What a Girl Wants (22 page)

‘The same but different?’

‘It’s telling stories,’ I said. ‘It’s all telling stories.’

‘And speaking of stories,’ Kekipi unfastened his bow tie and began wrapping it around his fingers into a tidy bundle before popping it into his jacket pocket, ‘what on earth happened with you and Mr Miller last night?’

‘I am still very angry about that.’ I resumed pointing. And then drinking. And then pointing. ‘That was a shitty thing to do.’

‘Amy and I consulted and we felt that a conversation needed to occur.’ He pushed my arm back down again. ‘I apologize for my devious nature – just this once. But seriously, dish. What happened?’

‘He went mental.’ I looked back across the bar to see Nick still talking to the random brunette. She was far too pretty for me to be OK with the situation. Very long legs. Really good tits. Clearly the devil.

‘Expand?’

‘He’s angry that I lied to him.’ I forced my eyes back to my big gay bestie and away from Nick’s Sophia Loren-lookalike. ‘And he said he could never be with me. But then tonight, outside the opera …’

‘Go on?’

‘We had a bit of a snog-type thing,’ I admitted to a round of delighted applause. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Can I have another drink?’

‘You can have two.’ He filled my champagne glass until the bubbles overflowed and trickled down my fingers. ‘It’s quite obvious what’s going on here: he’s punishing you. He’s hurt, his ego is in tatters and he’s punishing you. Straight men are so cliché.’

‘You think?’ I puckered up my lips to meet the champagne glass as early as possible and still managed to spill it down the front of my dress. Thankfully, Kekipi had his eyes on Nick and Sophia.

‘Honey,’ he topped off his own champers and smiled, ‘I told you once that you were my hero; you’re playing this just right.’

‘Wasn’t that the time I kicked that awful man in the balls and then threw up in my hair?’

‘He was a terrible homophobe,’ Kekipi reasoned. ‘You threw up in your hair? I’m sure you just had half a McChicken sandwich in there.’

‘Either way …’ I stared at the champagne flute in my hand, glanced over at Amy on the tabletop and suddenly realized this was all a huge mistake.

‘No, you’ve been perfect until now,’ Kekipi continued. ‘You stay detached and distant, show how much you don’t care, and it’ll drive him crazy. Don’t give an inch.’

‘But I passed out in a garden last night and woke up without my shoes,’ I stage-whispered over the music. ‘I think maybe I do care.’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t need to know that, does he?’ he said with a sigh. ‘You’re so lucky you found me. Now drink that drink and get your bestie off that table before she breaks her neck and kills herself. Or worse, tears her dress.’

Taking my orders, I marched across the bar, only bashing my hip against two chairs as I went. The bar was already dark and tiny and aside from our awkward foursome, Gino, Francesca and Sophia Loren, the only other patrons were three older Italian gentlemen who really didn’t look to me like they cared for random English girls dancing on their tables. Or gay Hawaiian men paying the bartender two hundred euros to play music from his iPhone. They just did not come off as Miley Cyrus fans.

‘Amy!’ I shouted, holding on to the back of a chair so that I didn’t fall down when I looked up. My centre of gravity was seriously compromised by my heels. And the shots. And the champagne. ‘Get down, you’re going to break your neck.’

‘Fuck off, Mum,’ she shouted back, kicking in the general direction of my face and thankfully missing. ‘I’m having fun.’

‘Please?’

‘No.’

‘For me?’

‘No.’

‘Kekipi wants to tell us some stories about secret gay celebrities.’

Scrambling to her knees and then her down onto her bum and finally her feet, Amy grabbed her handbag from underneath the table and gripped my arm as though it was about to fall off.

‘Tell me it’s neither of the Ryans?’ she pleaded with big blue eyes.

I gave her an elaborate and dramatic shrug and watched her scuttle across the bar as fast as her feet would carry her. Which was, to be fair, much faster than mine would, even out of heels.

Sinking into the nearest seat, I couldn’t stop myself from staring over at Nick. There he was, all smiles and charm, still talking to the Italian woman. He had taken off his tie in the car and the top three buttons of his shirt were undone and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew the woman he was talking to was being treated to flashes of his toned, tanned skin and the light scattering of blond hair across his chest and it made me crazy.

Just admit it, the voice in my head was back again. You’re gagging for it.

