Married By Christmas (19 page)

‘That’s what you think?’ Miles asked her. ‘That’s what you think I’m doing?’

‘Yes!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘One minute it’s all, don’t worry Annie, we’re in this together and then just because I suggest we don’t make a fuss about one little falling asleep fully clothed on a sofa incident, I can’t see you for dust, so yes, Miles, that is exactly what I think you are doing!’

Miles stood up suddenly, causing Anna to totter backwards a step or two as he towered over her.

‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ Miles said. ‘I’m doing this for you!’

‘For me?’ Anna stamped her foot in indignation. ‘How can just abandoning me in the middle of everything be for me?’

‘Because … because you don’t belong to me!’ Miles blurted out. ‘And I’m not yours to rely on and I think that for a little while we both forgot that.’ There was a beat of silence, as Anna took in what he’d said. ‘In a couple of hours I’ve got the biggest audition of my life, and I need to focus on that now … on that only and not … not you, Anna.’

‘Oh,’ Anna said. ‘Oh God, Miles, I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Miles looked confused.

‘Yes, sorry. I’ve been so caught up in my own drama, and I’ve dragged you into it and completely forgotten why you are here. It’s this place, it’s changed me, for the worse. I haven’t made one list since I got here, I’ve barely thought about the wedding and you were right, I didn’t speak to Tom this morning, I didn’t even think about him. I’ve been obsessing about this woman that I’ve never met, and it didn’t even occur to me that I was trying to take over your life too.’

‘No, that’s not what I’m trying to say.’ Miles shook his head.

‘No, it’s OK,’ Anna said quietly. ‘I know I can be overpowering, only somehow in the last few days with you I’d forgotten. I don’t want to go Christmas shopping on my own, Miles, I want to support you, at your audition, like we said. And you don’t have to come tonight, to the play, and you can check out of the room, if you like. And we never, ever have to see each other again, if you’re really that sick of me. It’s fine, but, please, after everything you’ve done for me, please let me be there for you today. I promise I won’t talk to anyone, I won’t look at anyone. I’ll stay outside, in the snow, probably getting hypothermia. Just let me be the kind of friend to you that you have been to me, even if it’s just for a little while. It really would mean a lot to me.’

Miles looked at her for a very long moment, his expression hard to read, and then suddenly smiling, breezy Miles was back again.

‘OK, Annie. You can come to the audition, and I’ll come to the play. You’re right, we might as well make the most of the time that we have left to hang out together before you’re an old married lady and I am an international rock star and we take different paths for ever.’

‘Wow,’ Liv breathed, standing on the very top of the Rockefeller tower, side by side with Tom. ‘Wow, look!’

It wasn’t perhaps the best view the vantage point had ever afforded. The snowfall hadn’t subsided by even a little since they’d arrived, which made Liv think they were lucky that their flight hadn’t been diverted. They must have made it into JKF by the skin of their teeth. Low, pregnant-looking clouds lumbered over the pinnacles of the skyscrapers as if they might at any minute release an even heavier deluge, if the tops of the buildings pressed too hard. Still, the view was enough to take Liv’s breath away, even if they weren’t allowed onto the deck, for fear the wind might whisk them over the edge. She glanced up at Tom who was staring broodily into the tumult.

‘Still no call,’ he said miserably, clearly not seeing the same view that impressed Liv so much. She sighed. Since the anticlimax of their arrival she had tried her very best to distract him from Anna’s marked absence. Though they were both battling the exhaustion of some twenty hours without proper sleep, she was determined to force him to take in their surroundings, to enjoy where they were, instead of merely tolerating them as if they were in some particularly unpleasant holding area waiting for Tom’s life with Anna to begin again. So far nothing had really worked.

Liv had even sneaked off at one point and tried Anna’s phone herself several times, but it just rang through to voicemail each time. Now the greetings message that Liv must have heard at least a thousand times was actually starting to sound sarcastic and mocking, giving an overtired and overemotional Liv the distinct impression that Anna was lost somewhere in this city living the high life, instead of picking up the pieces left in her wake. Finally she sent Anna a text: ‘Tom & I in NYC, will meet you at your hotel. Call as soon as you get this … Anything you’re not telling me?’ That, she thought, might solicit some response from Anna, who hated even the idea of being in trouble over something she hadn’t done, but still nothing came back.

