rugby player. Sarah’s the same, usually.
‘There must have been a heck of a lot of free champagne for Sarah to get like that,’ I say, recalling the way she’d reeled into the flat earlier.
‘I’m not a big fan of the stuff so she had mine,’ he says. ‘They kept topping us up. She was drinking for two to save me from the embarrassment of saying no.’
I laugh. ‘She’s all heart, that girl.’
‘She’s going to have a headache in the morning.’
We lapse into silence again. I cast around for something to say to fill the chasm, because if I don’t, I’ll do the unthinkable and ask him if he remembers me from the bus stop. I really, really hope that at some point I stop having to consciously fight that particular urge, that it stops being important, or even relevant, to me. It’s a work in progress.
‘She likes you a lot,’ I blurt.
He takes a long, slow slug of his beer. ‘I like her a lot too.’ He looks at me sideways. ‘Are you about to warn me that if I ever hurt her you’ll come after me and black my eyes?’
‘Don’t think I couldn’t,’ I say, and then I make this ridiculous karate chop motion because I’m all bravado and no conviction, and what I was actually thinking was that I like them both a lot and it’s giving me the mother of all problems.
My loyalty lies firmly with Sarah, of course; I know where the line is and I’ll never cross it, but it’s just that sometimes the line feels like it’s been drawn with chalk on the grass, like at a school sports day, easily rubbed out and redrawn, but never in quite the same place as before. On nights like tonight, for instance, it has inched forward, and then on mornings like tomorrow, I’ll diligently push it back again.
‘Your secret ninja skills have been duly noted.’
I nod.
‘Not that you’re going to need to use them on me,’ he goes on. ‘I like Sarah more than enough to not want to hurt her.’
I nod again, glad for Sarah that he’s kind, sad for me that he’s Sarah’s, and mad at the world for being shitty enough to put me in this crap position in the first place.
‘Good. Then we understand each other.’
‘Spoken like a true mafia moll.’ He leans forward to slide his empty beer bottle on to the table. ‘A mafia ninja. You’re turning out to be a dangerous woman to be around, Laurie.’
Especially when I’ve had a bottle of wine and I half love you, I think. I really should go to bed now, before I scrub the chalk line out and move it forward again.
Jack
You’re turning out to be a dangerous woman to be around, Laurie.
What the bloody hell are these words coming out of my mouth? It sounds like a cheap pick-up line in a naff made-for-TV movie, when all I was trying to do was say we’re friends. You stupid Jackass; I berate myself using the nickname I carried through school like a badge of honour. My school reports were littered with variations of the same comment, though more politely put: ‘If only Jack applied as much effort to his studies as he does to acting the fool, he’d go a long way.’
I like to think I proved them wrong; when it came to the crunch my grades were just about decent enough to scrape into my first choice of uni. Truth is that I was lucky; I’ve been gifted with a near photographic memory, so those textbooks and theories only needed to go in once and they stayed there. With that and an ability to talk crap to anyone, I’ve done okay. Though for some reason my ability to talk doesn’t seem to extend to Laurie.
‘So, Laurie. What else should I know about you, besides the fact that you’ll beat me black and blue if I hurt your best mate?’
She looks startled by my question. I don’t blame her. The last time I asked anyone a question like that was my one and only hideous attempt at speed dating. What am I doing, interviewing her?
‘Umm …’ She laughs, music-box light. ‘There’s not really very much to tell.’
I try to bring it back to normal, shooting her a ‘try harder’ look. ‘Come on, throw me a bone here. Sarah wants us to be best buddies. Give me your three most embarrassing facts, and then I’ll give you mine.’
She narrows her eyes and her