Chapter 13 #2
‘Check this one out.’ Josh flicked to another video.
One of the first that had received over 800,000 views.
It was when Pim had a photoshoot for a celebrity show set in the jungle and I had to travel with her on a private yacht to the set along the coast of Australia.
I had never seen such blue water in my life.
You could see the stingrays swimming beneath the boat as if you were looking at a lit rockpool in the London Aquarium.
‘Geez, that’s awesome,’ Simon said, taking the phone and flicking through a few more of the generic videos of me hanging out in hotel rooms while Pim got her hair done for the Emmys. Or on the back of a TV set as Pim did an interview on daytime TV.
I reached for the phone, but Josh pushed my arms away.
‘Our Evie is a starlet,’ he said, glowing with pride, while Megan made an ‘uh-huh’ noise, still looking at her phone.
‘And you’re leaving all this behind?’ Simon said, pointing to the screen. I shrugged.
‘It’s not all glamour and greasepaint. Most of the time it’s long hours, non-stop days, and so much effort.’ I sighed as if exhausted, which in truth I was. ‘And after eight years I could do with a bit of stability.’
Simon nodded again, doing one last final flick over my TikToks before handing Josh his phone back.
‘What about you?’ I found myself asking. ‘Is busking your future?’
Simon’s lip twitched knowingly. ‘Well, it wasn’t always the plan, if that’s what you really want to know.’
‘Oh, she does.’ Josh smirked. ‘Look at her! She’s digging for details into your past, darling.’ He pointed it out as if Simon didn’t already know, and I rolled my eyes. Josh was not adept at subtlety.
‘My past,’ Simon repeated, nodding as if preparing himself.
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ I pointed out. ‘And I’ve just told you an awful lot about me. Or, actually, Josh did.’
‘Fair is fair,’ Josh agreed, and Megan once again made an ‘uh-huh’ noise without looking up from her phone.
‘Couldn’t I call that favour you owe me?’ Simon joked and Josh countered by saying he would simply ask again, so he had no choice.
Admitting defeat, Simon inhaled and sat up.
‘My mum passed away when I was eighteen,’ Simon began and immediately Josh flushed in embarrassment, which Simon was quick to remedy.
‘As I told you earlier,’ he said to me. ‘So, I was raised by Dad, who wasn’t a natural single parent, or parent in general.
He’s always working. He works in media too, actually, so I kind of know what you mean about the long hours.
’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I was sent to boarding school at thirteen, when I became a bit too teenager-y for him. School wasn’t bad but as you can guess of any highly paid education system, they valued academic subjects over creative ones, and I’ve never been interested in maths and English.
Not in the way I was with music anyway.’
‘I feel like I see where this is going,’ Josh said, his ears pricking up.
‘Probably.’ Simon laughed darkly. ‘After mum passed, I told my dad I wanted to go to music college, and he downright refused to support me. Obviously, I did it anyway, but when I graduated at twenty-one, without a job and not much interest in getting one, he cut me off.’
‘And you’ve been busking ever since?’ Josh asked, surprised that that could sustain a person for so long.
Simon leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair, appearing surprised when a sudden cloud of glitter seemed to fall out of it. I brushed it off his shoulder for him.
‘The busking is relatively new. I mostly do it for charity.’
‘Mostly,’ I joked. Simon shrugged with his hands up in a mock ‘don’t shoot’ manner.
‘Sometimes I run a little short of cash, normally just before payday. But my actual job is in advertising.’
‘Advertising?’ I repeated in surprise. ‘You?’
‘Me,’ Simon said. ‘Why? Are you surprised?’
‘Very.’ I took on some of Josh’s non-subtlety. ‘Feels a bit too much like a job for the man. Too corporate for a musician.’
‘Well, you might be surprised…’ He seemed to be trying to stop himself from laughing.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’
‘If I tell you my job title, you’ll laugh.’
‘Oh, no!’ I was unable to hold my anticipatory smile in.
‘Now you have to tell us,’ Josh said, leaning in and resting his chin on his shoulder.
Simon sighed, defeatedly. ‘I am my company’s Chief Jingle Writer.’
Josh and I fell to bits, we laughed into the table so much that Megan finally looked up from her phone and had to ask Simon to repeat himself, from which she joined me and Josh in our laughter.
The waitress that brought over our cocktails had to hand them all to Simon, since he was the only one capable of holding them steady.
‘Chief Jingle Writer,’ I repeated.
‘Yep, get it out.’ Simon smiled in good humour despite our overreaction.
‘It just seems like…’ I tried to catch my breath. ‘Not the job for you.’
‘It pays the bills.’ Simon lifted his beer to his lips. He was not a cocktail kind of guy.
‘You’re a… a…’ Josh couldn’t contain himself. ‘A jingler!’
‘Jingle writer,’ Simon corrected, a bit more sternly, although only in jest. He clearly understood that his job title was hilarious.
‘Oh, honey!’ Josh was wiping a tear from his eye and picking up his sex on the beach. ‘You and I should talk. Do you freelance?’
‘Josh designs retail Christmas displays,’ I explained quickly.
‘I do actually,’ Simon said to Josh, who immediately began to talk his ear off about a Gingerbread House display he wanted to make in the children’s department of Harrods that wasn’t too scary but not too sweet either.
‘I like this man,’ Megan suddenly whispered, leaning into my shoulder and acting as if she were still deeply concentrating on her non-existent WhatsApp messages.
‘I can tell,’ I said under my breath, before leaning closer to her. ‘Me too!’
The look of joy that passed over her face was gone in an instant, but something inside me seemed to light up upon admitting it.
I really liked Simon. Not just because he was really good-looking, with his sort of rough-and-tumble blond locks and sandy facial hair I had a strong urge to run my fingers over, but because he was kind and humorous.
He was everything you could want in a really good friend or, in my imagination, a really good boyfriend.
But it was impossible. I was leaving.
I’d spent years telling myself that relationships were almost an inconvenient thing, something I didn’t have time or space for. Now that I finally did have, I was on the verge of uprooting my entire life again.
Starting something now felt reckless: a recipe for heartbreak built from temptation. Wanting Simon was easy. Staying long enough to find out what that might mean was not.
So I did what I always did when my thoughts edged too close to something real: I folded them away and focused on what was right in front of me.
I played with the cocktail umbrella in my negroni as Josh and Simon spoke about a few of the adverts that Simon had scored – Josh had to deny himself from saying ‘jingled’ – and the kind of work Simon could do with him.