Chapter 20
JAKE
‘Jake, are you okay?’ Max says. ‘You were miles away?’
Shit. I was thinking about Freya, and Dan and Lizzie’s drinks this evening.
I can’t work out whether I’m really looking forward to seeing her or quite the opposite.
I’ve really missed her this week. Like… it hurts thinking that there’s no possibility of seeing her like that again.
And I don’t want to make that hurt worse.
But, also, I can’t help stupidly hoping that maybe, just maybe, if we spend more time together something could happen.
And also it would be nice just to see her because I really do miss her.
‘Sorry, yes, fine. Just thinking about the weather.’ I don’t want to upset him; I know that my family have been worried about me since the divorce. ‘I’ve been cycling into work but it isn’t great in heavy rain. A lot of thunderstorms have been forecast for next week; have you seen?’
‘Are you sure you’re okay? Do you usually worry about weather?’
‘Ha, yeah, no, true.’
I’m an idiot.
I’m also thirty-six years old, not sixteen.
So it’s truly ridiculous to firstly be thinking so much about Freya and secondly be making up stupid things so that I don’t have to admit it to my own brother.
The drinks are in Lizzie’s flat, which isn’t that far from Freya’s house.
I’m still in my do-I-want-to-see-her-do-I-not state when I arrive, but actually, there are a good twenty people here, and I don’t immediately see her; instead I end up getting engrossed in conversation with some old uni friends who I haven’t seen for a while, and when I do catch sight of Freya on the other side of the room I see that she’s surrounded by a little group, all talking very animatedly, and decide that actually this is for the best. We won’t really interact this evening and that will be that.
A few minutes later, however, my back bumps pretty hard into the back of someone smaller, and when I turn round to apologise, I discover that it’s Freya, and that the bump caused her to spill wine down herself.
‘It’s okay,’ she says in response to my apology. ‘One of those things. And, also, it wasn’t your fault. It was me. I took a step backwards and bumped into you.’
‘I also took a step backwards,’ I say inanely.
‘Mutual fault, then. And you got lucky in being more competent at holding on to your drink than me.’ She smiles at me, and I try hard to ignore the fact that it’s like I can actually physically feel the smile somewhere inside me. ‘Anyway, at least it’s white.’
‘Sticky, though. Should you maybe try to wash it out?’ I try to avert my eyes, without obviously averting them.
The wine’s making her top cling to her, which is making me remember things from last weekend and think thoughts that are extremely inappropriate given that we definitely won’t be doing that kind of thing again.
‘Yep, probably. I’ll get something from Lizzie.’
‘Let me help you,’ I say, before remembering that I will certainly not be helping her to clean a stain off the chest region of her top.
‘Or not. I mean… Obviously you can probably manage yourself. Just offering. But I totally get that you will probably be very happy to do it yourself.’ Yep, the social skills of a sixteen-year-old with a serious crush. I need to stop talking.
Freya is just laughing at me, and rightly so.
‘Very kind, thank you,’ she says, still sniggering.
‘Why don’t I, at the very least, find Lizzie for you?’
‘Find me?’ says Lizzie, from right next to my elbow.
‘I spilt wine on my top and Jake thinks it’s his fault but it isn’t,’ Freya explains.
‘I love that top,’ Lizzie says. ‘We need to rescue it. Let me give you one of mine to wear and we’ll put that one straight in the washing machine so we can get the wine out before it dries into a stain.’ She takes Freya’s hand and pulls her away. ‘We’ll see you in a minute, Jake.’
And off they go, and that will probably be the last I’ll see of Freya this evening.
When I did my teenage-style agonising over seeing her, I didn’t actually imagine that all I would do would be stare at her chest and babble.
But there you go. I really do need to forget about her and move on.
Easier said than done, obviously, with Sonja’s one-hour live special looming, but I’m an adult; I should just deal with it.
Fucksake. I’m staring in the direction of where they just disappeared. Like a lovesick teenager again.
I give myself a shake and move over to speak to some friends.
A few minutes later, I’m genuinely properly distracted by a story about a truly crazy stag weekend in Wales a couple of weeks ago (so many clichés: a green moustache was painted on the groom in permanent marker; he was tied to a lamp-post naked; he was then found by his mother’s female next-door neighbour who panicked and handed him an actual sock to cover himself strategically – why not a larger item like a dressing gown or towel?), when up pops Lizzie, holding Freya by the arm.
