Chapter 3 Jules “Islands in the Stream”
Jules
“Islands in the Stream”
I might have known Darius would get the karaoke going. He loves a performance.
“Give it up for Adam and Jules, everyone,” he hollers down the mic, stabbing his finger toward me. “You’re on.”
“No, no, no,” I call back, knowing I must look a state—sweaty from dancing.
Only Darius insists and I reluctantly let him pull me up onto the stage, squinting in the glare of the rigged-up stage lights.
“Where are you, A-Hole?” he booms, scanning the crowd.
I squirm, knowing how much Adam will hate his stupid nickname getting bandied around publicly like this. Especially in front of colleagues.
Where the hell is he anyway? I’ve hardly seen him since he was chatting to that Meredith woman from his office earlier.
Doodles briefly introduced us. Of course, Adam’s mentioned her before, but she was much prettier and more athletic-looking than I was expecting.
Not that it matters. Because Adam…well, he’s Adam.
Darius jabs a button on the console next to him and the intro to that cheesy Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers classic comes on. Adam and I always used to sing it as our ironic karaoke duet back when we first got together. I’m astonished Darius remembers.
Surely, Adam can’t leave me hanging for “Islands in the Stream”?
Only it seems he can, because now I do see him, skulking at the back of the crowd. Not budging, even when our eyes lock.
Come on, I mouth. But he shakes his head. What the hell? I know he’s insecure about his singing, but is he really going to leave me alone up here?
“There you are,” Darius says, spotting him too. “Come on, mate. Remember the old Lion & Lobster karaoke days? I’m telling you guys, these two totally ruled.”
Adam shakes his head again and, with the lyrics starting to roll on the screen by my feet, Darius pulls a “your loss” kind of a face, unclips the mic from the stand, and starts to sing at me, loudly, and very, very badly indeed.
I desperately search for Adam to come and rescue me, but I can’t see him anymore and suddenly it’s my turn to sing.
My voice is nervy to begin with and I look down from Darius’s intense green eyes to the screen.
Even though I know this song about sailing away to another world and relying on each other by heart, it just feels wrong to sing the words to him.
As the crowd claps and bellows along, I remind myself that it’s just a bit of fun, and glance out across all these faces gathered from our past. Oh my God.
Is that Mickey Ratty over there? My complete jerk of a first boyfriend.
Still with a ponytail, only now all grizzled and gray like…
a dead rat. The tattoo on my shoulder feels like a burn.
If Adam sees him that’s hardly going to put him in a good mood.
Even though he says he doesn’t mind my little “rattoo,” as he calls it, I know he secretly hates it.
Then I spot Ngozi pushing through the crowd to the front, where she stops, grinning at me and giving me a big thumbs-up. Relief floods through me as I grin back, and by the final verse, I’m properly in my stride.
When the song ends, Darius grips my hand and makes me take a bow with him like we’re onstage at Wembley. Jumping down, I feel my legs shaking as I fall into Ngozi’s arms, and we head away to the side of the dance floor as Darius pulls another victim up onto the stage.
“Would you like a glass of something?” one of the waiters asks, walking past us with a tray of drinks.
“I need water,” I tell him, taking a glass as Ngozi grabs a cocktail.
“And would you bring us two of your finest tequilas?” Ngozi adds, in that charming yet authoritative tone that makes most people fall over themselves to do her bidding.
We all exchange a look, as an off-key rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” starts up from the stage, then laugh.
“I was worried you weren’t going to make it,” I say to Ngozi, as the waiter heads off and we sit together on a nearby bench.
She might be at the top of her game as a corporate lawyer and earning bazillions, but her job is relentless, and she’s just flown in from Geneva.
Not that you’d know it. It’s three years since she divorced Geoff and being footloose and fancy-free is clearly suiting her.
She’s wearing a sexy, slinky blue dress with studded ankle boots.
Her hair is scraped back from her flawless face and going gray at the edges, but she’s still as stylish and cool as when I met her in sixth form college.
“It was touch-and-go. Hey, I’m pleased to see this old thing is holding its own,” she says, tugging at my dress.
“I know, right? Proper vintage.”
“You looked great up there.”
I’m warmed by her compliment.
“Darius has thought of everything. He had nice showers with swanky hair dryers for after the pool.” I flick my blow-dried locks.
