I’ve been sitting out here for a little while now and to be honest, as boring as it is, at least it’s nice and cool, and no one is expecting me to paint anyone, so that’s great.
‘I can’t believe you painted her fat,’ he calls from behind the curtain.
I’ve just told Millsy the full story and he finds it hilarious.
‘Not on purpose,’ I say for the millionth time. ‘She wasn’t even that fat. Just… I don’t know, lumpy?’
‘Did they let you keep it?’
‘I think Flora was keeping them but I’m sure she’s had mine destroyed already.’
‘I’d love it for my office, if you can get your hands on it,’ he says and, while I can’t see his expression behind the curtain, I’m absolutely certain he’s just kidding.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I reply with a laugh.
‘Oh, I do have some good news for you,’ he says. ‘Ruby is completely happy for you to come to the wedding. She’s sold on you being a real adult.’
‘I am a real adult,’ I insist.
The man fitting Millsy’s suit emerges from behind the curtain with a garment bag. I jump out of my skin. So much for being a real adult.
‘Almost done,’ he assures me. ‘We just need to decide on a shirt.’
‘OK, thanks,’ I reply.
‘I do actually need your help picking a shirt,’ Millsy calls out. ‘Might see if you’ll come and have a look at them.’
‘Yeah, no worries,’ I reply casually. Whatever makes this go faster. Whenever I’ve read or watched men in fiction complaining while their significant other shops I’ve always thought it couldn’t possibly be a fair representation but sitting here, waiting for Millsy to try stuff on, I am bored out of my mind.
I pull back the curtain and step inside the fitting room, only to find myself standing behind Millsy, who isn’t wearing anything apart from a tight-fitting pair of boxers and a bemused smile on his face. Because this is a fitting room there are mirrors at a variety of angles, so there’s no hiding anything and no pretending I didn’t see anything.
So far while I’ve been living with Millsy, and sharing a room with him when we were in Scotland, I have managed to get by without seeing him undressed and now here I am, standing in a fitting room with him, unable to move off the spot.
‘I didn’t mean right away, but you’re here now,’ he says with an amused chuckle. ‘Have a seat.’
As he nods towards the stool next to him I feel the flush of embarrassment commandeer my cheeks. No amount of air con can cool down my face right now. I feel as if I’ve fallen asleep in the midday sun for a couple of hours.
‘I’ll come back,’ I say.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he insists. ‘I need your help with these shirts anyway.’
I sit down as instructed but wherever I look there are mirrors reflecting a different angle of almost naked Millsy at me.
I knew that he was a buff guy from his clothed physique, but now that I’ve seen him without clothes on I can see what a seemingly perfect figure he has. It’s no wonder he makes so much money as a body double; I’ll bet he has a better body than most of the actors he stands in for. I cast my mind back to that time I watched that terrible Edge of Eden movie. You know the one, a sort of Fifty Shades of Grey type flick about an S&M-loving lawyer who has a steamy affair with the woman he’s defending on a murder charge. The leading man, Freddie Bianchi, had his arse out constantly in that movie. I wonder if that was Millsy… Could you even recognise an arse? I doubt it.
‘Cara Brooks, are you looking at my bum?’ Millsy asks.
I’m even more embarrassed now, if that’s possible. Millsy, who clearly thinks this is hilarious, is grinning like an idiot.
‘No, of course not,’ I reply. ‘I was just thinking about your job and, who knows, I’ve probably seen you in movies before.’
‘Looking for distinguishing features?’ he asks with a wink. ‘I’ve actually got a little birthmark on my left cheek, but they usually cover it with make-up or edit it out in post. We can’t have everyone knowing I butt-double for a few people.’
‘I suppose not,’ I say. I’m looking down at my shoes now.
‘OK, how about this one?’ Millsy asks before flexing pretty much every muscle he has. He points his arms down in front of his body to tense his pecs and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so sexy in real life. It’s always been really obvious to me that Millsy is an undeniably good-looking guy but now that I’m in here with him, at close quarters, watching him in his pants, flexing his muscles…
Once he’s in position Millsy starts making his pec muscles dance, bouncing them up and down as he hums a tune that seems so familiar to me.
