Chapter Four
I took a moment to watch my best friend.
Bex was always beautiful, but there was something special about her tonight.
She was glowing, gazing into Dan’s eyes with pure love and laughing that incredible, throaty gift of a laugh.
Which was why it made it all more heart-breaking when Bex caught sight of me, and her jubilation sputtered out.
I hurried over, thrusting a gift bag before me like a shield.
“I know, you’re sorry,” Bex snapped before I could say anything.
“I am.” Guilt made my voice crack. “Do I at least get some tiramisu?”
Dan nudged a bowl to his right. “We saved you a slice. But it’s been sat out a while.”
My stomach growled. “That’s fine.” I took a seat opposite Bex, Dan between us like an uneasy mediator. I dug into the now room-temperature dessert, trying not to wince as Bex pushed my gift bag to one side. “How was everyone?”
Bex shrugged. “All asking after you.”
I blushed. “I was at—”
“Work, yes, don’t worry, I told them.” Bex downed a mouthful of champagne. “What did Lin have you doing now?”
I braced myself. “Well, I was about to leave, but then this director – Ruben James – sent her a script to read. It’s his first movie script and he’s sent like a billion drafts.
Lin’s sick of them but he wanted feedback on this one today.
And she had dinner plans, so I ended up reading the script for her. ”
“What, she made you read an entire script and feed back on it late on a Friday night so she could go out?” Bex said witheringly. “God. She’s a special kind of bitch.”
I’d already decided I couldn’t lie about this. Not to Bex. “Not exactly. It seemed like the sort of thing I should be doing to get ahead so I said I’d do it.”
Bex’s glass froze mid-arc in its descent to the table. “You volunteered?”
Tiramisu slid down my throat like wet cement. “Well, yeah, it was a good opportunity.”
Bex’s eyes glittered. “It’s my birthday, Lucie, you couldn’t have offered to pick it up on Monday?”
“RJ needed feedback tonight.” I lowered my spoon apprehensively. Bex always understood what I was up against at work, what was different now?
“And I needed you tonight.” Bex’s voice hitched. “I know how hard you work, and how tough you’ve had it, but you couldn’t have put me first, just one time?”
“Look, I’m really sorry, I wanted to be here.” I could hear how hollow my justification sounded.
“Not enough, apparently,” Bex muttered.
Dan covered her hand with his. “Don’t get upset.”
“Too late,” Bex shot back.
“Bex, you said it yourself; I have to move up, professionally,” I said. “I can’t be an assistant all my life and this could be my chance.”
“But what made this chance different to all the other ones?” Bex demanded.
“When we had to cancel that Dublin weekend because Lin needed you to arrange that last-minute event for some obnoxious twat in Berlin? Or when we had to find a new flat and I did all the hunting because you were tied up preparing for a pitch? Has your career advanced thanks to that? And you missed … you missed something big.” Bex shot a sideways glance at Dan and took a deep breath, lifting left hand.
“This isn’t the way I envisioned telling you but … we’re engaged.”
There, on Bex’s neatly manicured ring finger, was a huge diamond, surrounded by brilliant blue stones. I grabbed her hand to inspect it closely – it was perfect. Elegant and stylish, just like her. Happy tears sprung to my eyes.
“Mate, congratulations! This is amazing, I’m so happy for you both!” All sense of tiredness was gone. “We should get champagne!”
Bex smiled tightly and pulled her hand away to gesture at the numerous drinks glasses that still littered the table, the silver bucket brimming with icy water.
“Ah. You already did.” Bex had probably waited for as long as she could for me to arrive before making the announcement and no doubt when she’d finally told everyone it had been a lovely moment.
Yet I hadn’t been part of it, this milestone event.
Even Tiff with her two kids had made it down from Luton to be part of it.
I had chosen to stay in that poky office rather than be present for this important announcement and it was an experience I’d never get back. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Bex passed her hand over her face, the diamond twinkling in candlelight. “I’m sorry I kicked off. I’m just … I don’t know, Lucie, aren’t you, like, tired of this?”
I frowned. “Of what, missing parties?”
“Missing everything,” Bex said. “Life! Don’t you care?”
“Of course I care,” I said hotly. “And you know I wanted to be here.”
“Did you though?” she countered. “Because when the moment came, you chose your job over me.”
I gaped. She wasn’t wrong about me choosing work, but she also knew that was how things had to be for me. “Isn’t that a little dramatic? You know if I’d passed the opportunity up, another one might not come around again.”
Bex’s cheeks reddened. “You know what? I think it’s been six years of hard slog at that job and the fact that it’s going nowhere has been staring you in the face for at least five of those years. You’ve just been too stubborn to see it. Or maybe too scared, I don’t know.”
Her words were like a smack in the gut. “You think I’m scared? Of what?”
Dan cleared his throat. “Now why don’t we just—”
“No, let her talk,” I said through hot tears. “Say what you really think, Bex, come on.”