‘Where is the rubber duck when you need him?’ I said, wishing I’d brought my drink with me, even though the room was already starting to spin. ‘I am so not gagging for it.’

And I wasn’t. I was in so much deeper than that. Every second that I sat there, watching Nick chat up another woman, I could feel myself getting darker and darker. I couldn’t bear it. It was making my skin crawl. I had sat in student unions, in bars, in restaurants, at weddings, at work and even slept in the same room as Charlie and his assorted girlfriends over the years and it had made me sad. I’d been disappointed. But did I do anything? No. I threw myself into my work and ignored it, hoping it wouldn’t last long. It never did. But this … this was terrifying. I felt a hair’s breadth away from frenzy. If that woman touched so much as a hair on Nick’s head, I didn’t know what I would do. And in that moment, it was all so clear. I saw him, I saw myself, I saw everything.

The woman leaned over and rested her hand on Nick’s arm and, laughing like a madwoman while I stared like a psycho, I was on my feet before I even knew where my feet were.

‘Right, that’s it!’ I shouted, kicking my shoes across the room. ‘Get off him. Get right off!’

Since there were only thirteen people in the bar, including the staff, it wasn’t hard to get everyone’s attention, even over Miley. In fact, she probably could have walked through the door and twerked herself silly and no one would have noticed.

‘
Scusi?
’ The woman looked appropriately startled as I threw myself in between her and Nick, elbowing him backwards to make room. ‘Nick, this is your friend?’

‘No,’ I answered for him. ‘I’m not his bloody friend.’

‘She’s not,’ he confirmed. ‘Definitely not. Tess, what are you doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ I could hear myself slurring and couldn’t quite work out why. Everything sounded fine in my head. ‘But I know what I’m not doing. I’m not sitting over there while you stand here, being all Mr Charming Arse and flirting with this woman!’

I patted her on the shoulder and smiled as apologetically as I could.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘This is a whole big thing. It’s not your fault you’re the sea witch.’

‘The sea witch?’ She was confused. It was sad.

‘Yeah, it’s this whole Disney thing,’ I explained, waving my arms around in the air. Was it me or had my hair got bigger? ‘Amy will explain it to you.’

‘Amy?’

‘Really, this doesn’t concern you,’ I said, turning my attention to Nick. ‘It concerns you. And your “I’m not interested but I am interested but I’m not interested” bollocks.’

‘Are we really going to do this now?’ Nick asked through gritted teeth. ‘Because I’d really rather not.’

‘I don’t give two shits about what you’d rather do,’ I wailed. ‘I waited for someone to make his mind up for ten years, Nick.
Ten years
. And now I’m supposed to sit there like some twat and wait for you to decide what you want? No way. Forget that.’

Somewhere in the bar, I heard Amy cheering.

‘You told me how you felt and I listened and I’ve gone along with your hot-and-cold headfuck of an attitude until now but enough is enough!’ I stamped my bare foot on the bar floor to prove my point. ‘I like you. I more than like you. Actually, I think I probably might that other word you, but I can’t say it here and I’m not going to say it because you’re awful and you can’t make your mind up and you’re just messing with me and my foot hurts.’

I looked down at the floor, trying to pick up my foot and bend down to check it out, all at the same time. First mistake. The second was grabbing hold of the front of Sophia Loren’s dress to stop myself from falling when I inevitably went over.

‘Oh shit,’ I yelped as we both toppled to the floor, me with a handful of frock, her with both boobs popping out as we went.

‘I think that’s our cue to leave.’

On my hands and knees, surrounded by too much tulle, my own blood and an empty bottle of limoncello I faintly recognized, I felt at least one pair of tiny fists beating me around the head while two bigger hands grabbed me around my waist and yanked me upwards.

‘Sorry,’ I shouted as I was hoisted onto someone’s shoulder and carried towards the door. ‘
Mi scusi
.
Ciao Ciao
!’

The cold night air was a shock. It had been so hot in the bar, and from my unconventional upside-down view, I could see it had rained while we had been inside. No wonder it was so lovely and fresh. With blood rushing to my ears, it was hard to follow the exact conversation but there were definitely two male voices involved and whatever they were discussing, we were not standing still to do it.

‘Could you please put me down, please?’ I asked, the contents of my stomach, almost entirely liquid, beginning to churn.

‘No.’

‘But I might do a sick.’