And now here they were standing on what felt like the top of the world. It felt like a lifetime moment, and Liv, despite the reasons they were here, was desperate to enjoy it but Tom was
still
sulking.

‘Oh, Tom, give it up,’ she said irritably, crossing her arms.

‘Give it up? Give what up? Worrying that my bride-to-be is lost in New York? That I’ve ruined everything, and that I probably deserve what I’m getting?’

‘Yes!’ Liv said, rolling her eyes. ‘Yes, give it up and stop worrying. Anna didn’t know we were coming. It’s hardly fair of you to think the worst of her just because she wasn’t sitting in her room alone, waiting to be rescued. She’s out somewhere being proactive – doing what you didn’t offer to do. And it’s what she’s best at. She’s not the sort of person to let life happen to her, if she can possibly stop it in its tracks.’

‘OK, OK,’ Tom muttered. ‘I’m enjoying the view.’ He looked around with a heavy sigh. ‘Let’s talk about something else then. Anything else – take my mind off Anna. I know, what about you?’ Tom said, turning to look at her suddenly.

‘What about me?’ Liv said, caught off guard by the question.

‘You never talk about yourself much,’ Tom said. ‘Not any more. I was thinking on the plane, when we first met at the club getting you to talk to me was like getting blood out of a stone.’

‘Was it?’ Liv asked him, uncertainly. She hadn’t been aware of him trying to squeeze words out of her particularly, mainly because she’d been hiding around corners willing her skin not to come out in scarlet blotches every time she walked past him, offering a casual ‘hey’.

‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘You’d scurry off after a class, and be home before I could catch you, for ages.’

‘Were you trying to catch me?’ Liv asked, confused.

‘Yes!’ Tom laughed, rolling his eyes, momentarily distracted from his misery. ‘Oh, Liv, you are funny!’

‘Am I? Am I funny?’ Liv asked, without very much mirth, before adding the inevitable question. ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “why”?’ Tom asked her, puzzled. ‘Do you really not know?’

‘I really don’t,’ Liv said. ‘I mean because I’m such a great kick-boxer? Or because I know all the best bars in London or … why?’

‘Because I fancied you, you muppet,’ Tom said shaking his head. ‘I don’t know how you don’t see all the attention you get from men, I really don’t.’

‘You fancied me?’ Liv repeated the question, rather testily. ‘Me? Wait – what attention?’

‘Yes, I fancied you!’ Tom said. ‘How many girls does a bloke meet who fight like a motherfucker, drink like a boy and look like Audrey Hepburn? Of course I fancied you! Almost every red-blooded male who meets you does.’

‘You never said!’ Liv spluttered, weighing up her sense of loyalty over even discussing the matter of attraction between her and best friend’s intended. ‘Why did you never say?’

Tom stared at her then, his face suddenly serious. ‘Because we hung out, for ages,’ he said. ‘We did stuff, went places, went to the cinema even, and you never, ever, not once gave me any sign that you fancied me back. I can take a hint, you know … eventually. Anyway, never mind, it all worked out for the best in the end.’

‘I never gave you a sign that I fancied you back,’ Liv repeated in disbelief. ‘What sort of a sign were you looking for? My tongue down your throat, whipping my bra off in the middle of the latest
Mission Impossible
? What?’

‘Either of those would have worked,’ Tom said slowly, puzzled by her angry response. ‘But you were just … You’ve always just treated me like a mate, so I thought that’s what you wanted us to be … Wait, are you telling me you
did
fancy me?’

‘No!’ Liv said quickly, her heart and shoulders sinking in unison. ‘OK, yes, yes, Tom. Yes, I did fancy you, and all those drinks and shopping and cinema trips we went out on, I was waiting for
you
to make the first move, you know like boys are
supposed
to? But you never did, so I had a birthday party, just so I could invite you, so I could try and make something happen. Only you met Anna and … fell in love with her and you would have met her anyway, I suppose, even if we had … done something. And presumably you would have fallen in love with her anyway, wouldn’t you? So …’

Liv wasn’t really sure where to go with that particular train of thought. It seemed to her that if you were about to marry someone then they had to be the person you were destined to be with from the beginning. Even if she and Tom had started seeing each other, as soon as he met Anna it probably would have been game over. He’d have fallen for her – how could he not? And things would still be the same as they are now, only she might have got to kiss him a lot first. Though, actually, Anna would never have gone out with someone her best friend had previously gone out with, so there would have been no Tom and Anna, no wedding, no emergency visit to New York. Tom would probably have drifted out of both of their lives by now and … Liv forced herself to stop thinking about what might have been. The idea that fate could be so fickle scared her. She’d always comforted herself with the idea that Anna and Tom were meant to be together; the thought that their relationship was somehow accidental was no comfort whatsoever.