‘Oh my gosh, it’s that iconic scene, from that romcom movie, oh, what’s it called?’ I babble, excited to recognise what he’s doing, and for his silly dance to dispel an otherwise tense moment. I know I’ve seen this scene in a movie before. How weirdly cool is it that it’s my friend whose muscles play the muscles in the film?
Right on cue the man fitting Millsy’s suit joins us. Millsy freezes as soon as he notices. I’m frozen. Even the man is just staring at us.
‘Some shirts,’ he says after a few seconds. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Oh my God,’ I blurt when we’re alone again.
‘Do you think he wants an autograph?’ Millsy jokes.
‘Just, put your trousers on,’ I tell him as I grab them from next to me and throw them at him.
‘Are you worried I’m going to get you in trouble?’ he jokes.
‘Something like that,’ I reply.
I decide that it’s probably best that I step outside until Millsy has clothes on. Not just so I can cool down, but so I can try and forget what I saw. I can still see Millsy’s abs whenever I blink. If I can just forget then things won’t be awkward, but that’s the problem when you see the man behind the curtain – your eyes are opened and you can’t go back to how things were before.
22
The more that I think about it, the more pointless school reunions seem these days. I’m sure you could make a case for them, once upon a time, but not any more, not in the age of social media.
Before, a five-, ten- or twenty-year school reunion would be the only way to see people you hadn’t seen in years, to find out what they had been up to and what they turned out like. The thing is, everyone I wanted to keep in touch with I have on Facebook (plus a few I would have rather not kept in touch with), so I don’t just have a general sense of how well they’re doing, I know exactly how they’re doing – I know details I really don’t need to know.
Take my old friend Becky, for example. We were best friends at school but when we grew up, we grew in different directions. I thought we were going to be friends forever. Our other female friends all got boyfriends and we would joke about them, because their boyfriends were their entire world. We'd refer to them as the Boyfriend Club. As the Boyfriend Club all slowly dropped out of sixth form our group got smaller and smaller – well, who cares about A levels when all you want to do is start a family? – and it was all fine until Becky caught the bug too. She was married before I’d sat my A2 exams. And so the Boyfriend Club became the Baby Club, and our lives just became too different for me to be included. They all wanted to be mummy-ish and talk mummy things and I guess at some point they decided that I wouldn’t be able to fully participate and that was it, I was out of the clique. I'm surprised they kept me in the group chat for as long as they did.
They are, however, all still friends with me on Facebook, and they’re all quite vocal – Becky especially. I know everything about Becky. I know everything about her kids. Everything from their first words to their rashes to the backlash at school when she put a Frube in her kid's lunchbox. I can tell you where she’s been on every single holiday she’s been on over the past decade (it’s always Florida – mostly because she’s Disney crazy), I know her job (full-time mum these days, and she’s had five kids, so it r
eally is a full-time job). So, when I am inevitably standing in front of Becky, and we start catching up, what do we even have to talk about? What is there that I don’t know? I know exactly how it's going to go: we’ll make polite conversation until she eventually asks me if there’s any sign of a husband or a baby in my future, because that’s what Becky deems a success, so she thinks everyone else should too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her, for wanting a family of her own more than anything else in life, if she’s happy that’s great, but when people project those desires onto me it makes me feel really uncomfortable.
Of course I’d like to get married and have kids but it isn’t the be-all and end-all for me. I don’t think I’m a failure because I don’t have them yet. At this stage in my life they’re just concepts. I wouldn’t want to marry someone, to have kids with just anyone. Still, it doesn’t feel great when you’re standing with a bunch of people who think you haven’t amounted to anything. I don’t think that about myself, obviously. If my life had played out differently I wouldn’t be living in the city, doing my dream job. I suppose there’s a lot to be said for being chubby and shy at school – I couldn’t get a boyfriend so I threw myself into my exams, then uni, then my career. As proud as I am, I can still see that inevitable ‘no baby though?’ look of pity that will be in Becky’s eyes.
