Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
I can hear the music of the wedding rehearsal coming from the ballroom. Giving a silent prayer of thanks that I don’t have to be there, I take my time in getting ready. Weasel texts.
I’m downstairs. Garden. Drink then 8 p.m. dinner? Made reservations at La Tavola.
Like a perfect boyfriend. Shit.
My stomach lurches. I have to tell him. I spend another few minutes trying to figure out what I’m going to say. I think he likes me – I mean, he did get on a plane he thought was destined to plunge from the sky. For me.
I swallow hard. But that doesn’t necessarily wipe away the time I’ve had with Adam. I have a boyfriend and he is my priority. My future.
By the time I get downstairs, dressed in white pants and a silver glittery camisole, Ben has grabbed a chilled bottle of local Sauvignon Blanc and two glasses. Like we’re celebrating. Yikes. I gulp. Luckily I’ve had a shot of tequila, otherwise this would have my anxiety skyrocketing.
Out in the garden, the tiny fairy lights twinkle like stars, and the muted sounds of a string quartet flow across from the ballroom.
He pours me a glass. ‘Wow, Gemma, you look…’
‘Yes?’
I think he’s going to say ‘beautiful’ – and God, I hope he doesn’t – but instead he chews his lip, before he says, ‘Almost relaxed.’
‘I’ll have you know I am very relaxed at times, when my chief editor isn’t following me to Italy. Or thinking he’s going to die in a small plane.’
‘We should clink glasses before we start sparring, and someone needs to say pineapple.’ He grins and holds up his glass.
The sun flashes its last rays, everything painted in pink and red as they streak across the sky. The cicadas start up like a choir, a distant hum. Everything smells like honey and jasmine, and the most perfect smell of all: a pizza crust baking.
I’m about to say something; I’m just finding the right words, the right time. Where do I start? With that kiss on the plane? With this entire holiday?
‘Another glass?’ he asks.
I shrug. I’ve lost my nerve a bit already, seeing him here. The good girl in me is trying to take over the new boldness. But I can’t lose my resolve, not now. He pours me a half glass and I take a sip.
I have to do it. ‘I have to be honest, about earlier…’
‘Yes…’
‘You know, on the plane. I need to apologise…’
‘There’s no need.’
Just say it. ‘I have a boyfriend and I shouldn’t have kissed you on the plane.’
‘And I shouldn’t have … uh … put mud on you in the spa,’ he says lightly, but I can tell his tone is serious.
I give a small, strangled laugh, but then I remember what I’ve done on the plane and feel overwhelmed again. The weight on my conscience is heavy, like an anvil dragging me down.
‘I don’t know what I’m thinking about over here. I don’t know why I did any of that. I seem to have temporarily lost my mind.’
‘I get it. You have a boyfriend. I’m a great stand-in. Say no more.’
I cast my eyes over his face and try to read his expression but can’t.
‘Right,’ I say flatly, wishing there wasn’t an ache beneath my breastbone.
‘Right.’ He nods a little too much.
‘Right,’ I say again, the lead ball in my stomach getting larger. I swallow and try to ignore the strange sense of sadness about what will happen in a few days when this Italian bubble bursts.
I try to look away, but everywhere around me are fairy lights, and twinkling stars and music and wine, and God, it’s just so bloody romantic .
‘I can’t break up with him,’ I say quickly, trying to explain.
‘Did I ask you to?’ He raises both shoulders as if to say, How much has this girl been drinking?
He’s right, he didn’t, but it stings to hear him say the words.
I take a gulp of wine and we silently stand there and watch the night. Off in the distance, at the rehearsal dinner, the string quartet starts a new tune.
‘I like this one?—’
‘Pachelbel’s Canon,’ I say humming along.
‘I know what’s it’s called, Gemma. You may need to school others, but not me. And as I was saying – before I was rudely interrupted – I like this one, but I’m rather a Beethoven cello sonata guy myself.’ He gives me a little smile.
‘Arrogant music twat.’
He’s laughing now. And I’m relieved that I get the sense that everything is going to be okay, and maybe we’ll be friends when we get back, and go for coffee, and talk about books or music.
