Chapter 32
Lesson 31: Never ceilidh in anger.
Bridget Jones Tally:
what’s my name again?
Fuck. She’s here.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt. My stomach dropped into my feet. My throat twisted. I scanned the room frantically. I couldn’t
find her. There weren’t many women younger than fifty out there, and even fewer redheads.
“Well, I’d better stop hogging the stage before I get a skelping!” People laughed. He jumped offstage and hurried into the
crowd. I moved closer, trying to catch a glimpse of her. I dodged through clusters of people and arrived to find him in an
embrace, swinging around a petite woman with a chin-length mess of ginger hair. He put her down and held her out by her elbows.
My jaw dropped. A chin-length mess of graying ginger hair.
Was this...? But she...
She was a small middle-aged woman with intelligent, ice-blue eyes and a smile so big and proud it must have hurt. And she looked just like him.
Helena swooped in. “Isla! Took you long enough!” She laughed. “Come here and give us a squeeze.”
I watched from the sidelines as Robbie rushed around making introductions.
“Doris you know, of course, and there’s old Percy. Berrta is here from Germany. Berrta, this is my mom.”
My vision blurred. His mom ? I was dizzy. How the hell did I get everything so wrong?
After introducing all the ladies, Robbie slung his arm around his mom’s shoulder and gave her another hug. He looked up to
scan the crowd for me, but I held back out of sight. I needed to get a handle on the relentless waves of incomprehension lashing
the shores of my memory.
I thought his mom died of cancer. Didn’t he say she died? I thought back to the conversations that we’d had. We often used vague, abstract language to discuss the death of Robbie’s
mom, in the way that people tend to do to soften painful things. I thought they had been discussions about death. He had talked about her being sick, and about the fear of losing her, but perhaps he
never actually said that she had died. Was that possible?
I left through a side door and found a place to sit out of the way, to regain my composure and sort through the deluge of
thoughts and emotions. They struck me heavily one at a time in the following order:
She was the one on the phone.
He didn’t have a girlfriend.
He’d been free the entire trip.
Somehow, this wasn’t the relief it should have been. As if falling for a man who was unavailable wasn’t bad enough, now it
turned out that he had been available the whole time. So much had changed between us since I had asked him for space. That was long forgotten between us. He could have made a move on me any time he wanted. I had ached every painful second that I held myself back from him. He clearly wasn’t fighting the same battle.
Oh, I knew he cared about me. That much was obvious. He made such an effort to cultivate our friendship. But he must have
wanted me as a friend and little more. The flirting, or what had felt like flirting to me, must have been just a bit of fun.
I had added two and two and made six.
“Aliiice Cooooper!” He came laughing and rushing toward me. “Come on, lass. Come meet my ma!” He looked so happy. He grabbed
my hand, and I went with him as he dragged me back to the ballroom, practically running.
When I finally met Isla, she greeted me with an honest smile that made glittering blue crescents of her eyes.
“Alice, this is my mom, Isla.”
“Alice, dear.” She clutched my hand snugly in both of hers. “Robbie’s told me all about you.”
“Maaaaa,” Robbie whined, rolling his eyes and pretending at the role of embarrassed teenager, which made his mother laugh.
“How’s that ankle of yours, Alice?”
“Much better, thank you.”
“I see that. I saw you dancing earlier. You looked lovely out there. You’re picking it up rather well.”
“That’s a little too generous of you.” I smiled and tried harder. “I nearly took Robbie’s big toe off a couple of times.”
“Aye,” he said. “But what a way for it to go!” He gave me a little wink. “Right then. Only one thing could improve on this.
Who’s up for a nip of something? My shout!” Robbie took orders from all the ladies, then turned to me. “I could use a bit
of help with the glasses. Why don’t you make yourself useful?”
I gave him a frosty look. It surprised me. I hadn’t really meant to. His brows drew quizzically, but he put his warm hand on my back and led me through the crowd.
He looked over his shoulder and then leaned into my hair and hummed conspiratorially in my ear. “How’s about a little shot
while we’re here doing all this thirsty work?”
I shrugged noncommittally, but yes, I could drink the whole damned bottle.
“Are you okay? Tired? Is your ankle hurting you?”
“I’m fine,” I said flatly. The classic feminine manifesto of the decidedly un-fine.
