Lovestruck, p.28
Lovestruck, page 28
‘Carlos …’ she says, not brave enough to look at him.
‘I know,’ he says.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
Carlos shakes his head. ‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ he says, sadly, and when neither of them says anything else, time passes, and Mike eventually senses they’re outside and looks out of the window to wave, and Becca gets out of the car without saying anything else.
34
She Texts Back
‘Hey!’ Mike says, opening the front door to her, backlit by the hall light so that his face falls into darkness. ‘Are you OK? I’ve not heard from you all day but Jessie says you fainted? What happened? Here, come in, Bec.’
Mike holds out an arm to usher her inside. Becca doesn’t turn around. She can’t. This is all too confusing, too weird. She accepts a kiss from Mike on her cheek and moves past, kicking off her boots and taking off her jacket.
‘Yeah,’ she tells him, sliding on her slippers. ‘I forgot to eat breakfast.’ Her voice sounds hollow, tired.
‘That’s not like you.’
‘I think I’m run down,’ she says, standing up straight and watching him close the front door, sliding the safety latch across because that’s them now, in for the night, locked away from the cold November evening, just the two of them.
‘God, you sound awful. Come on, let me make you a tea.’
They go through into the kitchen, Becca pausing to adjust the blinds on their way through.
Carlos looks at her through the glass of the driver’s car door, and Becca is aware of Mike asking her things, or telling her things. Eventually Carlos starts his engine, gives her one last look, and then pulls away from the kerb.
I can’t tell you what to do.
‘What did you say?’ Becca asks, settling on to a stool at the breakfast bar and accepting a peppermint tea, honey on the side.
‘I said,’ Mike repeats, leaning on the opposite side of the counter before springing off and finding things to do: straightening the tea towels, clearing the dried-out and used tea bags from the tea-bag holder, ‘if you don’t feel well enough for a chat, that’s OK, but I do have something I’d like to sound out with you.’
Becca sighs, casting a glance back over at the shut blinds in the living room. ‘I have bandwidth,’ she tells him. She’d rather hear Mike’s thoughts than marinade in the confusing mulch of her own. He’s handsome, Mike, in his marl-grey joggers with bare feet, his white T-shirt hugging his form. Isn’t this what Becca always wanted? Her man, making her tea, asking about her day, looking after her? ‘I’m just tired now, is all. I might go to bed early.’
Mike fishes about for new bin bags under the sink, coming up victorious and starting the messy endeavour of taking the full bag out, tying it, replacing it. He has an energy about him tonight, Becca thinks. Skittish. Something curdles in her stomach.
‘So,’ Mike presses, once he’s done. Finally he stands still, the only tick betraying his outward demeanour a bobbing, excited leg. ‘I have a whole PowerPoint presentation for you – I can give you the full kit and caboodle in terms of hard sell. But I’m … seventy-five per cent sure I won’t need the hard sell.’
Becca drinks. It’s warm and soothing, a reminder that she can do this. This will be OK.
But what is ‘this’?
‘I got a formal job offer today,’ he says, raising his eyebrows as he waits for her to be impressed – which she is. She was impressed when he started putting himself back out there again full stop, proud that he got back up again after his proverbial fall.
‘Oh, wow!’ Becca says, genuinely thrilled. She thinks about what her dad said after they’d got engaged: a man needs to feel like a man. Is this what she has been holding her breath for? This last piece of the puzzle? ‘I didn’t even know you’d interviewed – I haven’t wanted to breathe down your neck or anything. Oh, Mike, I’m so pleased for you!’
‘Well,’ Mike starts, and it’s obvious what he is going to say before he says it, because the look on his face is familiar. Drummers tap on her temples, rhythmless but persistent. She rubs at them.
‘It’s a perfect role for me,’ he says. ‘The guy knows everything about me: everything about the business, how it started and how it ended, that it’s been tough to bounce back. I met him through the consultancy gig. And he’s gone out on his own and wants me to join him. He’s passionate about having a team who have experienced failure to become better, which as a work culture is just great. There are two other people on the team who have had businesses end, for one reason or another, and as a team they go over the hows and whys as they build this new business – because it’s a start-up. Again. The money is good enough and will only get better, the people are good, it feels like a really great fit … We’re failing up, proving it’s possible.’