Ngozi looks toward Darius on the stage. “Still full of himself, I see.”
She’s never been that impressed by our host.
“So? How was the trip? Any GS?” I ask, and she laughs. This is our code for “German sausage”—a reference to the one and only time she copped off with someone on a work trip.
“No. Not a whiff.”
The waiter returns with our shots and proffers them to us on a tray with a flourish. Ngozi and I clink glasses, downing the tequilas, making that disgusted, wincing joyful face we always do.
“O-kay. Let’s get this party started,” she says, hauling me back to my feet.
We join in with the crowd and sing along to the karaoke numbers and then Doodles appears. He’s bare-chested beneath a crazy fake-fur jacket, in tattered jeans with Aphex Twin scrawled across one leg. He wraps his arms around our shoulders, leaning on us.
“My dudes,” he says. “You look…” He surveys us both, grinning, but clearly a little too wasted to decide exactly how we do look. “It’s yours truly up next. Stay right where you are.”
A moment later, a blast of dry ice hisses up from the stage and Darius introduces Doodles like he’s the headline act at the Ibiza season opening party.
Headphones on, Doodles nods from behind the decks and starts his set.
Ngozi puts her arms up, as the intro to her favorite song, Baccara’s “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie,” starts, swaying her hips as the beat comes in.
She’s always been the coolest person in any room and quickly she’s surrounded by other people as the party really gets going. Only still no sign of Adam.
I step away from the dance floor and head toward the house, spotting him in the glass-sided atrium at the back.
He changed three times before we left home, in the end plumping for his orange R.E.M.
Out of Time tour T-shirt, so I know it’s him, even from this distance.
He’s running around the table-tennis table with a bunch of other middle-aged blokes, throwing the bats down at each end so they can all take turns at hitting the ball.
As I get closer, I can hear them laughing and panting with the exertion.
“Where are you sneaking off to?”
“Jesus, you made me jump,” I tell Darius, suddenly engulfed in his expensive cologne. “I was trying to find Adam.” I point to the atrium.
“He looks just like a giant goldfish going round and round,” Darius observes.
As I’m trying to formulate a response to what he’s just said, because that was a bit mean, one of the lads bundles into Adam and they collapse on their arses in a fit of laughs and chorus of jeers.
“And to think he was nearly my business partner,” Darius says conspiratorially. Like by not answering I’ve admitted that it’s okay for him to take the piss behind Adam’s back. “Does he ever regret it?” he asks. “You know. Not taking the chance?”
I’m amazed that he’s jumped right in and asked something so personal, but it occurs to me that I don’t have the foggiest idea how Adam actually feels.
About not going to San Francisco. About turning their business partnership down.
It’s a subject we don’t…can’t discuss. Neither of us dares open that particular Pandora’s box of resentment and recrimination.
But I’m not going to give Darius what he clearly wants—the affirmation that Adam screwed up. That he could have had all this too. Even though we’re both thinking it. How can we not, when this whole party has been one giant pissing contest?
“What about you?” he presses.
“I don’t think about it,” I lie. Have I pulled off nonchalant? Please, God…
“Life would have been different, there’s no denying it,” he says with a sad sigh. “The three of us out there together in that brave new world. Who knows how it would have turned out?”
What does he mean? Turned out for who? Me and Adam? Or me and him? Because that’s here too. The possibility, no matter how crazy, that he’s also talking about us.
And suddenly I can feel the thing we’re not discussing approaching.
The very specific conversation we had eight years ago, before he left, that neither of us has acknowledged or mentioned since.
Well, it wasn’t much of a conversation, but it still feels like a secret.
Is a secret. One I’ve buried, telling myself it was too insignificant and yet at the same time too shocking to admit even to myself.
My mind now fills with the memory of how Darius tenderly wiped away my angry, disappointed tears and told me that I could still go to San Francisco.
Me and the kids. Only not with Adam, but with him.
And how I held his gaze, my tears stalling with shock at his offer.
And in that split second, he moved his face toward mine…
Only I pulled away, flustered, shaken. So shocked that he’d betray his oldest friend, but even more shocked that my heart had soared for a brief moment in temptation, until, guiltily, I’d crashed back down to earth.
I never mentioned it to Adam. I never told him how close Darius and I came.