Chapter 7
Cece
Jake’s a walking storm as I steer him away from Ada and Davis. The pair of them are clearly up to no good, but my immediate crisis is the fuming rugby player who looks one second away from wrecking my front bar.
I ask after his Nan, and he gives distracted, half-ass answers until the moment we step into the crisp night air and he turns to face me, a manic look on his face. “Are Ada and your bouncer fucking?”
“God, no. They hate each other. Well, they don’t hate each other,” I backpedal. “It’s more like... brother-sister vibes.”
He doesn’t look convinced.
“I’m serious. It’s not a thing. They don’t feel that way, and even if they did, Ada would never hook up with—”
I cut myself off before I can finish with ‘a guy I like,’ which is stupid. Because I don’t like Davis.
“Forget it,” I say. “But no, there’s no way they’d go there.”
Jake stares at Afterglow’s entrance, clearly considering whether to believe me or march back in and thump Davis.
“Hey, please leave it?” I ask. “This place has enough bad press without the face of Sky Sport starting a brawl in it.”
That gets him to crack a smile, which immediately fades back into a scowl. “You swear Ada’s not fucking him?”
I pointedly look at my watch, and Jake lets out a breath.
“Sorry. I know I'm acting up... I just... I’ve got a massive thing for her, and I’m kinda losing my mind here.”
“Is the ‘massive thing’ your penis? ’Cos I heard she’s already had that.”
Jake does not find this as amusing as he should.
“Chill,” I say, holding up my hands. “No one cares that you gave my best mate your, uh, thing.”
“She told you?”
“Uh, yeah...?”
“She say how it was?”
“Um…?” I mentally run down a list of options for how to tactfully inform him Ada’s exact words were ‘I’ve had better.’
“Shit.” Jake ploughs a hand through his hair.
“Is this about when she went on top? Is that why she left? I swear, I don’t usually…
Look, the girl of my dreams was riding my dick, telling me I’m the biggest she’s ever had, any man would’ve…
And I was all set to go again, but then she just bailed and… Fucking hell.”
I watch him, open-mouthed. Even as a teenager, Jake was all control—cold steel and locked jaw. Sportscasters call him ‘serious as the grave,’ because they’re lazy pun addicts. Yet here he is unravelling in front of me over not fucking a flautist good enough.
I can’t decide if I should tell Ada her revenge plot is firing on all cylinders, or bury the information before it motivates her to absolutely rain blood on the reunion.
I attempt a sympathetic smile. “You are really losing it, huh?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Sorry. Look, can you just forget I said that?”
“Jake… I’m never forgetting this.”
His ears go pink. “Right.”
“In your, um, overexcitement defence, Ada does have amazing tits.”
“She does,” he says, with such sorrowful reverence, I can’t help laughing.
“Cheer up. You’re not the first guy to lose his mind over Addy. She hooked up with my Emergency Nursing lecturer at the Auckland Med Ball when she was home on holiday once, and the guy followed her around the internet for a year with his tongue out.”
Jake’s face twists into an unholy combo of homicidal rage and misery. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Uh, shake it off? Plenty of fish, yadda yadda?”
His jaw tightens. “I want her.”
“Well, if the Med Ball taught me anything, Jake, it’s that Ada finds begging for round two about as sexy as head lice.”
“I’m not gonna beg. I just… I like her, okay? I’ve liked her since school.”
“You never told me that.”
“Ask your brother. I used to drive him crazy going on about her.”
I blink, utterly confused. Jake could have crushed on Ada since school, God knows I understand what that’s like, but I tried, and failed spectacularly, to get Will’s attention many, many times.
The fact that Ada didn’t even remember Jake says he can’t have done the same.
Which means he falls into a very familiar category where my best friend is concerned.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You weren’t one of those guys, were you? Those post-grad creeps who all mysteriously discovered Ada’s hot once liking her didn’t risk social death?”
Jake looks genuinely offended. “What? No. Jesus. I liked her as soon as she showed up at school.”
“So why didn’t you do something about it?”
“I tried to. I asked her out.”
“You did not!” That definitely would’ve come up at one of me and Ada’s Saturday newsagency shifts. “When? Where?”
“I don’t wanna get into it.” Jake stares at his shoes, suddenly seeming all of sixteen. “I just… I never thought she’d go for someone like me. She was smart. Weird. Cool. I couldn’t even look at her without feeling like a dumbass.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Yeah, well, Ada’s still weird and smart and cool, but you’d better figure out whether this is about you actually liking her or just living out some fantasy.”
