said, ripping it out of my hand. “We are not at home to DIY projects. Not for this.”
Joss looked so crushed that I said, “I’ll find another occasion, Joss, I promise.”
“We’ll see,” muttered Bea, plopping a spiked fascinator on my head. I looked like a cactus.
Joss brightened, despite Bea’s side eye. “Hunt would be ever so chuffed.”
“Please tell me you are not referring to Tom Huntington-Jones,” Bea said.
“That’s what he tells me to call him,” Joss said. “Philippa’s dad,” she explained to me. “My investor. He says I’m an exciting emerging talent.”
“That’s great, Joss,” I said warmly.
“I assume ‘investing in emerging talent’ is not a euphemism,” Bea said, crossing her arms over her silk-clad chest.
“Ew,” Joss said. “I mean, I think he fancies me, but he’s not my type.”
This was a compliment, to Hunt. Joss’s last boyfriend had been a guy who wore a large stud in his left ear with a chain attached to it that turned out to be the leash for a hefty white rat called Bob, which prowled around his shoulder and neck. Eventually, Joss dumped him for refusing to take off Bob while they had sex, and we’d been glad to see the back of him before any of us caught rat-bite fever.
My phone rang. “It’s probably Gaz,” I said, digging in my purse. “Penelope Six-Names wants to take him to her tarot reader. I think he’s over it.”
I wish it had been Gaz.
“Bex,” Nick said. “Have you bought a hat yet?”
“No,” I said. “What do you think, tasteful beige, or a potted plant?”
“Um,” he said.
My face fell so fast that I’m pretty sure it made a sound. Quickly, I got up and walked over to the window; a banal-looking grill across the street was packed with theatergoers overpaying for a meal before curtain at the Starlight Express revival running around the corner.
“What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
“It’s off,” Nick said bluntly. “With your public opinion ratings so low after the PPO thing—”
“I have public opinion ratings now?”
“It’s not—”
“And you care about them?” I hadn’t wanted to fight, not with Nick all the way at the southwestern tip of England and out of my physical reach. And yet. “What other data should I know about? Did Marj decide she prefers the odds on ‘Nick Gets a Fellow Officer Pregnant’?”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said impatiently, but not without sincerity. “It’s been decreed. It isn’t a good time.”
“It never is,” I said. “And I’m starting to think it never will be.”
And I hung up, barely getting the words out before a sob escaped my throat.
* * *
Nick and I didn’t correspond the next two weeks, beyond quick apologies. It was the longest we’d gone without speaking. I was full of contradictory upset: I didn’t want to talk to him, because I didn’t want another argument, yet I hated that he hadn’t tried to talk to me. Lacey did everything she could to jolly me out of it—American snacks, Socialite Darts (in which we threw things at the faces of our enemies, tacked onto a corkboard behind my bedroom door), and in a moment of desperation, a DVD of Great Moments in Chicago Cubs History that ended up only enhancing my depression due to how short it was.
The day of the wedding also happened to be my birthday. Tony had invited us to the soft launch of a Club Theme pop-up that was so new he hadn’t even released the name, just the address; Nick was supposed to meet us there after the reception, and I was on edge about seeing him. My wonderful friends rallied to my side, planning a casual dinner for me and Lacey before our night out, so that if I was wobbling, I could find strength in numbers. Gaz volunteered to do the food.
“I plan to dazzle Cilla with my secret weapons,” he confided, wiggling his hands. “These can do magical things to a chicken.”
“That’s a very alluring selling point,” I said, giving him a side squeeze.
Gaz hosted us in his ancient flat in a mews near the Victoria and Albert Museum. His place looked like a turn-of-the-century time capsule of masculinity: Everything was tartan or leather, there was a deer’s head mounted on a wood-paneled wall over the fireplace, and an actual divot in the chair rail in the dining room that Gaz swore was thanks to an errant piece of shrapnel during the Blitz.
“What is he making in there?” Lacey asked, sniffing the air from her perch on his plaid