He ordered two shots of Jameson with a dash of Baileys. I threw mine back. I was angry. I knew it wasn’t fair, that he hadn’t
really done anything wrong, but that didn’t matter.
This guy. With that voice and his fiddle and those eyes, he was something otherworldly tonight: a prince, a celebrity, a fairy
king in a story that had a dark ending. I was spiraling, falling for him harder than ever, and there was nothing I could do
to stop it. And yet, he was clearly a complete stranger to me. And he was single, and he sure wasn’t falling for me.
I wanted off this roller coaster. I would not continue to throw myself at a man who wanted me only for my friendship and personality!
How dare he? What a grade A asshole!
I slammed my glass down aggressively, asking the barman for another. Robbie was surprised and confused. “What’s gotten into
you? I thought you were having a good time tonight.” He took my hand. Concern was written over his face in a way that made
my heart hiccup. I clenched my jaw and took the moment to ignore him as my shot arrived and I threw it back.
He wanted to know what had gotten into me? Well, I could help him out with that. I turned to face him slowly and gave my cold
stare the dramatic moment that it deserved.
“Robbie. I thought your mom was dead.”
He let out a small, shocked puff of air.
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why ? The way you spoke about her. The things you told me. The fear and pain of losing her.”
He gave one short mirthless laugh and rubbed a hand over his face.
“I did almost lose her. It was very painful. They told me that she didn’t have much time left. We said our goodbyes, we even had Christmas early. But...
she beat it.” He searched my face, looking for the source of my upset, then he laughed again. “Alice, she’s fine now. She’s
perfectly fine.”
I looked down at the bar. I didn’t know how to respond. How could I explain that I was angry that his mother didn’t die—because,
ipso facto, it meant he didn’t want me?
He swept me up into a big hug.
“You numpty.” He laughed into my hair. The sudden heat of him spread through my body, right up my neck, and into my face.
The smell of him. Like whisky and manly capability, as if he’s just come in from chopping enough wood to see us through winter, goddamnit!
I pushed back a bit, and he released me but held me by the elbows. I tried again, reining it in a bit.
“I don’t know how I could have gotten it so wrong. Of course, I’m obviously very happy that your mom is here... and well,
you know, not dead.” He barked a shocked laugh at the insanity of the conversation. “She seems wonderful.” I stopped, but
he knew there was more, and he searched my face silently, patiently waiting for me to drag it out. “It’s just. All this.”
I gestured, waving my hand dumbly at the stage and his mom. My uncontrollable attraction to him, rampant now that I had added
glittering talent to the intelligence, the smile, the calves, and the kilt. It was so unfair.
It sounded stupid to say, but I was going to blurt it out it anyway.
“It’s just that I thought we were friends, but it turns out that I don’t really know you at all.”
His eyes widened.
Oh God. I sound like a stupid teenager.
I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I couldn’t possibly bring myself to tell him the stupidity of the rest of my assumptions—that
I thought his mom was his girlfriend and that I was mad that he was single and had not tried harder to get me, to kiss me
again, to take me to bed. That I was hurt and embarrassed to discover that the feelings I was having—the struggle every day not to run flat-out until I collided with him and kissed him breathless—was one-sided. That the overwhelming romantic connection
between us was little more than a product of my fevered imagination.
Before he could say anything, I went on. I just wanted it to be over.
“Look. Forget it. It was my mistake. It’s only been a few weeks. It’s not like we’re best friends. It just took me by surprise,
that’s all.”
Cheeks burning, unable to face him any longer, I grabbed a few of the glasses, whipped around, and headed back to the group
before he could object. He couldn’t pull me back without spilling the drinks, but he raced to cut me off as I blazed a trail
through the dancers. He stood in front of me, drinks filling his hands, as close as we could be without dropping everything.
“Alice. What are you talking about? Of course you know me.”
“Clearly.”
“No. Don’t do that. These past weeks I’ve gotten closer to you than I am to some of my oldest friends. Search me for why we’ve gotten along so quickly.” A cheeky grin danced on his lips. “You’re an unholy terror, but we’re friends, and there’s nothing I can do to stop that now. I care about you. You’re a person in my life. So maybe it’s only been a few weeks and we’re still discovering things about each other. That’s not a bad thing.”
Ugh. Curse him for crafting a perfect response . It was sentimental, complimentary, insulting, and sensible in equal measure. Friends, though. He said we were friends.
