chest.
‘Well, sorry for being all weird and disappearing on you like that.’
‘Hey, I would have done the same. If you see a taxi on a Saturday night at peak time, you’ve just got to take it.
Those things are about as rare as unicorns.
’ I heard my breath echo down the phone, a sigh of appreciation at all the things Luca had chosen not to say.
All the things he knew I wasn’t ready to talk about.
‘Was that it?’ His voice was warm with humour as it crackled down the phone.
‘Um .?.?.’
Alice mouthed something at me that I couldn’t make out.
‘I, err .?.?.’
Jacob performed some sort of weird hand-to-mouth action, miming cutting something in front of him and chewing it. What was this, fucking charades? I’d always been terrible at charades. No one wanted me on their team at Christmas.
‘Food!’ I blurted out before I could stop myself. The silence on the other end of the line was so deafening I had to remove the phone from my ear and check Luca hadn’t ended the call. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, do you eat food?’ I shook my head at the words coming out of my mouth. How was that any better? Judging by the way Jacob covered his face with his hands, he shared my pain.
‘Yes, Thompson, I eat food.’ Luca’s tone was light, tinged with humour, and I could just picture that teasing hint of a smile playing with the corner of his mouth.
I pushed my bottom lip forward with my tongue.
‘Of course you do. You are human,’ I groaned, spinning in a circle and yanking at the end of my ponytail with more force than a woman who already lost a considerable ball of hair in the shower every day should.
Alice had produced a medical pad from her bag, pen lid clamped between her teeth as she hastily scribbled something down before turning the page to face me.
Ask him if he wants to grab dinner!!
I shook my head at her, trying to ignore her aggressive stabbing of the page with her pen to get my attention. Oh, fuck it.
‘How about you come to the pub for dinner on Friday? My treat, for disappearing on you the other night.’ I only realised I was holding my breath when Luca’s answer came, short and blunt.
‘I can’t.’
‘Oh. Sure. No problem. Forget I even asked,’ I said, forcing a casual indifference despite the sting of rejection.
I was about to hang up when Luca added, ‘I’d like to, it’s just .?.?.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said abruptly, cutting him off before I could hear whatever lame excuse he’d come up with in those five seconds of awkward silence.
‘If you’d let me get a word in, I was going to say I’ve already got plans on Friday night.’
Of course he did. This was the guy who had women throwing phone numbers at him left, right and centre. He probably had a date lined up every night this week.
‘Wild Friday night plans, you know how it is!’ Luca added, his voice light and playful as though he could sense my discomfort down the phone.
‘Oh, sure, I’ve actually got plans on Friday myself,’ I found myself saying. Jacob and Alice both frowned at me, clearly struggling to keep up with the conversation.
‘Really?’
‘Yep.’
‘Because you were the one who suggested Friday in the first place .?.?.’ Luca reminded me. There was no hiding the amusement in his voice now. He was backing me into a corner, and he knew it.
‘Yeah, well, I only just remembered. My diary at the minute is just wooo —’
Alice tapped her pen against her glass, giving me a sobering shake of her head, whilst Jacob just gawped at me open- mouthed, like I was some exotic animal in a zoo.
‘Ah, that’s a shame.’ Luca’s voice vibrated in my ear.
‘Why’s that?’