Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stella
With Beck in New York, I was going to have to make the best of things.
It wasn’t as if he were on a desert island somewhere without his mobile.
After elbowing my way through the lunchtime crowds of Seven Dials, I threw my salad onto my desk and pulled out my phone.
It was nine in the morning in New York. Beck should be ready for a few questions.
Me: Are u there?
Beck: Where?
Me: On the other end of the phone?
Beck: No.
He was almost funny.
I had to use the time he was away as efficiently as possible. I needed to think of the kind of digging Karen was going to do. No internet research was going to tell her anything that would be a problem. It wasn’t like Beck was secretly gay or married or a priest or something.
He liked women. His friends had assured me of that in the pub. I grinned to myself. He was always so cool and confident, it was nice to see he wasn’t perfect—the way his friends ribbed him about stuff in front of me had clearly irritated him.
It was cute.
Almost as if he wanted to present the best version of himself to me. As if he wanted me to like him.
And I did like him. So far. Not that it mattered. Although, obviously he was attractive. An eighty-five-year-old lesbian nun would be a little giddy around Beck.
But it didn’t matter. Because we weren’t dating. We were getting to know each other. That was different.
Somehow.
Me: What’s your favorite restaurant in London?
Nothing.
Two minutes later—nothing.
Ten minutes later—still nothing.
Five hours later just as I was logging out to go home—Beck was still radio silent. What could be more important to him than this? I thought he desperately wanted to go to the wedding.
Three dots popped up, indicating he was online, not that I had the phone jammed in my hand or anything.
But then nothing.
I typed out “hello” and then deleted it. Then typed out another less polite message and deleted that one as well.
I knew if any sane person could see me now, they’d wonder what the hell was going on. Time to call in the only person I was completely sure was sane: Florence.
I shot past the lifts and took the stairs where I could get mobile coverage.
“Hey,” she answered.
“I need you to talk me off a cliff. Oh, and hello.”
I heard her take a deep breath and it made me copy her and fill my lungs.
“What’s going on.”
Florence understood how difficult this wedding was going to be for me. She’d understand a little freaking out. “Beck isn’t answering my messages.”
As I exited the building, by some miracle my bus was waiting for me at the stop. I climbed on and pressed the phone harder against my head, hoping I’d hear Florence over the traffic and announcements on the bus.
“At all? Or has he just not answered one text. Yet?”
“The one I sent him five hours ago hasn’t been answered. And before you ask, he’s seen it and it’s after lunch in New York.” I wasn’t being entirely unreasonable and expecting him to answer in the middle of the night or anything.
“You know what I’m going to say,” Florence replied.
I stared out of the window, watching the push and pull of the office workers trying to escape the area and the tourists pouring in. “That I should never have agreed to go to this wedding in the first place?” Well, that was completely certain. “It was a deal I couldn’t say—”
“You know that’s not what I was going to say. He’s in New York for a reason, not just to message you the entire time. He’ll reply. He knows he has to keep you happy and stop you from completely melting down.”
She was right. He was probably in a meeting. Or multiple meetings.
But didn’t he get a loo break?
“Karen is going to do her best to figure out if we’re an act. I can’t give her any chinks in our armor.”
“Yeah, she’s on a mission now. If I didn’t know better, I would say she’s more interested in you and Beck than she is about the wedding itself. She called me again last night and asked a ton of questions about when you two met and then when I’d met him.”
My heart pounded, sucking up blood from my toes and making them turn marble-cold.
I’d half hoped Florence would tell me Karen had forgotten by now and that in Scotland she’d be far more focused on her wedding and her guests, but she’d done the opposite.
“Maybe I should have gone to New York,” I replied.
I could have phoned in sick, although knowing my luck, I would have bumped into someone from the office on the Heathrow Express.
“Who cares what Karen thinks, anyway,” Florence said. “She’s a witch. You don’t need someone like that to believe you.”
I thought Florence got it. “Karen can’t know that Beck and I aren’t a real couple. Gordy hasn’t said something, has he?” Was she trying to warm me up before she told me that Gordy had spilled the beans?
“Gordy doesn’t speak to Karen. And actually he hasn’t spoken to Matt much either. Between you and me, they’ve had a bit of a falling out. Gordy really doesn’t approve of what he’s done.”
Gordy was a sweet, kind man who might just deserve Florence.
My thoughts tumbled down into the I-can’t-believe-this-has-happened valley. I’d spent a lot of time in that place, ruminating and wondering what had gone on, when things had gone wrong, how long Matt and Karen had been together—I couldn’t go back there.