He looks me dead in the eye. “I know exactly what this is.”
I’m not convinced. Jake isn’t the first wealthy, overconfident guy to lose his mind over Ada.
Or more accurately, the idea of Ada. Name Forever Redacted was the same: rich, a big-deal music producer, connections to British royalty, the whole thing.
And it was all ‘champagne and backstage passes’ until Ada moved in with him.
Then the mask slipped, and the crying late-night phone calls started.
NFR treated Ada like a doll: something pretty to pose, then shove on a shelf whenever someone else wanted to play with her.
He chose her clothes, pushed away her friends and picked fights whenever she went out, even to perform.
He demanded she get our ivy tattoo removed and bought three different necklaces, trying to replace the ‘A’ pendant I gave her for her thirtieth birthday.
I begged her to leave him, but NFR’s guilt trips were like expertly laid traps.
Ada kept stepping into them, then apologising like she was the one who’d done something wrong.
And the more she convinced herself she was the bad guy, the more he isolated her from everyone.
When NFR locked her passport in his safe to stop her from going on tour, I lost my shit.
I told Ada to get it back and come home, or I’d be on the next flight to Paris to file a police report.
Two days later, she arrived at Afterglow sobbing, with nothing but a bag of clothes and her flute case, and that day I swore I’d die before I let her fall in with anyone like that ever again.
“Cee?” Jake presses. “D’you believe me? About having a crush on Ada at school?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Jake. What I do know is a bunch of Pukekohe guys hit on Ada after we graduated, and she hates that more than she hates almost anything.”
Jake’s jaw tightens. “What guys? Guys I know?”
God, men are embarrassing sometimes…
“Yes, Jake, guys you know. That’s not my point. My point is that I have zero time for people who only wanted to fuck Ada once she wasn’t a social pariah.”
“I always wanted to fuck her!”
I close my eyes, summoning all my ‘tired-nurse-dealing-with-angry-mothers’ patience. “Please rephrase that before I’m forced against my will to make this bar the scene of another murder.”
“So you don’t believe me?”
I shake my head. “It’s not a matter of not believing you, I just don’t think this is a good idea. Ada’s been through a lot lately, and she’s not the same girl from school. You don’t even know her.”
“I do.”
“Pftt, how?”
“I listen to her music.”
“Everyone does, Jake! Ada. Mariah. Michael Bublé. The true Holy Trinity we celebrate each December.”
“I don’t just listen to her at Christmas. I do it all the time. Before games.”
My scepticism rises. That doesn’t even make sense. Ada plays classical flute, not hype tracks. I mean, I listen to her music all the time, too, but mostly when I’m drinking wine in the bath because it makes it feel more classy and less fucking sad.
“Cece,” Jake rasps. “What can I do?”
I throw my hands in the air. “I dunno, man. Prove you actually like her! Prove it to her, and prove it to me, because as far as I can tell, the only reason you’re here moping about Ada is that you ran into her by accident fifteen years after graduation, while actively hanging out with people she hates. ”
“Cee…”
“I mean it, if I find out you’re just sniffing around for the thrill of the chase, I’ll summon every ghost haunting this building and sic them on you. Anyway, I’ve gotta go. Bar to run.”
Jake’s brow furrows. “Right. Talk soon.”
“Cool.” I pat him on the chest and head back inside, leaving Pukekohe’s Golden Boy standing alone in the street.
Davis is still sitting in Ada’s playpen. The two of them have their heads together, and they’re laughing. The intimacy of the scene makes my stomach plummet. I meant what I thought—I don’t like Davis. So why does it bother me that he and Ada seem to be getting along for once?
I pull out my phone, desperate for distraction. A few notifications light up the screen, but one makes my heart stop. Will Sharpe just followed me back.
A smile tugs at my lips. Suddenly, none of it matters: Ada and Davis plotting who-knows-what, Jake fuming outside my bar, my teetering finances.
None of it. Because tonight Will Sharpe saw my name on social media and thought, ‘Cece Taylor? Yeah, I want to see more of her.’ And that’s exactly the serotonin boost I needed right now.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasp, sucking in as much oxygen as I can with a crystal-beaded band constricting my ribs.
“You’re fine,” Mila, the sales attendant, insists, as she forces the zip up the final inch. “See? Perfect.”
I highly doubt that, but I can’t confirm, because ‘Kōwhai & Silk’ is so upscale that they don’t have mirrors in the changing rooms. You need to prance outside to a dais to discover whether you look like a swamp hag.