Chapter 17
November 19, 2024
“Shots! Shots! Shots! We’re doing shots, everyone! Woo!”
Jordan carries a tray of tequila shots from the bar and sets it at the standing table where Milo, Desmond, Poppy, and I are.
Desmond pulls a sour face. I touch his arm. “You don’t have to drink that.”
He flashes a grateful smile and sips his lager, wincing when the beat of an EDM song drops. “I feel about ten years too old to be in here,” he says, glancing around at the circular space.
“You and me both.” I down the tequila shot and chase it with a gulp of Poppy’s cocktail.
Around us a million early twentysomethings dance and writhe. Onstage at the far end of this club, a DJ with spiky fuchsia hair grooves and bobs his head along to the frenetic beat. A rainbow of laser beam lights illuminates the room. A second later, confetti falls from the ceiling for no apparent reason. Everyone on the dance floor cheers.
“This is the last time you get to pick where we go out,” I say to Jordan.
“Duh, it’s my last night here.”
“I mean forever. We’re never going out with you again, ever.”
“Oh, come on. This is a blast!” He spins around to dance with a group of people nearby. They playfully toss confetti at one another.
I shake my head as I watch him, in disbelief at his energy. This morning he woke me up at the crack of dawn, excited to go sightseeing. I forgot how little sleep he needs.
“Fucking twentysomethings,” Poppy mutters before sucking on a lime wedge.
“You were like this once, too, you know.” I elbow her.
“I was, wasn’t I?” She lets out a “Woo!” that gets swallowed up in the music and cheers. Jordan winks at her and shimmies over to dance alongside her.
“Imagine if we had gone to uni together!” she shouts.
“Oh, we’d have destroyed the city. For sure.” Jordan bumps his hip into Poppy’s, making her cackle.
A beat later, Poppy glides up to Desmond and slinks her arms around his neck. The corners of his mouth quirk up as he fights a smile.
“This is what you were like in uni?” he teases.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t know me then?” She bumps her nose gently against his before kissing it.
“So glad.” He raises an eyebrow, and Poppy playfully shoves his shoulder.
“Probably best that we didn’t meet until years later,” she says through a sly smile. “You would have pulled all the muscles in your face frowning at all the trouble I got up to.”
Desmond grins. “Maybe. But I still would have gone along with you. I would have been in awe of ‘uni party girl’ Poppy.” He kisses her forehead. She closes her eyes, her teasing smile turning tender.
I let out an “aww,” seeing my best friend and her husband share this sweet moment, watching them connect over something they didn’t even experience together. And then I think about how it reminds me of what I’m experiencing. In a way, I’m not really connected to the life I’m living, since I’m living it backward ... but in a weird way I feel more connected than before. Because at least I’m not being lied to and cheated on, and that’s made this life more honest and true.
I glance around, searching the crowd, like I have the past couple of hours we’ve been here. We haven’t run into Tristan yet, which is no surprise. This place isn’t the kind of spot he’d ever want to go to. But this is the night we’re meant to see him and Jordan throw down.
I gulp ice water instead of taking another shot. Milo slides his half-full glass to me as soon as I set my empty one on the table.
“Thanks. And thanks for being a good sport about all this,” I say to him.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fun.”
I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Fun?”
He shrugs before flashing that killer half smile that has every woman in the vicinity checking him out. “Maybe ‘interesting’ is a better word.”
There’s another whooping noise from Jordan, who’s dancing it up with yet another random group of nearby people. Forty-five minutes later Jordan and Poppy whine that they’re famished, so we make our way out of the club and down a few blocks to a hole-in-the-wall curry joint. Everyone takes their place at the end of the line, which snakes out the door. I opt to stay outside since I’m not hungry.
I yawn, stepping off to the side, and pull my phone out of my jacket pocket.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” Milo asks before pressing a kiss to my forehead.
I blink, my eyelids heavy from staying out hours past my bedtime. Even in this backward timeline, I’ve kept to my nighttime routine. I’m usually in bed by eleven thirty most nights, not partying into the wee hours of the morning. “I’m sure. Thanks, though.”
He heads into the shop, and I stay outside and read the news on my phone. Heavy footfalls echo behind me, followed by a muttered curse about how long the line is.
“Sorry, you in line?” a female voice asks.
I glance up and immediately freeze at the sight of the blue-eyed blonde and the man beside her.
Carly and Tristan.
Their eyes go wide at the same time. Mine do too, actually. For a silent few seconds, the three of us just stand there and gape at each other.
“Oh, um ...” Carly frowns, as her wide-eyed gaze darts between Tristan and me.
I wait for the surge of disbelief, then anger, then pain to hit, just like it did when I saw them at their Hampstead house playing with their son. But it doesn’t. Instead, the only familiar emotion I feel is shock.
Tristan looks at me, his eyebrows furrowed the slightest bit, his lips pursed. Shock fades, leaving behind the crackle of my nerves. They simmer under my skin, like hot oil warming on a stove.
The longer I stare at him, the less familiar he is. Like I’m gazing at a stranger who looks like someone I used to know. Like all the features are similar but not quite a match. Those are his blue eyes I’ve gazed into a thousand times, but the look of affection is gone. That’s the mouth that I used to kiss, that I used to crave. But now it’s just a thick pink line I wouldn’t look twice at. The delicate waves of his strawberry-blond hair are gone. It’s shorter, neater now. The thought of running my fingers through it seems so awkward. So wrong.