“Well, he’s done what he’s done. I’m trying to look to the future—otherwise I wouldn’t be going to this wedding.” The bus pulled up at my stop just three doors down from the flat I’d thought would become the place where Matt and I lived as newlyweds.
“Exactly, so who cares if Karen figures out you and Beck. You still get the job. You still move forward.”
I might still get the job of a lifetime but somehow, I needed more than that.
I had to believe that I could be more than the girl whose best friend and boyfriend got married.
“I need evidence,” I said. “Yes, the job’s important.
I need the chance to get my design business up and running, but I need something else too.
I’m in a rut—or I’m on a losing streak or something.
At the moment, if I got that job, I’m worried something would happen to stuff it up.
I need this pretend boyfriend thing to go right to break the pattern. ”
“To end your losing streak?”
I put the key in the lock and pushed the door open into the hallway.
Absolutely nothing about coming home had changed since Matt had left.
Except Matt wasn’t here. The coat hooks still had too many coats on them, even though they were just my coats and jackets now.
The succulent his mother had brought on her last visit still sat on the console table.
The deep red carpet still made the hallway look dark.
“Exactly. Maybe.” It wasn’t exactly a run of bad luck I was having.
But I’d gotten into a pattern of bad stuff happening and it was starting to feel normal.
“Something good needs to happen. And you know what? I want to convince everyone at that wedding, including Karen, that Beck is my boyfriend because I want to know that people think it’s possible. ”
“I’m not following you. Think what’s possible? That you could date a guy like Beck?”
“Sort of. I mean, he’s good looking, hardworking, he has a great body, his own business.
He’s funny—sometimes. He’s got nice friends.
I don’t know, I just want people to believe that I’m worth someone like that.
That I’m worth something more than a cheating boyfriend.
I swear people think that I must have done something to deserve it.
” The fact was, I was always trying to figure out what I could have done differently.
What I could have done to have stopped Matt cheating.
“Stella, I believe you’re worth more than a man like Matt.”
I didn’t like the tinge of pity I heard when she said my name.
“You don’t count. You’re biased.” I pulled open the bedside drawer that had been Matt’s.
When I’d packed up his stuff, I’d forgotten this drawer, and when I realized, I didn’t bother to tell him.
And I hadn’t emptied it. It was almost as if I didn’t want to get rid of the last pieces of him for some reason.
Now a packet of mints, a pen that he’d gotten from his dad when he got his first job, and a dog-eared copy of Into the Wild were the only things of Matt left in this flat.
In my life. I slammed the drawer shut. “It’s not just the Beck thing—I want people to think I’m strong and capable.
And that my whole life hasn’t been busted into a million pieces. ”
“You want everyone else to believe that?”
I did. I wanted the entire world to believe that I was okay. That I was not only capable of surviving Matt and Karen’s betrayal, but I had thrived despite them.
If everyone else believed it, maybe I could too.
The sound of a message arriving bleeped on my phone.
“I’m putting you on speaker,” I said. If Beck was online, I wanted to make the most of it.
Beck: J Sheekey. You?
So he hadn’t died. And I liked his choice in restaurant.
Matt always liked Rules for the venison, so we used to go there a lot. I preferred something a little more modern and less stuffy. Like J Sheekey or Scotts. But Matt didn’t like fish.
Me: Scotts
Beck: Nice. I like it there too. Do you have brothers and sisters?
I grinned and flopped back on my bed. Beck was taking this seriously.
“You think this will be one of those things that I look back on and say, thank God that happened? Thank goodness Matt cheated on me and ran off with Karen and married her within weeks?”
“Absolutely,” Florence said as if she were in no doubt. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they were divorced by the end of the year.”
“And I won’t even notice they’re divorcing because I’ll be so busy at work.”
“And you’ll be having amazing sex with an intelligent, handsome, funny guy who treats you like gold.”
“Actual sex? Or the make-believe sex like I’m having with Beck?”
“You never know—by the end of a week in Scotland you might be having actual sex with Beck,” Florence replied.
I ignored the fizzle under my ribs at the thought.
“I just want the design job. I can live without his penis.”
“I bet it’s super handsome. Just like him,” Florence said.
“I’m going,” I said through my giggle. “You’re ridiculous and Beck just replied. I need to pepper him with questions.”
“I hate to say I told you so, but I knew he’d reply,” Florence said. “I’ll be saying the same thing when you two end up hooking up in Scotland.”
“I’m hanging up,” I said.
Beck and I weren’t going to hook up. We were going to nail this fake boyfriend and girlfriend thing. Beck was going to get his Mayfair building, and I was going to get my life back.