“So I’m not an orphan, and I have the voice of an angel. I can also bake the best sticky toffee pudding that you’ve ever put
in your mouth. But you’ll get used to my being perfect. I promise.”
I scoffed. At a loss for what to do next, I shoved him slightly, and he spilled a bit of the drinks on his arms. I grinned
smugly and hurried back to the group. But I didn’t feel any better. His little speech had only succeeded in bringing more
emotions to the messy battlefield of my mind.
Somewhere, the levelheaded part of me reminded myself that in the morning, all this would look like very little. But I grabbed
that reasonable idiot by the scruff of the neck, and I drowned her in the whisky lake currently sloshing in my head. He was
doing all the right things, which made me like him more, and the more I liked him, the more I felt like a complete idiot.
The only smart thing to do was to cling to that fury with both hands and not give in to the threatening desire to swoon.
“Thank you, dear,” Robbie’s mom said as I handed her a drink. “So tell me. How have you been liking your trip?”
“Oh,” I said dumbly. I hadn’t been prepared to transition to polite conversation. My eyes ran over the ladies, and I softened.
I couldn’t help but answer honestly, and the truth of it made my heart ache a little bit. “It’s been wonderful. Truly wonderful.”
“And what are your thoughts on this concept of all-woman tours?”
“Well, I’ll be honest. When I arrived, it wasn’t what I had expected, and I wasn’t convinced that it was the right choice for me.” I started haltingly, trying to be diplomatic. “But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I do think that being an all-woman tour gave us a different dynamic. More space to bond. And I adore these ladies.” I stopped for a moment, but Isla didn’t jump in. Finally, I shared a bit too much under her warm, astute gaze. “They’ve been a balm to my burns.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she put a hand between my shoulder blades, rubbing roughly the way one would soothe a large barnyard
animal. It made me want to lean down and nestle into the warm softness of her shoulder and have a cry.
“Aye. It’s done that for me before too.”
We sat there in companionable silence, for a few moments listening to the musicians as they struck up again, her hand still
on my back.
“Ma!” Robbie’s stern voice came from behind us. “No manhandling Alice Cooper. She doesn’t like to be manhandled, or so she
says.” He added this little chestnut in a lower tone and shot me a look that made the statement feel shockingly suggestive.
I pinkened.
“She’s doing nothing of the kind,” I defended.
“And just what are you two conspiring about then?”
“Well, Alice was just telling me how she was enjoying the tour.”
“Oh, she was, was she? And has she confessed that the bit she loves best is torturing me? Sure, she’s cute, but she’s more
trouble than a badger in a basket!”
Isla gasped in mock horror. “Robert Brodie! You can’t speak about a lady that way.”
“She’s no lady, ma—she’s a stinging nettle.” That earned him a swat from his mother. It was a ruse. He was trying to goad
me into playing with him, to slip into our easy teasing, and she played right along with him. Normally, I would have eaten
it up, but tonight it felt like salt on a paper cut; something I wanted to be part of but couldn’t be. At least not in the
way I wanted.
“Ignore him. He’s a brute! What was your favorite part of the trip so far, Alice? I’m curious.”
“Well...” I furrowed my brow as images of the trip spun through my head. It was honestly hard to say, I had loved so much
of it.
“Oh, I think you’ll find her favorite activity so far was at Kenilworth Castle. I’ve never seen her more enthusiastic about
getting a hands-on experience in the British countryside.”
I went crimson all the way to my toes. My only hope was that the lighting was too low for his mom to notice. When she turned
her head to say something to Doris, I shot him a glare of pure, unadulterated hatred.
I had wanted him so much the day that we kissed that something had snapped inside of me and never recovered. I had thought
he had wanted me with the same fervor, but he had just been going along with it, opportunistically kissing any old American
who threw themselves at him. White-hot humiliation burned a kiln inside of my chest.
“Dashing White Sergeant!” the bandleader called out.
Robbie’s mom grabbed my hand. “We need sets of three for this. Come on. Let’s go kick our heels up!”
Robbie, Isla, and I made up a group of three where Robbie essentially played the center position of the dashing young sergeant
courting us both. We stood across from Lorna, Madge, and Berrta. I was not in the mood to dance with Robbie, but his mom looked
so pleased that I didn’t want to disappoint her.
