I said, wondering whether or not it might not be a little bit like that.
But Amy wasn’t finished. ‘And regardless of how you feel about Charlie and regardless of how many phone calls or emails you have not received, you cannot sit there and tell me you don’t have feelings for Nick which, at the very least, says something about your feelings for Charlie.’
It was altogether too close to home.
‘What have I told you about using the “N” word?’ I pulled my feet up underneath me, burrowing into the settee.
‘And you can’t keep referring to him as “the N word”,’ she said. ‘People really aren’t going to be OK with that.’
‘What’s happening with him anyway? You called him and he hasn’t called you back?’ Paige was trying to look supportive but I knew it was a strain. After all, she had history with Nick and much more of a history than I did, even if it was a history of rejection.
‘Pretty much.’ I shook my head. ‘But what’s the point anyway? It was a holiday fling. He didn’t even know my real name, for God’s sake. This is real life: Charlie and the agency and chicken cook-in sauces. Maybe that doesn’t seem as glamorous and exciting to everyone as Milan and photoshoots, but it’s exciting to me. And the Charlie thing … It’s throwing me because I’ve wanted this for so long and now maybe I have it. How would that not be confusing? To anyone?’
‘That’s how I felt when I got my first Chanel 2.55 bag,’ Paige nodded with genuine sympathy this time. ‘It was like “can I actually take this out? Can I actually use this?” It’s hard.’
‘You’re both fucking mental.’ Amy was not big on Chanel bags or metaphors. ‘And Tess, I know how long you’ve been in love with that cockwomble, but you’re not the kind of girl who only wants what she can’t have. I should know, because I am. So if you’re not champing at the bit to shack up with Mr Wonderful, there’s a good reason for it and I don’t believe it’s just nerves. I think you’ve got real feelings for Nick and I don’t think you can ignore that.’
‘How can I have real feelings for him?’ I asked, burning up. ‘I only knew him for a week. And he didn’t really know me at all.’
It was a question I’d been asking myself a lot, only Amy and Paige didn’t realize it was rhetorical. I did have feelings for him – big, scary feelings that I didn’t understand and, in all honesty, did not want to. I’d always been so safe and secure in my feelings for Charlie but every time I thought about Nick, my stomach clenched and my hands made tiny fists and I wanted to hit something. Preferably him. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up with nothing but my über-crush on Charlie back the way it was. Everything would be so much simpler.
‘To be fair, you did lie to the man about your entire existence while merrily shagging him senseless,’ Amy said. ‘Even after he bared his soul to you. I might take a few days to call you back for a chat, to be fair.’
‘He bared his soul?’ Paige looked less than impressed. ‘You mean, he pulled out some of his cheesy old lines?’
‘There were cheesy lines in the beginning,’ I admitted, not wanting to come to his defence but entirely incapable of stopping myself, ‘but there was a certain degree of soul-baring after a bit. Maybe not baring, maybe it was more like soul-flashing.’
‘What a knob,’ she breathed, taking a big deep drink of her wine. ‘Him, not you.’
‘It’s starting to feel like it never happened.’ I flipped to the sent messages in my phone and saw his name over and over. I wondered what would give out first, his refusal to reply or my dignity. ‘Every morning when I wake up, it feels more and more like I was never in Hawaii, like he never existed.’
‘Don’t upset yourself over it,’ Paige said, shifting in her seat. ‘I’m sure it was all bullshit. I don’t know if that man is capable of anything other than trying to get into a woman’s pants.’
Paige had known Nick a lot longer than I had and I was fully aware that she had tried very hard to get into his pants, and not the other way around. And that didn’t make this conversation awkward at all.
‘Bottom line is,’ Amy shrugged and emptied her second glass of wine, ‘something is stopping you from moving on with Charlie. Something’s got you stuck. That something is Nick.’
‘Paige, can you come and check these shots?’ the photographer bellowed from the set below. With a very grumpy look on her face, Paige dutifully stood up and marched down the stairs.
‘Shout if the models need oiling. The male models,’ Amy yelled as she went before turning her attention back to me. ‘I know I haven’t been entirely Team Charlie when it comes to you two being together-together but if you tell me this is what you really, really want, I will shut my mouth, buy you a shit housewarming present and never say the “N” word again. But you have to be entirely honest before you get yourself into something you might regret.’
‘You really have got to stop calling him that,’ I sighed.
There it was again. What did I want? ‘I don’t want to ruin everything because of a holiday romance hangover.
‘Life isn’t a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, Amy,’ I said. ‘If I cock this up, I can’t just go back to the end of the last chapter and try something else.’
‘Oh, Tess,’ She smiled and hugged me, squeezing my shoulders tightly. ‘That’s exactly what life is: nothing is set in stone, nothing has already been decided. That’s where you’ve been going wrong all these years.’
‘Am I interrupting something beautiful?’ Charlie’s voice broke through our Kodak moment, making Amy jump and spill my wine before I could drink it. Which was probably best. ‘Don’t let me stop you, I always knew there was something going on with you two.’
‘Didn’t I tell you not to tell him where we were?’ Amy jumped to her feet, kissed him on the cheek and bounced off downstairs to the set. ‘Just because she’d rather be in bed with me than you. No need to be jealous, Wilder.’
‘Amy,’ Charlie nodded. ‘Always a pleasure.’
He clambered onto the settee, all arms and legs and coppery curls, looking like a sexy hipster Bambi man.
‘I see she’s taking this well?’ he said, pulling the strap of his man-bag over his head and setting it carefully on the cushion between us. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ I nodded with too much enthusiasm, not sure what to do. Normally we’d have hugged by now or I’d have taken the piss out of him for his jeans being too skinny or unfastened the second button of his T-shirt because one wasn’t enough and three would be too many. Instead, I put my wine glass down and sat on my hands. ‘You had a busy day?’
‘I played football manager for about three hours and then I remembered outside existed so I went out and got you this.’ He pulled a blue carrier bag out of his messenger bag and handed it to me with a flourish. ‘Sorry it’s not wrapped.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. I bloody loved presents. Surprises not so much, but presents? Yes, please.
‘Open it,’ he said, his smile almost bigger than mine. ‘I hope it’s right.’
Inside