So this is actually our fifteen-year reunion, even though it’s technically only been fourteen years, but for various logistical reasons the team organising it decided it would be better for everyone if it were to take place a year earlier. I’m not entirely sure I want to be here at all, but I was worried it might look worse if I didn’t show, as if I had something to hide. At least I have Millsy with me – well, I will when he gets here. He had an appointment to get new headshots taken, although I do wonder if they’re headshots, knowing his usual line of work now. Infuriatingly, since the suit fitting last week, I’m sort of looking at Millsy differently. Before he was just Millsy but now when I look at him I see an attractive man and it makes me nervous. I suddenly feel a little self-conscious and like I want to impress him. I want him to see me as a woman, rather than the charity case he adopted to give a life makeover when he was bored.
I don’t know if it was to impress Millsy or my old school friends, but I made appointments with Zander and Dani, the hairstylist and make-up artist who gave me my initial makeover, to make me look the best I possibly could this evening. So my face (or at least the layer of make-up covering it) looks flawless and my long red hair is looking all big and bouncy and impossibly glossy.
Zander asked me if Millsy had tried to sleep with me yet. I said no, laughing off his question, and I wouldn’t ever want to ruin our friendship with what sounds like one of his trademark brief encounters, but I still keep wondering what’s so wrong with me that he hasn’t even given it a go. If he’ll allegedly sleep with anyone – even his stepbrother’s girlfriend – then I guess he really does just see me as completely unsexy. I don’t even think my perfectly highlighted cheeks, my sleek hair, my nude lace pencil dress or the sky-high heels I’m wearing will change that. It bugs me a little – I suppose because it makes me think something must be really wrong with me.
I don’t really want to walk in on my own so I'm currently standing in the corridor – because, of course, we’re having it in the school hall – looking at the photos on the display. There aren’t any I haven’t seen before, they’re all in the yearbook we were given on the last day of year eleven, but I haven’t looked at them in a long time. We all look so young and yet, somehow, when I look at the sixteen-year-olds of today they look like babies – unless they’ve learned to contour from a YouTuber, in which case they look older than I do now.
‘Spotted yourself?’ a man asks as he sidles up alongside me. He’s tall – really tall, like 6’ 5”. I only remember one person from my year who was that tall.
‘Sean?’ I say. ‘Sean Sharples?’
‘You remember me?’ he says.
‘Of course I do – who else could touch the ceiling with their head?’ I joke.
‘I'm sorry,’ he starts. ‘I don’t remember you… I’d definitely remember you. Are you in the right place?’
I turn to face him, flashing him my name badge.
‘Oh my God, Cara Brooks? No! You look so different.’
Sean Sharples is one of my former classmates who I don’t have on Facebook. He doesn’t look much different though, just older. I didn’t think I had changed much since I was at school but I suppose my recent makeover is quite the departure from my old look.
‘Ah, it’s just a bit of dye,’ I reply a little awkwardly.
‘And you’ve lost weight since school,’ he points out. ‘You look incredible.’
‘Thanks,’ I reply. ‘What do you do?’
I change the subject from me as quickly as possible. I’ve never been very good at taking compliments.
‘I cut people up,’ he tells me very matter of factly.
I just stare at him for a moment.
‘You think that’s bad,’ he continues. ‘I’ve got a friend who gives people drugs – sometimes he gives them to kids.’
‘Erm…’
‘I’m a surgeon,’ he says with a laugh.
‘And a comedian,’ I point out.
‘What do you do? Are you a model?’
I just laugh.
‘I design escape rooms,’ I tell him.
‘Wow, really? That’s so cool. I don’t remember you being this cool at school.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I reply. ‘And I don’t suppose you ever spoke to me…’
‘Well, more fool me,’ he says. ‘You’re absolutely stunning.’