‘So what’s the catch?’ Becca asks.
‘OK, well, I just want to say: this is probably the best offer I’ll get. It’s a coaching business: there’s a website, an app, in-person and online events. It started from a place of grief for the founder, Jerry, and the ethos is based on how we have many losses in our lives, from our parents dying – which with Dad getting sick, it just so made me think, you know? – to the grief that comes from a smaller loss, like not getting a promotion or deciding not to have the second child you wanted, life events that we brush aside and don’t properly examine. This coaching business encourages building in a grieving period for those things, too, in this really healthy and positive way, which is just …’ He kisses his fingertips like a chef pleased with the meal they’ve just prepared. ‘It’s a contribution to undoing toxic masculinity, helping people embrace the lows as part of the highs, everything that I’ve been trying to do, personally, this year …’
Becca nods, letting him get his sales spiel out of his system. She loves him. She wants him to have the sparkle in his eye that she can see right now, plain as day.
‘The thing is’, he tells her, ‘that it’s in London, with some LA stuff needed to.’
‘I see,’ Becca says.
‘And the culture is very face to face. Remote working is great for the right company, but for the stage these guys are at, we’re talking being in the office at least three days a week, probably four.’
‘Hm.’
She drinks the last of her tea as Mike watches her, then puts her mug down beside his untouched one.
‘It feels like déjà vu, I know.’ He holds up his hands, gesticulating with passion. ‘This is exactly what happened last time. I get it. But London isn’t New York, and we’ve already trialled what it’s like for me to be away in the week and it worked, didn’t it?’
Becca’s shoulders slump. She runs a finger around the rim of her mug, around and around and around. Neither of them speak, and the air grows thick about them, like a crumbling house enveloped by rising weeds.
‘I thought …’ Mike says, eventually.
Becca looks at him. ‘The past few months have worked because it was temporary, Mike,’ she tells him. ‘I’ve been so clear about what I need from you. So upfront from the start that I’m not interested in—’
‘Me fulfilling my potential, like you fulfil yours?’
She remembers what he said, back in the summer, outside the café – that her certainty about what she wanted to do with her work life made him feel emasculated. Had she known then that this was ultimately where they’d end up, like a car crash in slow motion?
‘It’s only London, Bec.’
‘How much time in LA?’ she asks.
He looks at his feet. ‘Fifty per cent,’ he admits.
‘Have you already accepted it?’
She refuses to look away from him as he avoids her gaze, staring at him until he gathers the courage to fleetingly look at her and say, in a small voice, ‘Yes.’
Mike furrows his brow, frustrated, and closes his eyes as he cradles the back of his head, an exasperated coach whose team aren’t playing their best.
‘Look,’ Becca presses, after taking a breath, knowing she has to say this now, that if they push it aside or agree to talk tomorrow she will never find the courage to say it and will somehow betray herself. Carlos’s face pops into her mind, but this isn’t about him. Not right now. This is about her and Mike. ‘I’m not saying don’t go.’
Mike looks at her. Oh my God,’ he says. ‘Is this an ultimatum?’
Becca shakes her head. ‘No,’ she tells him. ‘And that is different from last time. I’m not angry that you’re excited about this job, or that you want to take it. And if you want to move to London, or LA, I won’t stop you. I haven’t seen you this enthused in the whole time you’ve been back. I know you love me, and I love you too …’
‘But what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Becca shrugs. ‘If your dad hadn’t got ill would our reunion just have fizzled out? We got engaged under such emotional circumstances, and I wanted you, and us. But … are we sure we want to get married?’
Mike’s jaw drops. ‘Woah,’ he says. ‘So now you don’t even want to get married? You’re saying … what? What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying … let’s slow this down. Can we talk about it?’
‘Talk about if we should get married?’