‘Oh my God.’ Tom turned his back on New York City, leaning hard against the window, clearly not getting quite the same melodrama from the situation as Liv was. ‘That’s so weird, because that was my plan too. My plan was to come to the party and get up the courage to kiss you and see if you hit me or not. And you know what, I think if you’d opened the door instead of Anna, I probably would have kissed you right then and there, because I was too nervous to wait. Only you didn’t, Anna did.’ Tom shook his head. ‘Funny how things work out, isn’t it? If things had been different, I’d have been dating you instead of Anna.’

‘Yes, it’s funny,’ Liv said quietly, returning her gaze to the view.

‘I wonder what we’d have been like as a couple,’ Tom said, chuckling. ‘I mean it would have been odd, wouldn’t it? I wonder how long we would have lasted, what we would have been like together, I mean. I can’t imagine it now, can you? Funny!’

‘Hi-fucking-larious,’ Liv said, turning on her heel and heading suddenly for the lift.

‘What? Wait, Liv, hold up!’ Tom caught up with her in two easy strides as she was forced to come to a standstill outside the bank of lifts.

‘Stupid tall buildings,’ Liv muttered under her breath. ‘Who needs more than four floors for anything, anyway, bloody stupid city, and stupid lifts.’

‘Liv!’ Tom said her name. ‘What have I said? Come on, this isn’t like you. You don’t do that girly thing of getting all cross with a man, and not telling him why. That’s one of the things I love about you.’

Liv’s head snapped round to look at him, her eyes narrowing dangerously at his casual usage of the word that had been plaguing her more or less since she set eyes on him all those months ago. Fortunately, she heard a gratifying ping behind her as the lift door slid open, hissing her response.

‘If you don’t know then I’m not telling you,’ she said stepping inside, and tapping the doors closed button furiously. ‘Get the next lift. I’m not talking to you.’

‘But what do you mean? Why?’ Tom called through the ever narrowing gap in the door. ‘What about the skating, do you still want to …?’

The door slid shut, and Liv found herself mercifully alone for a few minutes at least. The idea, the very idea that she’d come so close to being with the man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about ever since meeting him made her want to beat her fists against the wall, punch Tom on the nose and go and find Anna and rip all her hair out for accidentally getting in the way of Tom’s fleeting interest in her. Except of course really the only person she could be angry at was herself. After all she’d had countless opportunities to give him that one particular look or touch that would have absolutely – with no room for doubt – shown him how she felt about him. Even if she’d had no idea how to do that. She’d also been the one who’d invited him into the home she shared with her taller, curvier, blonder flatmate, the one who always outshone her, even when she didn’t mean to. And most of all it had been stupid, moronic, idiotic her who’d persisted in feeling the same way about Tom even though she now had concrete proof that he was as dumb as a bag of rocks.

When the lift finally reached the ground floor, the doors opened to reveal Tom standing there. His lift had somehow beaten hers.

‘I caught the express,’ he said, by way of an explanation.

‘Oh,’ Liv said, shouldering her way past him and marching towards the lobby exit.

‘Liv, I’ve worked it out, why you are pissed off,’ Tom said.

She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes, of course you are, you have every right to be. And I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’ Liv said, turning round very slowly to look at him.
Sorry for not kissing you first, sorry for not realising it’s you and always has been
, were the words running through her jet-lagged head. She lifted her teary eyes to his, dimly hopeful of a Hollywood ending right then and there. (Even if there was still Anna to square away.)

‘To put you in such an awkward position, talking about fancying you when I’m about to marry Anna. I know that must seem disloyal to you, and you’re right. I’m completely out of order. It’s Anna I’ve got to think about now, Anna above everything else and it was crass of me to even bring it up.’