Without another word, I was immediately turned the right way round.

‘I need Amy to hold my hair,’ I said, brushing my hair out of my face and laughing as it sprang right back. ‘She holds my hair best.’

‘Amy is still in the bar, retrieving your shoes and Kekipi’s phone,’ Nick said, turning a corner and finally setting me down on the damp ground. ‘What the fuck just happened in there?’

I pouted and shrugged.

‘I got the shoes!’ I heard Amy and looked over to see her holding my heels over her head triumphantly. Altogether less triumphant was the huge red stain in the middle of her chest. Kekipi’s jaw dropped as we all stared at her. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t been shot – that chick threw a glass of red wine at me. Probably fair.’

‘The dress!’ Kekipi reached out to lean one hand against the wall. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’

‘I’m definitely going to be sick,’ I said, kneeling down and gathering my hair behind my head.

‘They wouldn’t give me your phone,’ Amy told Kekipi, rummaging in her own tiny evening bag. ‘And I think I’ve forgotten mine.’

‘Thank you,’ I whispered to Nick as he took hold of my handheld ponytail as I leaned over and threw up delicately in the gutter. Wiping my mouth on the sleeve of my dress I smiled at him. ‘I love you.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Nick crouched in front of me, his hands still holding my hair, not quite beaming back. ‘Have you got your phone to call the car?’

‘Yeah,’ I muttered, sitting up straight and pawing through my purse. ‘Here.’

Nick passed my phone to Kekipi and sighed.

‘What am I going to do with you?’ he asked. ‘What was that?’

‘You’re supposed to say “I love you” back,’ I pointed out, trying not to throw up again. My body did not care for lemon-flavoured liqueurs. ‘Or at least give me a thumbs up.’

‘No, you’re not supposed to give someone a thumbs up when they tell you they love you,’ Nick replied. ‘Not ever.’

‘Now you tell me,’ I said, taking my phone back and holding it in my hand. Squeezing the hard, sharp brick helped me focus. ‘Can we go home?’

‘The car will be here in two minutes,’ Kekipi said, bending down to rest his hand against my forehead. ‘We’ll be home in fifteen, sweetcheeks. I really do have to stop getting you drunk, don’t I?’

‘No,’ I said with much seriousness. ‘I think my tolerance is improving.’

‘You really are my hero,’ he smiled back at me. ‘Come on, let’s get you to your feet.’

It felt like we waited forever for the car to arrive but I put that down to the fact that everyone else seemed very concerned that the people from the bar were going to hunt us down and kill us. Once we were safely inside and motoring through he streets of Milan, I pulled out my phone, remembering the weird emoji-filled text from Charlie.

Not for the first time, my phone did not want to play fair. It took forever to open up the conversation and even longer before it allowed me to scan up to my last sent message. ‘Oh, fuck off,’ I muttered, pulling my hair into my face so I couldn’t see my phone. It was the perfect plan.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nick asked, stroking my hair away from my head. ‘Are you going to be sick again? Do we need to stop?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ I promised, lying through my back teeth. ‘It’s nothing.’

Impressively, I had lied twice in that short sentence. I was absolutely going to be sick again and it really wasn’t fine. Lying on the backseat of the car, resting my head in Nick’s lap, I flashed back to the night before, back to my secret garden. The reason Charlie had sent me a text message full of smiley-faced emojis was because he was happy. And the reason he was happy was because I had sent him a text message of my own.

A text message that said “I love you too” and there was not a single thumbs up emoji to be seen.

‘I can’t believe you made me walk this morning.’ Amy reached up and grabbed the sunglasses from my face, slapping them over her own eyes. ‘I think I’m dying. I didn’t think limoncello was that strong.’

‘If we’d got in the car, I would have thrown up,’ I said, squinting down the street and checking numbers on the buildings. ‘And I don’t think limoncello is any stronger than anything else but it probably doesn’t go that well with whisky and champagne.’

‘This bag is heavy – being an assistant is rubbish,’ she moaned. ‘I’m leaning towards the agency, right now. Could I be your secretary? I could answer the phones and fetch sandwiches and find a husband.’

Sixty-seven, sixty-nine, seventy-one.

‘Not sure the agency is going to be an option,’ I said, shifting my genuinely heavy backpack and stopping to check the directions on my phone. ‘I have to talk to Charlie about last night.’