Chapter 30
We spend the rest of the evening giggling and catching up.
Phil tactfully stays upstairs so that Angie, Damilola, and I can be alone. There’s no wedding talk, job talk, or kitchenware talk . . . although I do find myself more interested in fridges now I’m actually faced with the concept of choosing one.
Who am I?
I feel giddy with how lovely the evening has been. Eventually, Angie decides to head home. As I’m seeing her out, a shadowy figure appears at the end of Dami’s path. It’s Max.
“Oh . . . hi, Max.” Angie walks past him. “Looks like I just missed you, sorry. Next time.” She doesn’t sound in the least bit sorry.
“Good to see you, Angie.” Max smirks as she gets into her car. “She still hates me, then,” he says as we both watch her drive off.
“I guess so.”
“Ngegh. Oh well.”
In the past Max and I have always joked about Angie disliking him, but tonight it doesn’t seem so funny.
Maybe because what Angie said is still playing on my mind, or because Angie and I are moving in together and Max and I are beginning an actual relationship.
I suddenly wonder how on earth that’s going to work, if my boyfriend and my flatmate can’t stand each other.
“Better try harder,” I reply. “Angie and I are going to be roommates.” I wait eagerly for his response to this news.
Max keeps staring down the road. “Well, I guess I can let her win an argument every now and then,” he jokes. He doesn’t show any sign of reaction.
“Did you hear me say Angie and I are going to move in together?” I repeat.
“Yeah. That’s cool. Will you be living in her massive house?” He finally turns to face me.
“She’s selling it,” I reply. I don’t say anything else about how Jacob’s letting her keep half from the sale of their house, even though the deposit was his—he must feel guilty, now that he’s stopped gaslighting her—or how she’ll buy somewhere and I’ll send her rent to help pay off the mortgage, or the flats we’ve been looking at on the internet.
He doesn’t seem to be that interested. Am I making a big deal out of it?
Maybe moving out of my mum’s isn’t such a huge thing .
. . I guess we all did this years ago. Maybe I can’t expect him to jump up and down in excitement for reaching a milestone a second time.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I say instead.
“Yeah, I was working near here.”
“Oh, you got another job? That was quick.” Being freelance, Max usually has a bigger gap between projects.
“Nah, they lined me up for this ages ago. Beating them off with a stick these days,” he jokes.
I frown. That doesn’t add up. Max made it sound like he left Paris suddenly—like he had to race back to break up with Fran and come to be with me—but if that were the case, how could he have had another job booked?
Max notices my confusion and realizes he’s said something amiss.
A flash of something crosses his face as he recognizes I’ve caught him in a lie.
He was always supposed to leave Paris on that date, and he was lying to make it sound like he left just to see me.
“You gonna ask me in, or . . .” There’s an edge to his voice now.
“Er, yeah.” I wave him past me. I feel a little unsteady on my feet. Max lied to me. He outright lied. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Why would he pretend he rushed back just for me, if he didn’t?
Max has disappeared inside and I stand on the pavement for a moment, my head spinning.
I think of all the times Max has implied he made some sort of special effort to see me.
Even my birthday. He said he couldn’t come and then turned up at the last minute like he blew off work because he couldn’t bear not to be there.
Was any of that true? Is he sometimes pretending like he made more effort to see me than he did?
I shake my head. I’m being paranoid. He did lie, there’s no way around it, but he probably just wanted to impress me and make things right because we left on weird terms. Stupid, but not earth-shattering.
There’s no reason to assume every time he went the extra mile for me was made-up.
This is Max. My Max. Best friend Max. Love-of-my-life Max. Always-there-for-me Max.
Unreliable Max? Uncommunicative Max? I can’t help but think about what Angie said.
I go inside. Max is waiting for me in the hallway.
Any blossoming doubt shrivels up and recedes as he takes my hand.
We go to bed and I am so, so tired that I don’t interrogate any of this further.
I don’t think too hard about whether Angie’s words have any weight, or analyze that once again we don’t kiss before we fall asleep.
I get a blissful night’s rest as a girl who is madly in love and has exciting job prospects. But when I wake up the next morning, I see two things that blow that dream to pieces.