‘Yes.’
Mike shakes his head. ‘I honestly hoped you would say yes, you know. To moving. I thought we’d be husband and wife and start a brand-new life together. Not me just slotting back into the one you’ve made without me …’
‘My life is here.’
‘Even if I’m not?’
Becca bites her bottom lip. ‘Mike, answer this honestly: is your life still going to be out there, even if I’m not?’
She knows what the answer is, because she’s already seen it on his face. He wants the job more than he wants her. He needs the job more than he needs her – exactly as her dad said he would.
But.
She’s … relieved. She can’t fully articulate why, but there’s an inescapability about the conversation, a sense of the other shoe dropping. They’ve finally got their final chapter. Their third act. Their conclusion.
‘Ah, crap,’ he says, again.
‘I know,’ she tells him, standing up and moving to give him a hug. This is it; this is their ending.
Should they ever have started?
Yeah, she thinks, hugging him. I would always have wondered otherwise.
They stand in the kitchen, holding on to one another in silence. Becca starts to cry. She loves him, she knows she loves him … but she isn’t in love with him, not any more. They got carried away. And if Mike is really honest with himself, Becca knows he’ll come to the same conclusion. She feels his love, but he isn’t in love with her. He wouldn’t happily move across the world without her if he was.
35
She Doesn’t Text Back
‘I can’t believe you’re two weeks out from getting married, Bec! Isn’t it crazy to think how much has changed in only a few short months? Back in June all of this was just a wish and prayer and now here we are, only the middle of November, and … getting married!’
Becca sits opposite her best friend in the Italian deli, cradling baby Haoyu in her arms until he begins to squirm and cry, at which point she’s grateful that Jia Li motions for him to be handed back. Jia Li has been flicking through the mirror selfies Becca took from the fitting rooms of John Lewis, where she found an incredibly chic Bianca Jaggeresque white suit for the wedding day, which she intends to pair with a red lip and a low chignon, and a bunch of yellow mimosa.
‘You look very much like you, but on your wedding day, you know?’ Jia Li declares. ‘It’s going to be amazing.’
‘Yeah.’ Becca smiles. ‘That’s the exact vibe that I want. I don’t want to feel like I’m putting on a show, or a performance. And hopefully everything’s been organised in a way that means all of you feel that way, too – the guests. I’ve been to a lot of weddings where I don’t think I started having fun until after the dinner and speeches.’
Haoyu gurgles, a signal for Jia Li to flop her boob out. The first time she did it, Becca didn’t know where to look, if she should leave, what was polite. She’s seen Jia Li’s boobs before, but to see her breastfeed felt so intimate, until Jia Li had waved a hand and said, ‘I’m not gonna get any shier about it, so you may as well get used to it.’
‘I know what you mean about this year being wild though – me engaged to a man I didn’t know existed when we did those manifestations, you with a surprise baby. Which, I have to say, is less surprising than the fact that it’s Dave’s. I can’t believe I never knew you guys hooked up …’
‘I know,’ Jia Li replies. ‘But what can I say? When absolutely nobody knows, it makes it even hotter, and God, is that man hot in the sack. At the pub he’s all conservative and formal but get him naked and whoo!’
Becca looks pointedly at Haoyu, as if he could understand any of it.
‘He’s two weeks old, Bec. I think he’s too young to understand that he was conceived through my slutty declaration that I was DTF after one too many Bombay Sapphires.’
Becca laughs. ‘Fair. Very fair.’
‘I will say, though, I’ve had feelings for Dave pretty much this whole time. I don’t know why I ever took him to the friend-of-a-friend party and actively encouraged him getting together with somebody else. When he left with Kaylee, I was gutted.’
Becca tuts. ‘You idiot.’
‘I know! I own that! Dave thinks so too! I was just so terrified to be so close to something that good. We’d sleep together every few weeks, and then every week … now I know I was so up for it because he’d already got me pregnant. I reckon it was the pregnancy hormones; I was gagging for it. I’ve googled it, and apparently in the first trimester all that blood flow can make your clitoris––’
Becca holds up a hand. ‘I’ve got it,’ she says with a chuckle. ‘Thank you.’