‘When we get back can we go for coffee?’ I ask impulsively.
‘Yeah, of course.’ His voice is warm and he looks happy I’ve asked that. ‘As long as you don’t wear those grey pyjamas again. That’s something I think we need not repeat.’ He has a glimmer in his eye.
Okay, friends. I can do this. I’ve got this. Friends, I think, nodding to myself.
‘Another glass?’
Why not. I hold up my glass, and he fills it up.
‘Cheese?’ He points at the charcuterie board. ‘I asked them to put together something to snack on. We don’t want you getting hangry.’ He smiles and passes me a large chunk of brie. ‘You like brie, right? By knife this time, not fingers.’
I can’t help but laugh. ‘You’re quite good at this faux boyfriend thing. I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice.’
He laughs. ‘You have a lot of assumptions about me.’
‘Do I?’
‘You know you do.’ A hint of amusement flashes across his eyes. ‘But you’re so wrong, it’s embarrassing.’
He fills my glass with a splash of crisp white wine. I can’t help but bite. ‘All right then, go ahead.’
‘Let’s start off easy. I’m Ben Thomas McDonald. Favourite colour is blue. Favourite author we have is Annie Wilcox. Favourite book is her Ode on Light poems.’
‘ What ? You, vampire Weasel, like nature poems?’
‘I do.’
‘Sure it’s not James McMahon?’
‘No, definitely not the walking sexual harassment case that is James McMahon. Christ, that guy.’
‘So you noticed.’
‘Noticed? How could I not? When he … pawed you. We all saw it.’
I was morbidly curious now. ‘So why didn’t you do anything?’
‘You’ve said plenty of times that you don’t need saving.’
I look up at him. ‘I don’t. But if I’m doing radical honesty’ – I pause – ‘sometimes I may like to know that someone cares about me. Not saving. Caring. There’s a difference .’
He grins. ‘Okay, I think we’re getting somewhere here. Should we have a little sign maybe, when you do need protecting or saving? Like maybe tugging on your earlobe?’
‘I do that when I think. How about a little bear paw.’
‘It may look like you’re swatting mozzies.’
‘Exactly! I need saving from them!’ We both laugh. And it makes me feel warm.
‘Okay, your turn.’
But do I even want dirt on Weasel? Do I even want to know anything about him? Wouldn’t that make it harder when we get back to real life?
Instead I say, ‘The other night … I’ve been wondering. How come you didn’t worry about catching what I had? And how did you even figure out how to move me around whilst I was a comatose lump?’
‘I’ve had experience.’
Oh, I think, all the models and supermodels he’s dated. Getting themselves too drunk, and he’s made himself an expert at shimmying them out of dresses. What a chauvinistic little…
He sees the look on my face and quickly adds, ‘Not with girlfriends.’
I feel horrified. ‘Then who? With strangers ?’
‘No, I uh, looked after my brother for a bit. He needed help getting in and out of…’ He peters out. ‘Not dresses.’
He looks so soft and vulnerable right now, it can’t be a lie. Suddenly, every part of me feels like iron filings and he’s a giant magnet, and I have to fight with every ounce of my being not to lean over and hug him. What’s happening? I want to hold Weasel?
I try to think fast. Change the subject. ‘Okay, well … since you’re here with my family, how about you tell me about your parents. Are they as crazy as mine?’
He turns away for a second. ‘I don’t, um, know them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They had me, then my brother Lucas, when they were young – just teenagers – and they couldn’t cope. We were shipped off to different foster families, changing homes often.’
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair as he frowns. ‘I mucked up a lot, and so families would get sick of me and want me out. Then our parents came back and said they’d changed their minds. I was about ten – Lucas would have been eight – and I was so excited. Lucas and I packed our bags and waited out the front. We waited until past midnight, but they never came. After that we vowed never ever to lie, to each other or to anyone. It’s much better to just tell the truth.’
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’ I’m crushed for him.
It all makes so much more sense now. How independent he is. How he can’t care about others because no one has ever taught him how.