Bex swallowed a big gulp of champagne. “I think you’re holding yourself back. I think all the money problems you had after you first moved down here scared you so much you daren’t take any risk.”
“Can you blame me for being careful?” I said.
“No, I don’t blame you, but you’re so scared it’s stopping you from taking even the smallest moment to enjoy life, to be there for your people.
” She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “You know, Dan proposed just before we set off for dinner and, God, I was going to call you then and there, but I thought no, I want to see Lucie’s face when I tell her.
Getting married is huge and exciting and honestly, kind of terrifying.
I need my best friend by my side. So, imagine how it feels to hear you say you chose to not be here. ”
“Come on, Bex, I didn’t know Dan was going to pop the question tonight!” I said defensively.
“Tell me something,” Bex said. “If you’d known, would you have been here on time? Would you have walked away from this oh-so-fabulous opportunity to be here to be part of the announcement?”
I hesitated, just for a second. But it was a second too long. Bex’s eyes dimmed, and I knew I’d made a mistake. “Yes. Yes!”
“Wow.” Bex slumped back in her chair, looking drained. “I don’t know what to say anymore. What will it take for you to wake up and look around at what you’re missing?”
Dan leaned forward. “Hey, guys, I think we’re all in agreement here, yeah? Lucie’s job sucks—”
“Her boss sucks,” Bex corrected him irritably.
“Right, right,” he said. “So why don’t we take a breath, finish this wine?”
“I like that idea,” I said gratefully. “I don’t want to fight on your big night.”
“Neither do I.” Bex rose to her feet. “I’m staying at Dan’s tonight.”
“Don’t do this. I want to celebrate with you,” I begged. “Come on, let me make up for this.”
“I’m staying at Dan’s,” Bex repeated. Even though our flat was a ten-second walk from Sergio’s and Dan’s place was at least thirty minutes away.
Bex’s face was resolute. I gulped. God, I’d really made a mess of things. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
Bex pulled on her coat, then picked up the gift bag, peered in.
I had framed a photo of us during a dress rehearsal for the last ever show we’d performed in at university, Cabaret.
We were mugging for the camera in our costumes, entirely unaware of several castmates behind us frowning at our buffoonery. It never failed to make me smile.
“I thought we could hang it in the living room,” I said. “The frame is custom.”
Bex nodded dully. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.” And with that, she left. I watched her leave, a seething mass of guilt and frustration burning its way from my inside out. Dan slowly stood, lifting his coat off the back of his chair.
I met his eyes miserably. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I feel terrible.”
“I know,” he said. “Bex will be all right. She just really wanted you here when she announced it. Almost the first thing she said after accepting the proposal was that she couldn’t wait to tell you.”
I buried my head in my hands. “I don’t know why she puts up with me.”
“She loves you.” Dan dropped a kiss on my bowed head. “I’ll talk to her. But she has a point. Make sure all this hard work leads to something. You deserve it.”
“That’s all I was trying to do,” I said.
“I know I’ll regret missing her big night forever, I really will.
But I also felt like this was a proper chance, you know?
” I downed the rest of my fizz. “Maybe I should just choose another career entirely. I can’t lose her. She’s, like, the only family I have.”
“Well, we’re always looking for good people at my work,” Dan said. He worked in insurance and earned a packet.
I shriveled internally. I would not last a minute in the insurance industry. Dan thrived in it; he used words like ‘exponentially’ in everyday conversation, understood wine regions and knew what the hell an ISA was. If that’s what it took to succeed in his world, then I would have no place there.
My face obviously showed my reticence and Dan laughed.
“I get it, you’d rather die than go corporate,” he said indulgently.
“You have big dreams.” Then his face dropped.
“Shit, I sounded like I was taking the piss just then, but I wasn’t.
I think it’s great to have a dream. All mine are basic, like reach par in my golf game and make the perfect soufflé.
Yours is real. We just worry about what it’s costing you. ”
I smiled. He really was the nicest man I knew. “I know.”
“You’ll get there,” Dan told me kindly. “I believe in you. And it may not seem like it right now, but Bex does too.”
A little later, ensconced in my pajamas in front of the TV, I nursed a cocoa and doom-scrolled Instagram to see my feed full of pics from Bex’s big night.
There was Bex, beautiful and smiling, brandishing her gorgeous ring.
To Bex’s left, Dan staring at his new fiancée with stars in his eyes.
On Bex’s right, an empty chair. My chair.
What did my Instagram hold? Multiple arty shots of coffee, but nothing resembling a successful personal life.
I threw my phone down with a groan. Maybe Bex was right.
What was the point of working yourself to the bone day in, day out, only for your dreams to go unfulfilled?
What if, after all this graft and sacrifice, I had nothing to show for it apart from a non-existent love life and an empty bank account?
Bex had been the closest thing I’d had to family for years now and yet the way I’d treated her, I wouldn’t blame her if she escaped to Hertford and left me for dust.