Chapter 7
Amy
London
Amy was so fucking hungover it wasn’t funny.
Cocktails, wine, tequila shots… and that was just what she could remember.
She’d stayed at Naomi’s house share in Clapham, top to toe in her bed while Lara slept on the sofa, and she’d had nowhere near enough sleep nor had she drunk anything like enough water before going to bed.
God, last night, she thought, I got a little crazy.
Getting a woman’s phone number in the cocktail bar was one thing, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether she’d get in touch with her or not (Keira?
Was that her name? Amy struggled to recall) although she vaguely remembered thinking she was cute.
But then what she’d done in the club after, or more specifically the bathroom of the club with a complete stranger…
that wasn’t me, or of course it was me but not my style.
She’d even woken up that morning worried that she’d made a move on Naomi in the night… utterly ridiculous, of course, but a sure sign of where her head was at.
Yesterday had been insane. What had started as a normal Saturday of James going out to play rugby and Amy meeting Sarah for lunch had descended into, well, Amy somehow now effectively single, coming out to her two best friends and the night that followed.
She checked her phone again. 10.04am. Naomi was in the shower, Lara had gone back to her place to vegetate, and Amy was in limbo…
James would be back at their flat, and Amy couldn’t face seeing him quite yet, not until she felt a little more human.
Their flat. The place they’d been for a few years now, that she’d made nice, where all her stuff was.
The enormity of the day before hit her hard…
no more our flat, who stayed and who went still to be worked out, and she’d need somewhere to live potentially.
Amy took a deep breath and lay back down on the bed, trying to ignore the nausea and the headache throbbing away behind her eyes.
Messages first, triage the problems.
She picked up her phone again and forced herself to stop ignoring the messages waiting for her: from James, from Sarah, from Luisa.
First, James:
Hope you’re ok. We need to talk, sure you agree. Call me when you can?
Simple, and entirely accurate because God did they need to talk.
They’d talked for a few hours yesterday when she’d told him that she thought she was a lesbian and they’d covered a lot of ground, but yes they needed to talk and straighten things out.
If for no other reason, Amy realised, than she owed it to him…
walking in on your long term girlfriend in bed with her female boss couldn’t have been easy for him, although his relative equanimity yesterday had been telling given his own infidelities in the not too distant past.
She’d call him as soon as she’d showered, Amy decided. A shower always cleared her head and she’d need a clear head for whatever was to come.
Next, Sarah. Amy felt something inside her tighten at the thought of Sarah that morning…
because Sarah was complicated. She’d started to fall for Sarah, properly fall for her, not the half-real relationship they’d had for the past few months, a relationship predicated on Sarah’s professional help in exchange for, frankly, sex with Amy.
Fantastic, incredible, life changing sex, granted, but transactional nonetheless.
Sarah had that same arrangement with other women too, her mentoring scheme, but at some point in the last few weeks it had changed between them…
whether in LA where in Sarah’s hotel room Sarah had switched from a dominant to submissive role for the first time in her life, or since they’d been back in London and discovered a simplicity in something authentically equal she didn’t know.
All that Amy did know is they’d caught feelings for each other and it had all come to a head yesterday, after lunch, back at Amy and James’s flat.
Her message was simple:
Hi Amy, checking you’re ok. I suspect I’m not top of the list for this, but let me know when you can talk x
Yeah, they needed to talk, that was for sure.
But Sarah could wait… ultimately she bore as much responsibility as Amy for the mess she found herself in that morning, in fact Amy was surprised to realise that she felt a little anger towards her alongside the other feelings, and any conversation they were going to have necessarily sat behind James.
Then, that brought her to Luisa… Luisa who was five thousand miles away and utterly oblivious to the carnage in Amy’s personal life over the last twenty four hours. Luisa had sent her a message just about when Amy’s world was exploding around her and she hadn’t had time to reply:
Hey gorgeous, morning from LA. Hope you slept well. How’s your day so far? xx
With Luisa, it was easy. Everything about Luisa felt so fun and light, they’d only known each other for a few weeks but it was as if they were best friends who’d never known the other existed.
With Luisa there was no hidden complexity, at least not yet.
Doing the mental calculations, she worked out that Luisa was probably asleep by now, unless the premiere she was going to last night had gone on particularly late, but wanted to send her something to wake up to at least…
she felt a little bad that she’d not replied to Luisa last night but her head hadn’t been in the right place.
She tried three different replies, none sounding quite right to her hungover brain, then settled on:
Sorry for radio silence today. It’s been completely insane here. Long story that I’ll tell you about when we talk. Hope the party was fun. Can we talk tomorrow? I miss you xx
To her surprise she got a reply quickly:
Just got back. Party was good but movie was bad. Of course we can talk tomorrow, call me whenever. Everything ok? xx
Amy smiled. Luisa’s great, she thought, looking forward even more than she had been to seeing her again in LA at the end of the week.
She felt a little pang, wishing she was closer, but then that was the compromise with the two women who’d come crashing into her life: one was single five thousand miles away, the other was close but married with kids. Why can I never do things the easy way?