Carly moves to grab Tristan by the hand. “Let’s go,” she says curtly.
She pulls him to walk past me right as I hear Milo’s voice.
“Sleeping Beauty,” he singsongs. “Do you have cash on you? Their card reader’s down ...”
When he looks up and sees Tristan, they both stop in their tracks.
“What the ...” Milo straightens up, his easy expression now a frown.
Tristan returns a frown of his own as he looks at his cousin, except his is etched deeper. That frown. I know that frown. I remember it from the night of our wedding anniversary, right before he punched Milo.
“Sleeping Beauty, huh?” A bitter laugh falls from his lips as his gaze bounces between Milo and me before he rolls his eyes.
“Tristan. We’re going. Now.” Carly tugs on his arm, but he doesn’t budge.
“Listen to your girlfriend,” Milo says, his tone on the edge of a bite. I take in his stance. It’s the same one from that night too: tall, solid, refusing to back away. The only thing that’s different is that he’s not taunting or joking. Right now Milo is dead fucking serious.
Tristan steps into his cousin’s space and points his finger an inch from Milo’s face. Milo doesn’t even blink.
“You don’t fucking say a word to me,” Tristan growls. “Not after stealing my fucking wife.”
“Tristan!” Carly hisses. She yanks harder, this time managing to budge him slightly back.
Milo’s stare goes hard. I’m not used to seeing his face like this, like he’s on the verge of a roar, like he’s tasting acid. Even I can feel the anger radiating off him from feet away.
“Steal? Are you fucking kidding with that shit?”
“Sis, I need money! Cash money money mo—”
Jordan’s shout cuts off the minute he’s outside the curry shop and sees Milo and Tristan in a standoff. My stomach churns, and I start to move toward Jordan.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jordan barely slurs. That drunken haze is gone from his eyes. He looks alert now, like he’s had a B12 shot instead of a gallon of hard liquor. His gaze darts to Carly.
“Is this her?” he asks.
I nod, my face hot.
“You two are a class act. You fucking deserve each other.”
“Jordan. Don’t.”
He bites his lips at my scolding. As much as I dislike Carly and Tristan for how they cheated, I don’t want this to escalate. I don’t want to make a scene ... or a bigger scene than the one we’re already making. People step around us on the sidewalk, some stopping to gawk at the standoff we’re having at midnight in front of a curry joint.
“You’re such a piece of shit, Tristan,” Jordan spits. “A selfish, narcissistic, phony piece of shit. I’m so fucking relieved my sister is finally done with you.”
Tristan’s frown turns incredulous the longer he looks at Jordan. He chuckles like he’s going to spit poison from his mouth. “You think I give a shit what you think of me? I never liked you, Jordan. Such trash.”
I open my mouth to yell at Tristan, but Milo barks at him before I can utter a sound.
“Shut your mouth, Tristan. You’re one to talk.”
Tristan turns back to face his cousin. “Am I? Because if I’m trash, so are you. You’re worse actually. You stole your cousin’s ex-wife. You swooped in for my sloppy seconds, you shameless twat.”
Jordan’s fist connects with the side of Tristan’s face, causing a crunching sound. Everyone around us gasps or makes an “oooh!” noise.
Tristan hunches over, cradling his nose with his hand. Carly yelps before running over to him and reaching for his face.
I look on, unable to blink, my jaw on the concrete. Barely three seconds have passed, but it feels like slow motion.
Jordan shakes out his right hand as he heaves a breath. Milo gawks at him. He looks like he’s in as much disbelief as I am. I rush over to the two of them, now standing side by side.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I say to them.
Jordan nods at me, his expression pained, probably because his hand is throbbing. Milo sticks his head in the shop and yells for Desmond and Poppy to come out now. They appear with two giant paper bags of takeaway in their hands.
“No worries, lads. We got the takeaway. You owe us, tho—” Poppy’s eyes bulge out of her head as she takes in the visual of Tristan hunched over just a few feet away. “Fucking hell, is that—”
“Yup.” I grab her arm and start to lead her away.
“And is she—”
“Yes. We gotta go now. I’ll explain later.”
The five of us jog down the road. Desmond hails the first black cab that comes into view.
“Good call, Des.” Milo pats him on the back, and we all jump in.
“To Dorset Street in Marylebone,” Milo says to the driver.
Poppy, Desmond, and I take one side. Milo and Jordan take the other. As we ride, I give Poppy and Desmond a quick rundown of what happened.
“Goodness me,” Desmond says, looking positively dazed. “Glad I missed that.”
“I’m not. That would have been a perfect fucking ending to the night, seeing that bellend get his comeuppance. From your little brother, of all people,” Poppy says.
Jordan shrugs, still rubbing the knuckles of his right hand. “He deserved it. He had no right to say that about my sister. Or you.”
He juts his chin at Milo, who responds with a slight smile. I watch as he reaches his fist to Jordan’s uninjured hand. Jordan bumps him in return.
It’s a small gesture. But seeing it—seeing my brother and my boyfriend getting along—sends a strange and wonderful feeling through me.
Poppy hands Jordan a takeaway box of chips in curry sauce. “For tonight’s MVBP. Most valuable bellend puncher.”
Jordan accepts the box with a chuckle. “What can I say? No one fucks with my family.”
I catch the look of surprise that dances across Milo’s expression, taking in what Jordan’s just said and just how much it means.