Authors: Lindsey Kelk
‘I bet I could,’ Amy said. ‘Charlie’s not good enough for you.’
‘And what’s not good enough?’ I asked, coming over all spikey and defensive on Charlie’s behalf. I was giving myself emotional whiplash. ‘The fact that he’s sweet and caring and funny? That he’s always been there for you and me whenever we’ve really needed him? That he comes home with me so I don’t have to deal with my mum on my own? Shit, the fact that he’s met my mum and still wants to be with me should be reason enough to put a bloody ring on it.’
‘Fine, I’m convinced,’ she replied. ‘After ten years of you giving him the puppy dog eyes, Charlie Wilder is the world’s most amazing man, apart from when he’s being a thoughtless shithead, and has finally woken up and realized that you are the absolute dog’s bollocks and that he wants to make an honest woman out of you, conveniently at the exact time you’re looking elsewhere. He wants what he suddenly might not be able to have. Awesome.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said, wondering whether or not it might not be a little bit like that.
But Amy wasn’t finished. ‘And regardless of how you feel about Charlie and regardless of how many phone calls or emails you have not received, you cannot sit there and tell me you don’t have feelings for Nick which, at the very least, says something about your feelings for Charlie.’
It was altogether too close to home.
‘What have I told you about using the “N” word?’ I pulled my feet up underneath me, burrowing into the settee.
‘And you can’t keep referring to him as “the N word”,’ she said. ‘People really aren’t going to be OK with that.’
‘What’s happening with him anyway? You called him and he hasn’t called you back?’ Paige was trying to look supportive but I knew it was a strain. After all, she had history with Nick and much more of a history than I did, even if it was a history of rejection.
‘Pretty much.’ I shook my head. ‘But what’s the point anyway? It was a holiday fling. He didn’t even know my real name, for God’s sake. This is real life: Charlie and the agency and chicken cook-in sauces. Maybe that doesn’t seem as glamorous and exciting to everyone as Milan and photoshoots, but it’s exciting to me. And the Charlie thing … It’s throwing me because I’ve wanted this for so long and now maybe I have it. How would that not be confusing? To anyone?’
‘That’s how I felt when I got my first Chanel 2.55 bag,’ Paige nodded with genuine sympathy this time. ‘It was like “can I actually take this out? Can I actually use this?” It’s hard.’
‘You’re both fucking mental.’ Amy was not big on Chanel bags or metaphors. ‘And Tess, I know how long you’ve been in love with that cockwomble, but you’re not the kind of girl who only wants what she can’t have. I should know, because I am. So if you’re not champing at the bit to shack up with Mr Wonderful, there’s a good reason for it and I don’t believe it’s just nerves. I think you’ve got real feelings for Nick and I don’t think you can ignore that.’
‘How can I have real feelings for him?’ I asked, burning up. ‘I only knew him for a week. And he didn’t really know me at all.’
It was a question I’d been asking myself a lot, only Amy and Paige didn’t realize it was rhetorical. I did have feelings for him – big, scary feelings that I didn’t understand and, in all honesty, did not want to. I’d always been so safe and secure in my feelings for Charlie but every time I thought about Nick, my stomach clenched and my hands made tiny fists and I wanted to hit something. Preferably him. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up with nothing but my über-crush on Charlie back the way it was. Everything would be so much simpler.
‘To be fair, you did lie to the man about your entire existence while merrily shagging him senseless,’ Amy said. ‘Even after he bared his soul to you. I might take a few days to call you back for a chat, to be fair.’
‘He bared his soul?’ Paige looked less than impressed. ‘You mean, he pulled out some of his cheesy old lines?’
‘There were cheesy lines in the beginning,’ I admitted, not wanting to come to his defence but entirely incapable of stopping myself, ‘but there was a certain degree of soul-baring after a bit. Maybe not baring, maybe it was more like soul-flashing.’
‘What a knob,’ she breathed, taking a big deep drink of her wine. ‘Him, not you.’
‘It’s starting to feel like it never happened.’ I flipped to the sent messages in my phone and saw his name over and over. I wondered what would give out first, his refusal to reply or my dignity. ‘Every morning when I wake up, it feels more and more like I was never in Hawaii, like he never existed.’
‘Don’t upset yourself over it,’ Paige said, shifting in her seat. ‘I’m sure it was all bullshit. I don’t know if that man is capable of anything other than trying to get into a woman’s pants.’