Jia Li is nonplussed. ‘Well. I tried to push him away, I suppose, and then he actually dated her – and I like her, you know? I’m just relieved they broke up for their own reasons and not because of me.’
‘Didn’t Dave say he always fancied you though?’
‘Yeah.’ She laughs. ‘Intimidated, he reckons. My arse. The FBI couldn’t intimidate that man.’
‘And now you’ve given in to it. Given in to the something good …’
‘Disgusting, I know,’ Jia Li replies. ‘It’s like I didn’t want to stare directly into the sun or something, and now I can’t look away, even if it’s blinding.’
‘Blinded by love.’
‘Who’d have thought?
The women smile; the baby feeds; their pastries are eaten.
‘Don’t kill me,’ Becca says, and automatically Jia Li looks up and raises an eyebrow, like: Oh here she goes, go on then … ‘But … I always thought that you maybe had a thing for Carlos … ?’
She lets the not-quite-question hang in the air. Jia Li shakes her head.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she replies.
‘I’m just asking!’ defends Becca.
‘I know you are! That’s what makes you such an idiot!’
Becca shrugs and waits for a better answer, using the final bite of her croissant to mop up the last of the milk foam in her cup. When Jia Li doesn’t offer any more information, Becca says, ‘It’s just – I know something happened. Years ago now …’
‘It did,’ says Jia Li. ‘I tried to kiss him, he kissed me back for a split second, and then he said he didn’t feel the same.’
‘But you liked him?’
‘For a heartbeat, when I first started, yeah. I think I mostly wanted to see if I stood a chance, really. And when I realised I didn’t, I was upset for a week, maybe two, and then I was fine. I honestly don’t think about it, except to occasionally give him shit for it. Have you thought I was secretly in love with Carlos all this time?’
Becca scrunches up her nose. ‘Yeah,’ she admits. ‘I think I have.’
‘I swear to God, the pair of you need your heads knocking together.’
‘Who? Me and Carlos?’
‘Yes!’ cries Jia Li. ‘Jesus Christ!’
Jia Li blinks at her, and Becca waits.
‘Look,’ Jia Li says, with a Tone. ‘I’m not allowed to say any more because I am sworn to secrecy and you, my fair lady, have bigger things to worry about than Carlos. You’re getting MARRIED.’
Becca wants to ask follow-up questions, and yet can’t. His name turns over in the back of her mind: CarlosCarlosCarlosCarlos.
‘Did you know Noosh broke up with Carlos because she thinks he’s in love with me?’
‘I did know that, yes.’
‘Stupid, isn’t it?’
Jia Li rolls her eyes so hard her head might fall off.
‘You don’t think …’ Becca says.
‘I said I’m not allowed to talk about it.’
‘Talk about what?’ Becca presses.
‘Bec …’ Jia Li says, warningly. ‘If you open this box, you won’t be able to close it …’
Becca searches Jia Li’s eyes for clues, but only gets a warning.
‘Fine,’ Becca settles on, waving a hand. ‘You win.’ She mimics zipping her mouth and throwing away the key, because if she does that everything can stay the same and she doesn’t have to know anything that might rock the boat. Then, getting back on conversational track, she muses: ‘Did you ever think it might not happen? The happily ever after? You always seemed so relaxed that it would all work out and I’ve envied you for that, sometimes. All the years I tortured myself about where my guy is …’
‘And he was in a bar, waiting for me to get his number for you.’
Becca grins. ‘Yes, yes, my happily ever after is all because of you, the note-takers for today’s deposition will be sure to write that bit in bold.’
‘Thank you!’
Becca playfully hits her friend’s shoulder, careful not to disturb the baby.
‘And I did worry, for what it’s worth,’ says Jia Li. ‘I put on a good show, but I have to admit that I feel a relief at the man, the baby. Like, I can exhale. Don’t tell the other feminists I said that, though.’
