CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘You’re going to get serious wrinkles if you keep frowning like that,’ Scarlet says as I attempt to relax by the pool on our spa day. I am wound up so tightly that the masseuse is going to have to be a miracle-worker to unknot me. We’ve checked out of the wedding venue and in Scarlet’s little hire car we’ve bombed it, late, as usual, to check into the next hotel. By the pool it’s calm and quiet, and the sound of people swimming slow, effortless laps converges with plinky-plunky spa music.
‘I didn’t realise I was frowning,’ I say, using my fingers to iron out the creases settling between my brows. But it’s no good and I feel my face crumpling up again.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks. ‘You’ve been frowning all morning.’
I didn’t tell her about seeing Chris when I found Scarlet last night, as she wasn’t sober enough to understand. And what would I say? How do I tell her I feel as if I’ve been dumped by a guy who categorically wasn’t my boyfriend to begin with. And now we can’t even be friends.
Maybe Chris is right about us. Maybe, if we were friends, I’d find myself in a pickle, emotions-wise. Although I’m already in a pickle.
Scarlet leans over on her lounger and uses her fingers to try to iron out my creases. I chuckle at the act.
‘That’s better,’ she says, sitting back. ‘Why. Are. You. Frowning?’ she pleads.
I tell her and when I’ve finished my rant – because it is a rant – I’m fuming. She looks confused.
‘And this is the guy from the wedding where you met Josh? The same guy who got you the job?’
I nod.
‘Chris, who worked in the Union bar with Grey, before I worked there? The perfect guy?’
I nod and then add quickly, ‘No. Josh is the perfect guy.’
‘Josh was the second guy,’ she says. ‘You told me you’d met someone who was perfect, but that it couldn’t go any further. I remember that. Then you met Josh, all hell broke loose and you snogged his face off.’
‘It doesn’t matter who I said was perfect at the time.’
‘But Chris thinks you’ll fall in love with him if you go anywhere near him?’
‘I … I think I’m phrasing this badly. He didn’t actually say that. He just sort of pointed out it wasn’t worth the risk.’
‘Oh,’ Scarlet says as she sips her ginger-and-turmeric shot. ‘Well, that’s kind of … nice of him.’
I make a face. ‘Is it, though?’
‘Yes. It is. He doesn’t want you to get hurt. He doesn’t want to get hurt, and he doesn’t want anybody else involved to get hurt, either. So you’re now simply work colleagues. Chris obviously thinks that’s a good thing and – I’ll be honest – so do I.’
‘Oh,’ I say, deflating.
‘I feel,’ Scarlet starts up again, ‘that you would like to keep seeing Chris and keep talking to him,’ she analyses. ‘And that would mean you’re open to the – hopefully very faint – possibility of it ending in disaster and a few people getting hurt.’
I swallow.
‘And as much as I love you, that’s dangerous and probably not very nice. For anyone,’ she says diplomatically.
‘You think I’m a bad person?’
‘That’s not what I said. I just think Chris has thought it through, and you haven’t. And remember what I said about men and women being friends.’
‘Chris said that too,’ I point out and I curse myself for helping along his argument.
‘The problem is, you sound as if you had a real connection in a short amount of time. You both felt it, but that moment has passed. And now you’re trying to make it work with other people.’
‘I’m not trying to make it work with Josh,’ I say. ‘It is working with Josh.’
‘OK, then that’s great. Case closed. And, Lexie,’ Scarlet sounds exasperated now, ‘I don’t think you’re a bad person. But if, after being warned off by Chris and me, you go and open that door with him again … then I do think you have the potential to be a bad person.’