“Group hug,” I said, signaling for them to come to me. Maybe I was barmy.
“Absolutely not,” Bea said as everyone else reached around me.
“I love you guys. Thank you so much for being here with me even if…well, whatever happens with Nick.”
“We love you, too,” Cilla said. “Bea, get your bony arse over here and engage.”
“This is not one of Pudge’s interventions,” Bea sniffed, but she walked over and gave me a crisp pat on the shoulder just the same.
*
Tony’s latest project turned out to be called Misery, an aptness that seemed less funny once we got there and saw it was in an abandoned, recently condemned building on the South Bank that looked like the kind of place you’d visit if you were angling to catch hepatitis. There was yellow caution tape stretched across the front, broken glass from the ruined windows, and floors intentionally (or still?) littered with trash and assorted debris. The drinks were deliberately bad, and the music was the worst nightclub mix you could imagine, from morose Tracy Chapman to endless Gregorian chants. All the artsy, desperate hipsters lined up around the block were proclaiming it Tony’s most ingeniously subversive effort yet.
Two good things came out of that night. One was that Cilla dumped Tony for being a pretentious ass who’d tricked me and Lacey into spending our birthday at a potential hotbed for suicide. (“The rudest comedown from Gaz’s lovely dinner,” she’d rebuked him, and she’d been right in every way.) The other was that even in my emotionally reckless state, I couldn’t choke down more than a quarter of one poorly made bottom-shelf cocktail. So there was no false liquid courage when Nick showed up—I was stone-cold sober—and no drunken regrets when the end finally came.
I had actually texted Nick and told him not to bother, and that we’d speak in a day or so. He’d obviously picked up on my vibe, or been self-aware enough to know that this would be coming, because he ignored me and showed up anyway. The second I saw him, I wanted to pretend everything was fine, because…well, he was fine: His muscles were more sculpted after his military drilling, and because he’d borrowed Twiggy’s motorbike—as he always did whenever he wanted to travel quickly and anonymously—he’d also purloined his PPO’s snug, weathered leather jacket. The whole effect was very Top Gun. Nick seemed relieved when he saw that I was alive and whole in this den of scuzz, but as he walked toward me, my resolve steeled.
“Proceed with caution,” Lacey said quietly, laying a hand on my arm.
“What is this place?” Nick asked when he reached us, his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. “Are we sure Tony isn’t going to murder us all? What is that shirt?”
At my expression, he kissed me very chastely on the cheek, which made me go stiff. “Happy birthday…?” he said loudly, the words for the bystanders’ benefit and the question mark for mine.
“I told you not to worry about coming,” I said.
“But it’s your birthday,” he said reasonably.
“It is,” I said softly. “And it hasn’t been the best one.”
He sagged a little. “Bex, let’s go talk about this someplace else,” he said.
“No. Not tonight. I think you should just go.”
“Bex,” he said, trying to look pleasant for the sake of appearances.
“Nick,” I said, wiggling the vile potion in a cheap glass tumbler that was in my hand. “Don’t harsh my buzz. I’m trying to celebrate.”
“Rebecca.”
I didn’t care for his tone—whether he liked it or not, Nick had inherited a sliver of Richard’s flinty impatience, though he almost never deployed it—but I’d also known perfectly well my texts would freak him out, and I’d done nothing to correct that. I’ve never been patient; I wasn’t waiting for this fight any longer.
Cilla stepped toward me. “Tony has a trailer parked out back that he’s been using as a makeshift office,” she whispered. “Go. I’ll send Nick in a minute.”
The trailer was an Airstream that had clearly recently been a food truck, still tricked out with a restaurant-quality griddle and hot plates, and smelling faintly of old bacon grease. A crusty plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup lay unloved on the counter.
Nick walked in ten minutes later. In that time, my hackles had gone down somewhat, leaving in their place that cold, goosebumpy feeling you get when the sun goes behind a cloud.
“I didn’t want to do this tonight,” I blurted out at him. “Not here.”
Nick set his helmet on the counter. “I am amazed anyone wants to do anything here.”
He looked like he was wrestling with coming over to me, but I held up my hand.
“No,” I said. “Please don’t. If you come over here, we’ll just end up having sex on the griddle or something and that won’t help.”
“It might,” he said, but he stayed where he was.
My mind raced for what to say first, but as usual, my mouth had its own ideas.
“So, was Clive right?”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t be cute,” I said impatiently. “Clive told me I was destined to be discarded once you found someone more suitable.”
“Clive had an ulterior motive.”
“Doesn’t mean he was wrong,” I said. “Look at the facts, Nick. We’ve been together four years, and you still won’t be seen with me in public. I had Bea telling me I’m your safety play. I had Clive telling me I was a fool for doing this in the first place. The press is telling me I’ve been thrown over for your ex, you’re telling the press you’d rather die than be tied down—”
“Please, don’t remind me,” Nick groaned.
“—and all you are ever telling me is, ‘It’s not a good time,’ over and over, before going out and snuggling up with Gemma goddamn Sands. I had to sit there on your birthday and watch her kiss you, and act like it didn’t hurt, in front of a room full of people who knew enough to look over at me when it happened,” I said, heating up. “Watching you from afar I could take, but watching you do that, in front of my parents, in front of your family…But, you know what? I got through it. I passed that test. And then I got bumped for her again. Like I’m some mutt you picked up because it looked cute in the pet store but now you can’t make it presentable.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked, incredulous.
“What else can I think?” I asked. “I know that being who you are sucks for you sometimes, Nick. But I am who I am, and that cannot be someone who waits by the phone for her boyfriend to call and say she can come outside now. Especially because I’m starting to think that call won’t ever come.”
He smacked his hand against the counter. “That is not fair,” he said. “You know I was nervous about being with anyone so seriously this soon. You know how much that scared me.”