Paige had known Nick a lot longer than I had and I was fully aware that she had tried very hard to get into his pants, and not the other way around. And that didn’t make this conversation awkward at all.
‘Bottom line is,’ Amy shrugged and emptied her second glass of wine, ‘something is stopping you from moving on with Charlie. Something’s got you stuck. That something is Nick.’
‘Paige, can you come and check these shots?’ the photographer bellowed from the set below. With a very grumpy look on her face, Paige dutifully stood up and marched down the stairs.
‘Shout if the models need oiling. The male models,’ Amy yelled as she went before turning her attention back to me. ‘I know I haven’t been entirely Team Charlie when it comes to you two being together-together but if you tell me this is what you really, really want, I will shut my mouth, buy you a shit housewarming present and never say the “N” word again. But you have to be entirely honest before you get yourself into something you might regret.’
‘You really have got to stop calling him that,’ I sighed.
There it was again. What did I want? ‘I don’t want to ruin everything because of a holiday romance hangover.
‘Life isn’t a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, Amy,’ I said. ‘If I cock this up, I can’t just go back to the end of the last chapter and try something else.’
‘Oh, Tess,’ She smiled and hugged me, squeezing my shoulders tightly. ‘That’s
exactly
what life is: nothing is set in stone, nothing has already been decided. That’s where you’ve been going wrong all these years.’
‘Am I interrupting something beautiful?’ Charlie’s voice broke through our Kodak moment, making Amy jump and spill my wine before I could drink it. Which was probably best. ‘Don’t let me stop you, I always knew there was something going on with you two.’
‘Didn’t I tell you not to tell him where we were?’ Amy jumped to her feet, kissed him on the cheek and bounced off downstairs to the set. ‘Just because she’d rather be in bed with me than you. No need to be jealous, Wilder.’
‘Amy,’ Charlie nodded. ‘Always a pleasure.’
He clambered onto the settee, all arms and legs and coppery curls, looking like a sexy hipster Bambi man.
‘I see she’s taking this well?’ he said, pulling the strap of his man-bag over his head and setting it carefully on the cushion between us. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ I nodded with too much enthusiasm, not sure what to do. Normally we’d have hugged by now or I’d have taken the piss out of him for his jeans being too skinny or unfastened the second button of his T-shirt because one wasn’t enough and three would be too many. Instead, I put my wine glass down and sat on my hands. ‘You had a busy day?’
‘I played football manager for about three hours and then I remembered outside existed so I went out and got you this.’ He pulled a blue carrier bag out of his messenger bag and handed it to me with a flourish. ‘Sorry it’s not wrapped.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. I bloody loved presents. Surprises not so much, but presents? Yes, please.
‘Open it,’ he said, his smile almost bigger than mine. ‘I hope it’s right.’
Inside the bag was a box and inside that box, was a camera.
‘Oh, Charlie, you didn’t!’ I tore away the packaging as carefully as I could and pulled out a brand-new Canon camera. It was almost identical to my old one, lighter and shinier and with fewer bumps and bruises on the body, but the buttons were all in the same places and she fell into my hands as though I’d known her forever. ‘You can’t have!’
He inched over on the sofa and squeezed my knee, his huge hand covering half my thigh in the process. ‘I can and I did,’ he said in a low voice that made every inch of my skin prickle. ‘And you’re going to go to Milan and take amazing photos of Mr – I forget his first name – Bennett and his clothes and whatever else you want to take amazing photos of and you’re going to be amazing at it.’
‘But the pitch?’ I looked up at him and then at my camera, my beautiful camera; beautiful, beautiful Charlie. ‘It’s only a week away.’
‘Yes it is,’ he said as I reached out to unfasten his second button; I couldn’t look at it for a moment longer. Charlie covered my hand with his and I felt a warmth wash over my entire body. ‘But I don’t want to wake up next to you every morning, not knowing whether or not you’re wondering “what if?” because I know you’d never say anything. So I’m not giving you the chance to regret this. OK?’
Just when you thought you knew everything about someone, they had to go one better.
‘This is amazing,’ I said, cradling the camera in my lap and leaning over to give Charlie the biggest hug I could muster. ‘You’re amazing.’
‘I’m all right,’ he replied. ‘And let’s be honest, I’m just trying to warm you up for later.’