She sent a quick reply to reassure her:
You and me are. But I think I might have exploded the rest of my life. Sleep well and don’t worry xx
At that moment Naomi came back into the bedroom in her dressing gown. “Shower’s free.” She paused and started laughing. “No offence but you look terrible.”
Amy groaned. “I feel it.”
“I’ll make you another tea while you’re in there. And Amy, seriously, no rush, my house is your house, stay as long as you need today. And if you need the empty room upstairs until you go to LA it’s yours. Or after. I mean it.”
Amy smiled weakly. “You’re too good to me.”
“Me and Lara are here for you. Anything you need.”
***
The shower had been magical, that and the cup of tea afterwards… whichever fool claimed that the second cup is never as good at the first clearly hadn’t spent a night getting hammered on cocktails and shots first.
Amy knew that she should probably have spent the shower having deep thoughts about her relationships and what was going on but, frankly, she’d been too busy trying not to vomit and trying to ignore the thumping of her headache to form coherent thoughts.
She felt relatively composed now, though, and able to at least string a couple of thoughts together. Enough to be able to call James.
Naomi made herself scarce and Amy sat there, her finger hovering over his name for a long, long moment before she pressed dial.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she replied, trying to keep her voice friendly and open. “How are you doing?”
“Honestly? I’ve been better.” There was a pause, then he added, “You?”
“Same. Did you go out last night?”
“Yeah.” A slight chuckle down the line. “I’ve definitely felt better.”
“Tell me about it… I ended up drinking tequila.”
“Ouch.”
They were silence for a few moments. “So we should talk properly. Face-to-face, but maybe not at the flat,” she said. “It’s too… I don’t know, too much.”
“I know what you mean. Where were you thinking?”
“The Falcon? We can talk without feeling like we’re being overheard.”
The Falcon was their local pub, a five-minute walk from the flat. They’d spent countless Sunday afternoons there over the years, nursing pints and simply enjoying the end of their weekends. It felt like the right place for this conversation: familiar but not too intimate.
“What time?” James asked.
Amy glanced at the clock on Naomi’s wall. It was late morning now. “Three? Is that long enough to… God, I don’t know, prepare?”
“Three works. I’ll see you there.”
“James?” Amy said quickly, before he could hang up.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For being so understanding yesterday. I know it must have been a huge shock.”
There was a long pause before he responded, and when he did his voice had lost the relaxed tone. “It was… I mean it is. But… Jesus, Amy, we’ve been together for years. I care about you, even if… if what you told me yesterday is true, well…” He trailed off, unable to finish his sentence.
“I know,” Amy said. “I’ll see you at three.”
After she hung up, Amy sat holding her phone for a few minutes, trying to steady her breathing. That was done. The first step taken.
She went through to the living room where Naomi was talking to one of her housemates.
“How’d it go?” she asked when she saw Amy walk in.
Amy grimaced. “The call was the easy part. I’m seeing him at three… it could be a long afternoon.”
“Did he sound ok?”
“About as hungover as me. So that’s something.”
Naomi nodded slowly in understanding. “We’re going to get an early lunch, and you need to eat. You can’t see James on an empty stomach.”
Amy hesitated… she really didn’t feel hungry, a mix she suspected of the hangover and the nerves about seeing James. Her head was still pounding, and she could feel her brain going fuzzy again after the short term boost from the shower. Experience, though, told her that she had to eat.
“Thanks, I’d like that. Can you give me two minutes? I just need to send a message.”
“Sure. As long as you need.”
Amy stepped out into the hall and took out her phone again. One more message… Sarah. This one was kind of easy, because frankly Amy couldn’t deal with the whole Sarah thing, not today and not with this hangover.
Hey, a lot to deal with today. Are you ok? x
The only debate had been the kiss at the end, but that wasn’t a debate really. It had clearly got complicated between them, yes, but she couldn’t deny the spark.
Sarah’s reply came quickly:
Oh, I’m fine. Completely understand, here to talk whenever you want to x
Amy pondered for a few moments, her sluggish brain struggling a little to work through the possibilities. I fly to LA on Thursday, she thought, and that’s for three weeks. I can’t let whatever it is with Sarah sit until I’m back, so it has to be before. And soon.
She realised there wasn’t much choice but to talk soon. She typed out her reply:
Tomorrow evening, there’s a bar in Borough Market I’ve wanted to try. 7pm? x
It didn’t take long for Sarah to confirm, and Amy realised that with it there came a sense of relief…
three people to juggle that Sunday morning, and she’d at least triaged the problems even if her hungover head wasn’t remotely ready to resolve them.
She’d chat to Luisa when she got the chance and Luisa would be cool with that, James would be James, and Sarah tomorrow gave her time to think about what exactly they were…
Amy knew that she had some serious thought to give to that.
It was a lot to work through, and at that moment Amy made a spur of the moment decision: her work was quiet for the next few days before LA, no one would miss her, she’d take the three days off as holiday to give her the headspace she needed. Nobody would begrudge her that, surely?
“Ok, done,” Amy called through to the living room.
“Perfect.” Naomi and her housemate came into the hall, reaching for their coats. “Time to feed you up and break that hangover.”