My phone is lying on my bedside table charging, and a message from Sara pops up on my screen.
Hey babe, glad you didn’t die lol. Are you coming to my show tonight? Max and Fran were coming but he told us you’re together now? I was always backing you guys to get back together tbh. Ed has food poisoning because the man never reheats his risotto properly, but Aurelia will be there x
I blink at the message and shake my head.
At first I think Sara must have it wrong.
Max would never go out with these guys without me.
Would he? This is our group of friends. He always made out like he hardly sees them that much anymore.
It’s a smack of reality that, in light of my recent chats with both Dami and Angie about him, I can’t quite manage to feed the denial monster.
He had plans with our friends from Scintilla . . . without me. And with Fran.
What the hell? Is that a regular thing? Does Max take Fran out and purposely not invite me?
I think back through a million little niggling memories .
. . Fran knowing what Sara’s next theme party was going to be before I did .
. . Sara knowing about Max and Fran moving in together .
. . Max said Fran bumped into Sara, but what if that wasn’t true?
I’m still reeling from this bewildering theory when I pick up my phone again and see an email from Monique at Shout Box.
Dear Becky,
Thank you very much for coming in yesterday—everyone enjoyed meeting you. However, I’m not going to be offering you the job and I wanted to let you know quickly so you could pursue other avenues as soon as possible.
I hope you are not too disappointed. You got down to the last 5 out of 250 applicants, which is an accomplishment in itself.
Wishing you all the best,
Monique
It is a brutal double digital attack.
I stare at the email, reading it over and over to check the words still say the same thing. I hope you are not too disappointed. The sentence taunts me. “Disappointed” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I am crushed. Monique has broken my heart.
If nothing else, it at least makes me forget Max for a second.
I don’t have space in my brain to work out what’s going on with him in the face of this rejection.
It’s immature—I realize people don’t get jobs all the time—but I can’t help it .
. . I start sobbing. I wanted that job so badly.
I really thought I’d be good at it. Stupidly, on some level, I had faith that I’d get it.
My shuddering and sniffing wakes Max. He rolls over and sits up. “Hey, what’s up?”
I pass him my phone. He reads the email and squeezes my arm. “Ah, Becks. I’m really sorry. Look, there will be other jobs.”
“Not as good as this one.” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and look away from him so he can’t see how red and blotchy my face is. “Ugh, I can’t believe I actually thought I had a shot. I’m never going to be good enough.”
“It was your first proper interview in years,” he reassures. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Maybe it’s stupid,” I say. “Trying to make the leap into something I actually care about. I should have never left We Work, You Win.”
“Well, it’s true you may never find another boss with such a fine collection of hats,” Max jokes.
I laugh through my tears.
“Come on.” Max turns my face to his. “It’s OK. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“What if I can’t find a job and I can’t move in with Angie? What if I have to work at another recruitment company?” I wail.
“It wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you will—that’s OK.” Max cups his hands around my cheeks. “Think how many more Tequila Trollops you’ll be able to afford. Hey, I know what would cheer you up . . . Shall I bring you a mimosa in bed?”
When he says this, my heart sinks. Working at another recruitment company “wouldn’t be so bad”?
“Maybe I will”? He knows how unhappy it’s been making me for years.
How hard it’s been to pull myself out of the rut.
His tone is so . . . light. Ostensibly it’s supposed to be comforting, but it feels like he’s kind of enjoying it.
He doesn’t sound disappointed about this for me at all.
I tilt my face up, daring to look into his eyes and be honest with myself about what I find there.
With earth-shattering sadness I realize it’s glee.
I don’t want to see it, but I can’t not.
He’s pleased that things have gone wrong for me.
On some level, he’s delighted that my plans are crashing and burning and at the prospect of me staying exactly where I’ve always been.
I am split in two. One side wants to laugh at his joke, to curl up in the cozy, protective warmth of familiarity, to regress.
To drink a mimosa and pretend everything is fine.
Perhaps it’s not so bad here, having nothing of my own and not being able to respect myself.
I know it well. Maybe it’s just who I am.
The other side pushes against it. I’ve come so far.
I can’t go back to the way things were. I don’t like my life, I don’t like who I’ve been, and I’m ready to move on and become someone new.