I looked away so he wouldn’t see me blush. We’d always flirted with each other but now I knew I was going to have to follow through, I couldn’t seem to keep the colour out of my cheeks.
‘I talked to my mate at Perito’s this morning,’ he said, squeezing my knee. ‘He’s going over to Portugal with his team on Monday and he asked if we wanted to go along, meet the founders of the company and all that.’
‘But Milan?’ I held my camera tightly. ‘And you hate flying?’
‘I told him you were already otherwise engaged,’ he said, fiddling with his newly opened button. ‘But I said I’d go. Double scotch and some positive thinking and I’ll be OK. It’s got to be a good sign, hasn’t it?’
‘It’s an amazing sign,’ I agreed, a twinge of jealousy in my chest that I wouldn’t get to go along. Not that I didn’t have an adventure of my own to worry about. ‘I’m really excited.’
Admittedly, I didn’t sound
that
excited but I was somewhat distracted by what was happening below us in the studio.
‘Is there any point in asking what’s going on down there?’ Charlie asked, nodding at the set downstairs.
Amy had done a fine job of making herself useful. I watched as she merrily rubbed moisturizer into the chest of one of the male models, bouncing from foot to foot, while Paige was on all fours on the bed, demonstrating a particularly uncomfortable-looking pose for the female model, who still looked bored. Gorgeous, but bored.
‘There is not,’ I replied, turning my back on it all and looking back down at my lovely camera again. ‘This really is amazing, you know.’
‘Doesn’t really feel like the right time to get all heavy …’ He gestured over to where Amy was now rubbing lotion into the chests of two men at once with her eyes closed. ‘But I wanted you to know I’m serious about this. And that I’m going to do whatever I can do to make you happy. It’s all I can think about, that we should be together. You’re what I care about.’
I still couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. ‘More than Arsenal?’ I asked, doubtful.
‘Let’s not go completely crazy.’ He ran his hand through his already messy hair and grinned. It was so fucking adorable, my heart almost exploded. ‘But getting there, at the very least. So, can we go?’
‘
Go?’
‘Home?’ he said, taking the camera out of my hands and slipping it back inside the box. I fought the urge to slap his hands away – given that he had paid for it in the first place I supposed he was allowed to touch it. ‘I’ve cleared out two entire drawers. For you.’
Oh yeah, he’d asked me to move in. And while I hadn’t said no, I hadn’t said yes, either. In fact, if I recalled correctly, I’d said I needed time to think. I rested my hand on the camera box and breathed out slowly, confused by the thought that it might not be a lovely, thoughtful gift but a very expensive pat on the head. Had he just assumed I was going to move in? That I was going to say yes to joining the agency?
‘I said I’d stay with Amy tonight,’ I said. ‘She had a job interview today and it didn’t go very well and she’s stressing out so …’
‘She doesn’t look that stressed,’ Charlie said, disappointment all over his face. ‘Are you sure? I was going to cook for you.’
‘Now I’m definitely sure!’ I took the camera, safely back in its plastic bag, and gripped the handles tightly. My precious camera. My precious, emotionally loaded, symbolic camera. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken. I know I can’t cook for shit,’ he said with a shrug. ‘To be honest, I was hoping you’d take over halfway through anyway.’
‘Because I’m such a domestic goddess?’ I stood when he stood, leaning into a kiss that still felt strange. Lovely, but strange. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Will you though?’ Charlie pulled his Oyster card out of his bag and stuck it in his back pocket. ‘Because I’ve heard that one before.’
‘Odds are good,’ I confirmed. ‘I’d say better than fifty per cent.’
‘OK. Tess?’ He stopped halfway down the stairs and looked back up at me, all pale skin and big eyes and wide, happy mouth.
‘Charlie?’ I sat back down on the settee, happily stroking my camera. I was probably overreacting. He wasn’t trying to force me into a decision I wasn’t ready to make. That wasn’t Charlie at all. He wouldn’t do something like that.
‘I love you.’
My eyebrows shot up so high I assumed they were forever lost in orbit around the earth.
It was hardly the first time the ‘L’ word had left Charlie’s lips and found my ears but this was different. This wasn’t the same as when I brought him an Egg McMuffin because he had a hangover or called him an Addison Lee because he was too lazy to get the night bus from mine. This was a legitimate ‘I Love You’. This was my first ever ‘I Love You’. I had no idea what to do.