Chapter Forty-Seven
Who’s ghosting who? Are you kidding me with that? I type to Ollie. I’ve waited so long for you to talk to me and you re-enter the chat with that? What are your reasons? I ask.
Then I look at the barrage of other texts that have landed in seriously large numbers. Liv has sent about a hundred, each one just a sentence long each time, as she’s train-of-thought gabble-texted me non-stop. Did she even sleep?
I’ve some missed calls from Mum. She doesn’t really read celeb websites, so someone has obviously alerted her to the fact that her daughter has one-night stands with anyone who’ll ask.
‘Aargh,’ I cry out in frustration as another message from Liv arrives asking why I’m not replying to her.
Ben has chimed in too, and I notice a couple of missed calls from him. His messages are mostly smug, about how he got there first. Sometimes I love Ben and sometimes I really don’t like him. Now is one of those moments when I’ve gone completely off him.
Ollie hasn’t sent anything after the ghosting comment and I don’t know what to make of that. In a way I’m relieved. Maybe he hasn’t seen the photo. But then he sends another.
Can I call you? Ollie asks.
Yes, I reply immediately.
I’m still in bed, in desperate need of coffee and a shower. My sheets smell of Sam’s aftershave and I’m clutching my phone while I wait for Ollie to decide whether or not he’s going to call me.
He rings me and I pick up at once. ‘Hi,’ I say.
I hear Ollie swallow. ‘Hi,’ he returns. ‘I see you’ve been busy.’ I notice the humour in his voice.
‘Oh, be quiet,’ I chastise him, but I’m smiling.
‘So you’re dating a celebrity now? You didn’t say.’
‘I don’t think it’s dating,’ I confess. ‘I don’t think it’s anything.’
‘It’s enough to get into the media,’ Ollie says. ‘I take it you’ve seen the photo online? Ben made a point of telling me he’d told you.’
‘I haven’t read Ben’s thousand messages. Sam showed me just now.’
I hear Ollie take a deep breath. ‘Is he still there?’
‘No, he’s left.’
There’s silence between us for a moment and then we both speak at the same time. Me with, ‘Why have you been ignoring me?’ and Ollie with, ‘It’s weird you talking about someone off the TV by their first name.’
‘You don’t even know who he is,’ I joke. ‘And he’s been Sam Charlton in my head since I met him, until about twenty minutes ago when first-name terms felt really overdue, given what we …’ I stop talking.
Silence again, for one second, two seconds. ‘I’ve been ignoring you,’ Ollie starts up, ‘because I needed a bit of space.’
‘From what? From me?’
‘I’m not sure. I think a little distance is never a bad thing. Means we’ve got more to talk about when we see each other.’ He says this in such an upbeat tone that I can’t quite believe he’s even said it.
‘That’s a smooth, pointless comment and I don’t believe you,’ I dare. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I don’t understand. What’s happening?’
‘Nothing’s happening,’ he says.
‘You said you had reasons why you weren’t talking to me, but you don’t,’ I retort. ‘You don’t have any reasons.’
‘Listen, just drop it,’ Ollie says.
I sit up straight. ‘No. I won’t drop it. Aren’t we friends any more?’ I ask. I can feel tears start to prick at the back of my eyes, even contemplating this. I can’t lose Ollie. I just can’t. He’s one of my closest friends.
‘Aury,’ he pleads, ‘drop it.’
‘Ollie, what’s going on?’
He breathes in, then exhales. ‘I’ve got to go. Bye, Aury.’
He hangs up and I’m left reeling, staring at my phone to check he really did hang up on me.
I’ve been awake only minutes and everything is going at a hundred miles an hour.
I want to ring Ollie back and find out what the hell is going on, but my phone rings and it’s my mum.
I close my eyes for a second, count to three and answer it as brightly as I can.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Hi, Princess,’ my mum says, with a hint of humour behind it. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’