Robbie alternated partners: dancing to his mom, spinning her around, and then switching to me for the same before going back to her. We would hold hands with the other three across from us; spin around in a circle of six in one direction, and then the next; and eventually, after the spinning and switching and weaving, we would leave the ladies and join another set of three, making our way around to all the groups in the room. It was an age-old scheme to get people to mix and no doubt end up married before the end of the season.
What this meant to me was that I had only the very briefest flashes of opportunity to show Robbie the full force of my searing
displeasure. Obviously, I didn’t want his lovely mother or the other ladies to see me giving him the stink eye or cursing
into his ear. So I had to be stealthy. I had to be two-faced. And I had to have rhythm.
Happy face at the ready, I Jekyll-and-Hyded myself around the dance floor at warp speed—smiling, scowling, hooting, clapping,
baring my teeth.
“Robbie,” I hissed, and then was slingshotted to the other side and back again.
“Yes, dear?” he replied pleasantly, just to piss me off. Then he held tight to my arm and spun me around so fast that my feet
flew off the ground and a little yelp escaped me.
Discombobulated, I danced a little bit in place, laughing and clapping as I faced his mom.
“Would you—” I scowled back at him. We wove merrily in and out in little happy steps and skips. “Stop—”
“Can’t stop now!” he sang when he got close again, a mischievous shit-eating grin splashed across his face.
If looks could maim, he would have been castrated on the spot. Unfortunately, they couldn’t. Maybe I could do it with a knee instead.
He laughed, delighting in my frustration, his joy only multiplied by my inability to tear him limb from limb while gracefully
and competently skipping, twirling, and clapping. My elegance and agility were taking a hit.
“I hate you,” I said quickly as he happily danced a pas de basque across from me.
He smiled. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do! Oh—sorry, Lorna.”
“No, you don’t.”
I tried to swing my elbow at him and make it look like part of the dance, but he just skipped away, leaving me to look like a teapot on my own. I plastered a smile on my face, put my other elbow up, and did a few little kicks so no one would notice.
“Ooo!” Berrta said, clearly impressed, and did something similar in an effort to match me. Oh God. We look so stupid!
Defeated, disoriented, and looking like a complete idiot, I focused on my dancing for the few bars left. When it was done,
I walked away in a storm.
Lorna came to grab me for the next dance, and I didn’t resist. She was so happy, viewing the world through a merry whisky
haze, that she didn’t notice my shift in mood. I didn’t want anyone to, really. It was such a beautiful, perfect night that
I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone. Only for Robbie. I could very happily ruin his evening as well as his ability to ever
sire children and call it a night.
The dance after that was something called the Gay Gordons. As I walked toward Berrta, Robbie grabbed my waist from behind
and spun me into the circle. It turned out that this one was danced very closely, as he knew it would be. My back was pressed
to his front, and our two sets of hands clasped above my shoulders. It involved being close at all times: switching directions
back-and-forth while not letting go of the handhold. It was a fast dance, clearly designed to make one feel dizzy and giddy
and to give couples an excuse to rub up against each other.
Robbie used this as an opportunity to keep me from running away. I instead chose to use it as an opportunity for revenge.
As we switched directions, I took special care to flick him in the face with my hair. As we went backward, I stepped on his
toe, and one time even managed to land a blind kick back on his shin. He squeezed my hands, but looked down at me with curiosity,
amusement, and barely a trace of the pain and annoyance that I had hoped for.
As we spun, moving backward and forward around the dance floor, his breath came faster, our bodies bumping and rubbing accidentally as the dance picked up speed. The feel of him took me over, and I had to close my eyes for a moment, letting him take control. His hands were large and warm and strong, and wouldn’t let mine go for anything as he guided me. It made my head swim. I wanted to kill him, but that task was made especially difficult when I was weak in the knees.
“What’s going on with you tonight?” The music was loud, but he was close enough to put his lips to my ear.
“Just stop toying with me! I’m not your plaything to pick up whenever you’re bored.”
“But you love it when I toy with you, Alice Cooper.”
“No. I don’t. I’m sick of it!” I was shouting now. The music swelled and drowned us out.
The moment the music stopped, I tried to go, but he kept a very firm hold of one hand and marched me out behind him, weaving
purposefully through the crowd as the dancers assembled for the next dance. He was leading me out of the room.