come back to you; she was that certain.’ Charlie is suddenly struck by another thought. ‘Not that her view seems so crazy now. I mean, I was all in favour of you running off with a multi-millionaire, we all were.’ If that’s the case, my friends and family now look extremely unsure. They are clearly mortified at being made accountable for their opinions in front of Adam. ‘But since he’s playing for the other team, it doesn’t look like such a smart move, does it?’ finishes Charlie. The silence is deafening. Adam rescues us all from the awful embarrassment.
‘Jess has been a really good friend to me when, you know, I needed a friend,’ he says. The delight and relief are rapidly replaced with something more like shame and regret. I feel like the cow I undoubtedly am.
Rick asks, ‘Should I go and get Jess? She’ll be pleased to know that you were taken in by her little ploy. Even though it didn’t pan out exactly as she hoped. Part A worked at least. You did think she had the hots for Adam, even though you never begged him to come back to you.’
Why wouldn’t she have the hots for him? I ask myself this as I sit staring at Adam. Why wouldn’t Jess or any other woman, come to that, have the hots for Adam? My fingers are itching to scuttle through his long, scruffy hair. His heavy eyebrows are knit in concentration and his dark brown eyes ooze concern. His cheekbones are sharper than I remembered, his shoulders are broader.
‘No, don’t interrupt her fun,’ I mutter. She’ll hear about my nightmare soon enough.
It’s only just dawning on me but I realize now that Adam is unique in his ability to be so laid back in this hectic and frantic world and he is not at fault. He’s a man with a quiet certainty that everything will be all right. He lives without fear. He isn’t afraid of people not liking him, or of being a failure, or even normal things that everyone is a bit afraid of, like being mugged, lost or unloved. He sees all that as pointless worrying. He’s not even afraid of missing the last train home. That’s why he wasn’t prepared to bow to the deadlines I, or anyone else, imposed. He was not afraid of time passing because he knew he’d have his time. I’m afraid of lots of things and Scott is afraid of everything. Now, being with Adam seems like a freedom. He’s unafraid, he’s not even worried. His quiet confidence is unusual and deeply, deeply attractive.
Oh God, if only I could beg him to take me back as Jess was hoping or, better yet, turn the clock back so that I’d never left him. That’s got to be the whiskey thinking, doesn’t it? Maybe not. Or the shock of finding Scott with Ben. Maybe not. I don’t know. All I know right now is that I want to push past my mum and all the other confused and concerned faces and throw myself on the floor, wrap my arms around Adam’s legs and plead with him to have me back. I think I wanted to do this the moment I saw him by the pool this afternoon, I just couldn’t admit it to myself. What a nightmare. What a total idiot I’ve been. Suddenly, I’m awash with startling, overwhelming memories. We were happy, Adam and I, once upon a time. We were happy in each other’s company and we didn’t need movie premieres or Rodeo Drive or infinity pools. We were happy waiting for a bus, sharing a stick of chewing-gum, finishing the Sudoku, guessing the outcome of a Coronation Street plotline. We were ordinary. Why didn’t I see that ordinary isn’t so bad? It’s actually rather nice when on the other hand you consider that the extraordinary includes your boyfriend having sex with your boy friend.
Dad gently tries to bring me back to the matter in hand. ‘Would you like me to go and tell Scott the wedding is off?’ he offers. He stands up and draws himself to his full height. He’s not enormous but his beer belly is quite impressive; in my eyes he’s never looked so heroic.
‘Someone will have to go and say something,’ says my mum. ‘There are so many people making plans, the sooner we start to unmake them the better.’
‘You think I should call off the wedding?’ I’m actually just confirming I’ve understood