getting married in the morning!’ I wail, placing my head on the table. The cold surface soothes my hot head. Mum bustles around to my side of the booth and evicts Lisa. She grabs me and pulls me into a hug. I close my eyes tightly so I can’t glimpse her appalled and aggrieved face. It’s bad enough dealing with my own disappointment.
‘What am I going to do?’ The whiskey loosens my tongue and I start to blather, giving voice to thoughts I hadn’t allowed to blossom fully. All my secret, difficult thoughts, that I’ve been working so hard to keep entombed.
‘Sometimes when I’m with Scott, I think that we are made for one another. At least, I did in the beginning. I really did. It was so exciting, overwhelming. I thought it was it, you know, everything you ever read about or dreamed about.’
Everyone is gathered around me now; all my loved ones, they nod and murmur their understanding. Only Adam has stayed in his seat and is silent. While every other face is twisted with concern or blazing with a ghoulish astonishment, Adam doesn’t change his expression from neutral. I keep peeking at him but I have no idea what he is thinking. Most likely he’s using every iota of self-control to resist yelling, ‘I told you so!’ In my effort to be honest, I’m probably really hurting him. Hurting him again. Which is shaming. Now I have a hint of how Adam must have felt when I left him. I try to explain my actions to him, under the guise of telling the whole crowd. I stare at the sticky condiments on the table and mutter, ‘I wouldn’t have left like that, unless I believed Scott was everything, do you see? That’s why I cut all strings. I’m sorry I was so – insensitive.’
The word is inadequate. No doubt Adam thinks so too but he still doesn’t move or respond. Everyone else bursts into another round of sympathetic grunts and someone orders more whiskey, I think it’s my third. I dip a chip into a small pot of ketchup. It splits and the fluffy white innards are exposed. I gobble it down in one bite. It tastes fantastic. I carry on talking.
‘But that feeling that we’re made for each other, that somehow we were destined for one another, I haven’t been getting it too much recently,’ I confess. How long have I known this? Why haven’t I said something earlier? At least to myself? ‘Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve had that feeling since we came to LA,’ I admit. ‘And we are never alone. It’s hard to stay connected when you have to shout above thousands of people just to ask him to pass the salt. And I don’t think I care enough about his records and his ambitions. And I don’t think he cares about anything else.’ And I do care about Adam’s band. I also care about where Adam is sleeping and who he’s sleeping with. Sensibly, even in my distraught state I’m aware I can’t confess this. I am however prompted to ask, ‘Where’s Jess?’
When I first came in I assumed that Jess was in the loo but she can’t possibly still be in there.
‘She’s downstairs, in the Purple Lounge,’ says Adam. It’s great that he’s finally entered into the conversation, although he still doesn’t budge from his seat.
‘Alone?’
‘No, this guy asked her to join his friends. He seemed really cool.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Mind? Why should I?’
‘Because. Well –’ I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Adam understands perfectly, without my having to do so.
‘I thought I told you Jess and I are just friends,’ he says with a shrug.
Oh thank God! Thank God! No, no, he hadn’t told me. Not as such. Not clearly. I wasn’t sure. Suddenly (and no doubt improperly) I’m filled with a dreamy sense of delight and relief. It swooshes around my body, causing my knees to shake.
Charlie claps his hands together and looks delighted. ‘Jess hoped you might think that there was something going on between her and Adam. Didn’t she, Lisa?’ Charlie has never been known for his subtlety and he’s had far too much booze today to compute whether his revelation is going to embarrass anyone. He lunges on. ‘Jess has this crazy idea that you and Adam shouldn’t have split up and she thought that if she could make you jealous you’d come to your senses. She bet Adam a tenner you’d beg him to