‘I’m just telling you because that’s the reason why I’m so ambitious. I want to set Lucas and me up so we never need to worry.’ He actually looks as if telling me has lifted a weight off him somehow.
I nod. I know the best thing I can do right now is to just listen.
‘And Lucas. He, uh…’ He looks down at his hands and is quiet for a while. ‘He had a brain injury a few years ago, and it was pretty serious. Life and death stuff. He’s doing pretty well now, with rehab, but the aim is for me to work hard enough so I can give him whatever he needs.’
I hate to admit it, but for a second, I wonder if he’s lying. ‘Wait, is that … true?’
He looks at me with those pure blue eyes, and his voice drops an octave, gets gravelly. ‘I would never lie about something like that.’
‘God, sorry, of course.’
He pulls out his phone. ‘You can call him if you want.’
‘I don’t think…’
He gives me a wry smile. ‘I was joking, Gemma, he can’t speak that well.’
Oh God, now I feel a million times worse. ‘I’m so sorry. About everything.’
‘That’s okay. I think he’d think it was funny too. He’s always had a dark sense of humour.’
‘God, you’re a guy who looks after his brother.’ I shake my head feeling stunned. ‘This is the last thing I expected. So it’s just the two of you?’
‘Three. There’s also Bella.’
For some reason my heart drops a little. Maybe she was a sister?
‘Bella is the third leg of our tripod. She’s not related to us, but I love her with all my heart.’
‘Oh.’ I can feel myself deflate as a strange sense of anxious disappointment spreads across my chest. So there’s a non-sister someone. A Bella someone. I always thought of Weasel as not having someone at home. But maybe he does. ‘Is she, uh, nice?’
‘She’s a good licker.’
‘ What ?’
‘She’s a dog, Gemma. A rescued border collie.’ He opens his phone and scrolls to a photo of a cute, fluffy black collie, sitting on a large beige couch next to a man staring off in the distance, like he’s trying to look at the camera, but his eyes won’t focus. Lucas.
‘You’re pulling at all the bloody heartstrings.’
‘Am I?’ he says with that heart-breaking grin.
‘You are, and you know it.’
‘Well, that’s everything. My soft crab insides.’ He shrugs and runs his hand through his tousled blond hair. ‘It’s the reason why I’m sometimes a cynical … what did you call me? Wanker?’
I nod as a soft bloom of fondness rises in me. Fostered. Sick brother. Rescue dog. Anyone with a past like his would act the way he does.
I have to turn away. Suddenly it’s becoming all too real. He can quote Shakespeare so perfectly that my heart beats like a jackhammer and he’s literally the most beautiful human I’ve seen, but it’s beyond sexual now. It’s emotional, and that is dangerous territory. If I stay here, I know what will happen. I’ll end up wanting to make out with his pretty face all night. And it won’t stop there. Why did I even agree to this silly drink anyway? Still, I can’t help but suddenly want to know everything about him. ‘Did you ever meet them? Your birth parents?’
‘Nope, my turn.’ He moves away from me. ‘What would you do if you weren’t an editor?’
The question hangs heavy in the air. I consider not answering it truthfully, but no, that’s what got me into this entire mess in the first place: not being honest.
He beats me to it. ‘Have you ever thought of being a writer?’
Ugh, another topic I wanted to steer clear of. Why does it feel like every conversation with him is littered with landmines? ‘I don’t.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, I used to think about it, but…’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘But?’
‘I thought about it, but it … went nowhere. So now here we are.’ I give him a quick glance. ‘And before you say it, I wouldn’t write a romcom.’
He holds his hands up. ‘I didn’t say a word.’ He pauses. ‘But you did write something?’
‘I did. Once. But…’ I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t think it was good enough.’
‘Why?’
‘It didn’t go anywhere.’
He shrugs. ‘You know, I was thinking…’
‘Oh? It thinks?’
He ignores me. ‘Maybe, now you’re here, you could stay on a few days, spend some time writing about Italy. Away from all this hotel and wedding stuff. The real Italy, the heart of it.’
The way he phrases it seems strange. It’s as if he knows I have already written about Italy.
‘Maybe spend some time in the Tuscan hills. You know, soaking in the culture.’