‘We’re back!’ Lizzie practically thrusts Freya towards me, and then just walks off.
‘Hi.’ Freya gives the top she’s wearing a little tug. At a guess, she’s feeling slightly exposed. It’s bright red and extremely tight. It looks very nice but it’s more revealing than the clothes she usually wears.
I want to reassure her that she looks lovely but I’m pretty sure I could end up in an awkward conversational quagmire if I go down that route, so instead I say, ‘We were just hearing about the stag weekend from hell.’ And then I repeat the details I just heard, and Freya obviously exclaims, and then she’s drawn into the conversation with the other men.
The group we’re in expands to include some other women, but it so happens that Freya and I continue to stand next to each other, and somehow end up in a side conversation, just the two of us.
‘How did your panel go?’ I ask. I know that she was speaking on an online panel about writing romance yesterday evening, and had been feeling a little nervous following the way our TV appearances blew up.
‘All good. There was only one slightly tricky question about Wake Up Britain – did I learn anything from it – and I batted it away with a plug for the live update show and a comment that doing it and the love challenge has taught me that I still absolutely adore writing romance and am incredibly grateful to my readers.’
‘Nice,’ I say appreciatively. Then, even though right as I say it I’m aware that it’s a stupid question to ask, I continue, ‘Do you feel like in reality it did teach you anything? I feel like it taught me some stuff. Like… even though Sonja is objectively manipulative and does not have our best interests at heart it was quite good being thrown into some of those situations. Yeah. I think I might just be saying that team-building events work.’
‘I think those team-building events worked but I don’t think they always would. Like, if we actually inherently truly hated each other, making me do things that I hated and you loved would not have improved matters.’
Her words give me a bit of hope – because, okay, yes, I really have missed her incredibly this week and I’d love to spend more time with her – and on impulse I ask, ‘Want to get some air on the balcony?’
Lizzie’s flat is a second-floor one, with a small, flower-filled roof garden jutting off the living room. No-one else is out there at the moment (possibly because it isn’t that warm), so if we go out there we’ll be alone.
Freya hesitates for a moment, and then says, ‘Good idea.’
We weave our way through the others and out onto the balcony.
I close the door behind us, and then say, ‘Don’t want to let cold air in,’ in case Freya thinks that I really wanted us to be alone (which if I’m honest I do, so I feel like I’ve just made up a pathetic little lie).
Freya sits down on the bench that Lizzie has running along one side of the balcony, and I join her.
‘Beautiful view,’ she says. ‘I always love it out here in the summer.’
‘How long has Lizzie been living here?’ I ask.
Our small talk continues for a while, and it’s nice.
Nice to know that we can still chat. I really only think about sexual things about once every minute or so: victory.
It’s good that we’re in full view of everyone inside so there can be no temptation whatsoever to do anything stupid like, well, kissing.
I’m careful not to mention anything about the weekend, because it’s hard to mention the activities without then thinking about the sex.
And I would really, I realise, like to be able to be friends with Freya, and I can’t do that if I’m constantly thinking about that side of things when I’m with her.
Freya’s been telling me about the long walk she went on this morning with a neighbour and the baking she did this afternoon. ‘How was your day?’ she asks.
I hesitate briefly, and then I say, ‘I spent the day with my family.’ And this time I go on to tell her in detail about Max’s accident, and the effect it’s had on the rest of us, and how my parents are amazing but obviously getting older and a little more tired.
And it feels good to tell her: even if nothing romantic develops between us, I hope we can stay friends; and we’ve had a huge experience together.
‘I’m so sorry again that the accident happened,’ she says. ‘You obviously have an amazing family, to have drawn together in response.’
I nod. ‘Yep. I think families often either crumble or become tighter. I do feel very blessed in that regard. We have wonderful parents.’
‘Do you…’ She stops for a moment, and then says, ‘How are you now about it all?’
‘I feel guilty that it wasn’t me,’ I say reflexively, and am then surprised, because I don’t tell people that. I have so much guilt that I feel guilty just thinking about the guilt.