Chapter Twenty Tom #2
“It didn’t feel amazing. The moment they called to tell me, all I wanted to do was tell you.”
He felt like the ground might crack open beneath him and he’d just start falling, lower and lower into it, that’s how light
his head went. He couldn’t make sense of her words; his thoughts had taken him so far in the other direction.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying if there’s time, after this—” she signaled around the room with her arm “—I’d love to talk some more. All I want
to do is talk to you. Well . . . not just talk . . . I mean. Argh. I’ll stop.”
He felt a rush thrum through his entire body.
“Tom,” a voice came from behind him and it was Kiki Lawrence, who’d managed to sweet talk everyone in the room before she approached him, dressed in a real skunk fur coat. Sophie had always been jealous of Kiki, but had described it as having a “bad feeling” which Tom suspected was the same thing.
“Kiki,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. She moved her face at the last second so his lips landed on the
edge of her mouth. Maybe Sophie’s bad feeling was right, after all.
“These photos are stunning. I want to buy them all. I won’t, but I want to.”
“Thank you so much, and thank you for coming.”
He waited for Sophie to say something, the way she might have when they were together. Instead she smiled at him.
“You do your thing. I’ll be here,” she said, nodding toward Laura, who was definitely making the most of a Martha-free night
as she reached for another champagne.
“You suit this work, Tom,” Kiki said, looking around her. “But if you ever stop taking my photos I will fucking sue you.”
Tom leaned his head back, laughing. “I’ll always take photos of you, Kiki,” he replied. “I owe you my career. If it weren’t
for you insisting on using me, there’s no way I’d have got the jobs I got.”
“Well that’s true. And I’m glad you remember, because . . .”
Out of the corner of his eye, as Kiki relayed to him the day they first met for the five hundredth time, he caught sight of
Laura pointing her finger in Sophie’s face, saying something animated.
Sophie was shaking her head and she rested her hand on Laura’s finger, pulling it downward. “I will,” it looked as though
Sophie was saying. She nodded and Laura shook her head, before they both looked over at him and their expressions changed
as they looked away.
“So just remember that, okay?” Kiki finished, and she was gone.
It was after midnight by the time Tom managed to get everyone out and was alone with Sophie.
The two of them sat on the floor of the gallery, directly in front of the photo of Sophie, the remains of a bottle of champagne between them. After all this time, he had her to himself. Two versions of her, in fact, which after a few drinks had made him feel very lucky indeed.
“I made a mistake, Tom,” Sophie said, reaching across to take his hand in hers. She ran her thumb across the top of it and
traced it over his knuckles, the way he forgot she used to. How was it possible that they could slip so easily back into something
that had been gone from their lives for so long? Tom wasn’t sure whether it was want, or habit. “And I’m so sorry. And I understand
if it’s too late. If that girl . . .” she drifted off, glancing toward the door that Daisy had walked through earlier as Tom
followed her gaze, air catching sharply inside him. “Or, you know, you and Kiki are . . .”
Tom pulled his gaze from the door and back to Sophie, snorting as she laughed too. “I’m kidding with that. I didn’t think
you . . . I mean not that you couldn’t date a supermodel. Of course you could, I just—”
“It’s fine. Please.”
They locked eyes and laughed, nervously, Tom suddenly aware properly, again, of where he was and who he was with.
“I understand if this seems out of nowhere and if you need time and more conversation. I just need you to know how I feel.
How the second I got the call today, the only person I wanted to celebrate with was you. I wanted you.”
“Today?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “And I already knew I was coming tonight and it just felt like a sign, you know? It was meant to be. For
me, I mean.”
She was saying all the right things and Tom started to push away the small parts of it that were alarming to him.
So she’d made this discovery less than twelve hours earlier, but that didn’t matter.
Whenever it was and however she’d got to that decision, she’d still made it. She’d made a mistake. She wanted him.
He cleared his throat, thinking of the right words. He didn’t want to fuck it up. “Soph, you saying this is all I’ve wanted
to hear since the moment you ended things.”
“Really?” She looked so unsure then, with her wide eyes and wobbling bottom lip that Tom couldn’t take it anymore.
“Really,” he whispered. He squeezed tighter on her hand, pulling her to him and kissing her right there in front of the giant
photo of her own face. It was everything he remembered. Butterflies. Soft lips. She kissed him harder, leaning farther toward
him and reaching her leg across until she was sitting on top of him, murmuring his name into his mouth, and every thought
he had about anything that wasn’t Sophie was gone.
“Wait,” he said, pulling away. “What were you and Laura talking about? It looked as though you were fighting.”
“Oh,” Sophie said, turning her face away for a second. “It was nothing. She was just smashed.”
That night, for the first time in months, the moment his head hit the pillow, he was asleep. When he woke up it was past 8:00
a.m. He’d missed the bus.