It’s as if he’s reading an overview of my book. A strange eeriness comes over me. Does he know? But he couldn’t possibly. No one has read that. No one knows except Tony, and he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. So why do I suddenly feel so uncomfortable, and like I just want to leave? ‘I’m quite tired…’
He stares at me for a second. ‘Is that the truth?’
There are two responses in me. One is a Nelly Nicepants: Oh yep, promise I am, still jet-lagged, just beat . And the other is the truth: You scare me; this conversation scares me. If we’re not almost kissing each other, we’re talking about the softest part of me and it’s overwhelming.
‘Actually no. It’s not.’
‘Say it then.’
‘The truth is … I don’t like to talk about me and writing.’
‘Okay, fine. How about some more cheese? Wine?’
I shake my head. I know where more wine would get us. Non social distanced, that’s where. ‘I think it’s best that I remove myself and don’t insert myself into any more of these situations.’
‘What about if we sit further apart? You sit over there, and I sit here.’
Every part of me screams, YES, LET’S DO THAT, but I know it won’t help. I need to leave and leave right this second.
‘I should go. But this was … nice .’
‘Sure.’ He stares at me and I can’t read his expression at all.
I grab my bag, then pause. There’s something still niggling me. And now that I have the warmth of wine in my veins and I’m no longer Nelly Nicepants, I want to get it off my chest.
‘You know, there is one thing I wanted to ask you about…’
‘Shoot.’
‘I heard a conversation the night of James McMahon’s drinks. You and Tony. Something that sounded like it was about me. And I’m sure I heard you say something like “ It’s over ”. You told me you didn’t want my career to be over, so what was that about?’
His face flushes. ‘I…’
I expected him to say it wasn’t about me. But he can’t. He can’t even look at me, and I know then, it was about me.
‘It’s true? You want me to leave Peacock?’
‘It’s not that… It wasn’t … uh…’ He’s struggling. I wait as his mouth opens and his jaw flexes as he tries to find the right words. He swallows, quickly looks at me, then looks away.
So it’s true. He wants me out. I feel suddenly cold, covered in goosebumps. So much for radical honesty. He can’t even bring himself to admit it.
‘I’m going,’ I say crisply, suddenly wishing I hadn’t pulled down my walls, hadn’t trusted him, had never kissed him.
‘Wait, Gemma.’
‘Yes?’
His face is white, strained. ‘There is something I do need to tell you.’
I nod as if to say, Okay, go ahead . And I brace myself for what he’s going to say.
‘I edited your book.’
I take a large inward sucking sigh. I can feel my heartbeat in my ears. ‘You what ?’
‘The other night when you gave me the password to your laptop, I thought… I saved it as another version, but I thought, well … I was trying to help.’ He looks at me hopefully, as if I’m about to bow in gratefulness.
My body stiffens. My fists clench. My blood is pumping in my ears. I’m so mad I can’t think straight.
‘You had no right to do that.’ My voice is wobbly, shaking. I bite my lip to stop myself from getting really supernova angry. But my blood is boiling.
What the actual fuck?
‘I was trying to show you what it could be. It needed?—’
I want to cut him.
‘I really, really wish you hadn’t done that.’
‘I’m sorry. I just thought?—’
‘No, you didn’t think. That’s the thing. You just went ahead and did what you wanted to do. Like always.’
He looks at me as if this is not the reaction he was expecting.
I can’t see straight. It’s my writing. My baby . My most precious creation. And now it’s got his paws all over it because he wanted to show off what a good editor he is. Chief editor. He did the one thing I asked him not to.
I feel sick. And shaky. Old Gemma – Nelly Nicepants Gemma – would have said, Oh that’s great , and then I would have gone to bed and cried. But this is the last straw. And I’m sick of being the doormat, in life. In everything. And it has to stop now.
‘Maybe you did teach me one thing.’
‘Yeah?’ He looks nervous.
‘About telling the truth. Well, here it is: it’s probably best that you leave and don’t come to the wedding.’
Before he can respond, I walk away, feeling angry and hurt. It should feel satisfying, telling him to leave, it should . But nothing feels good about it.