I can’t really hide my bemused smile. I wasn’t expecting him to be so nice to me. I guess maybe he’s just grown up.
‘Listen, I'm going to pop to the toilets but can I meet you in the main hall after? We can chat more?’
‘OK, sure,’ I reply.
‘I’d love to finally get to know you, after years of being absolutely, completely blind.’
As Sean says this to me he caresses my bare back with his hand, after somehow working his arm around me.
‘See you very soon,’ he tells me.
I watch with widened eyes as Sean disappears down the corridor. Wow, was he just hitting on me? After two literal minutes of conversation? What a sleaze.
I decide to head into the main hall, rather than stand here on my own, waiting for Sean to come back and get handsy with me again. I’ll feel better when Millsy gets here. No one is going to mess with me with that Greek-god-looking geezer on my arm. Only I know that he’s so scared of damaging his face that he would avoid confrontation at all cost. He might even use me as a shield.
I head into the hall and I’m surprised to say it doesn’t look all that different. It must still be doubling up as a gym because there are tennis courts painted on the floor and some of the bunting is fixed to climbing frames that fold open from the walls. The room is nicely decorated though, with bunting, balloons and fairy lights, all of which bring it to life a little. I can still tell it’s the same old cold hall I hated as a kid though. I feel as if any minute now I’m going to have to fake period cramps to get out of doing a bleep test.
I decide I’ll get a drink, wandering over to the pop-up bar in the canteen, which opens up into the hall.
‘Jason, is that you?’ I ask the man behind the bar.
I recognise him. It’s Jason Berry – they made us sit next to each other in maths for years because our names were next to each other alphabetically and we were always in the same set. He was quite weird though; no one really liked him. I built up a sort of tolerable rapport with him to make maths lessons easier but he really was an odd lad. He had this pencil case that was made from a rabbit – or at least he told us that it was, and that’s weird however you look at it. He used to give himself dragon tattoos with a combination of gel pens and Tipp-Ex – no sign of them now, real or fake.
He looks at
my badge.
‘Cara? I wouldn’t have recognised you!’ he says. I definitely recognise him. He still has a shaved head and a hoop earring in one ear. On a school kid it seemed like a really weird look, but it styles out a little better on an adult.
There’s a brief glimmer of a smile on his face but then it drops. ‘You were invited, then?’
‘I was… weren’t you?’
‘Nope. I work for a catering company in Leeds. When the agency said they had a pop-up bar job in my hometown I was quick to take it, to have a look inside my old school, see if things had changed. Then I turned up and it was my own school reunion that I wasn’t invited to. So nothing has changed at all really, has it?’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose,’ I attempt to reassure him although, now that I think about it, I’m sure I’d heard a rumour that he’d accidentally overdosed and died a few years ago. Obviously he hasn’t because he’s standing here.
‘I live in Leeds too,’ I tell him, attempting to change the subject.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yeah, I work there so…’ Oh, God, what if he thinks this is me trying to strike up some kind of social relationship? I need to change the subject as quickly as possible.
‘So, what do you do?’ I ask.
Jason slowly looks down at the bar and then back up to me.
Oh, God, right, of course. He’s working now.
‘I’m just gonna… yeah…’
I take one of the pre-poured glasses of Prosecco from in front of him and wander off. There’s something about the look in his eye that makes me feel as though, if I say the wrong thing just one more time, he’s going to turn me into a pencil case.
I circulate around the room, looking for someone I recognise or feel brave enough to talk to. Eventually I find my old clique. Becky, Christina, Joanne and Kelsey. The Mum Club. None of us were especially cool at school but, somehow, Joanne has wound up marrying the most popular boy in our class, Luke Lockwood, who was on track to play for Leeds United. Well, I guess he must have wandered off that track at some point, because he has a dad bod instead of a footballer’s physique. Kelsey has her husband here with her, but Becky and Christina are alone. I imagine their significant others are at home, looking after the kids. Well, they do have seven between them.
The Plus One Pact Page 17
