I make a “humph” sound via the back of my throat. “Are you?”
“Yeah, I am. This isn’t how . . .” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “This isn’t how two people who love each other behave.”
“Well, maybe we’re not in love.”
I didn’t want to say that. Why did I say that? He shakes his head again and I can see the frustration etched deep in the lines of his brow. “I thought we’d talked this through. I thought you trusted me. I forgave you for kissing Ryan.”
I feel my eyes bulge in their sockets. “Ryan kissed me, I didn’t kiss him. But every single time I look at you, Jadine Clark is hanging off your bloody neck. You know how she feels about you, but you’re doing nothing to let her know you aren’t interested.”
“Whatever you say, Violet, but Jadine hasn’t crossed a line. Maybe this is about us, maybe it isn’t. All I know is I’m sick of you looking at me like I’m a piece of shit.”
I’m lost for words. I look at my feet and twist the heel of my shoe into the carpet.
“Now, I’m going to get back to the party, and I’m going to talk and laugh and dance and drink and have fun with whomever the hell I like.” His tone is almost a sneer, and hurt builds up inside me, my eyes threatening to unleash a waterfall. “You should try and have some fun yourself, but I think you already know that, don’t you? For the first time in my life I can see why people call you cold.”
The Wizard of Oz was right. Hearts are totally fucking shit.
I was far happier pretending I didn’t have one.
19
I CAN’T BREATHE. THE ROOM is full of people, but I feel so lonely. I don’t want to be here.
I was certain that Ethan loved me for who I am – the bad and the good. I thought he didn’t care about my flaws. It has taken me all my adult life to no longer feel ashamed of being an outsider. I was made to stand out, not to fit in, so that’s who I am, and I shouldn’t have to keep apologising for it. All I’ve ever wanted is for Ethan to see me – properly see me – and still love me despite what he sees.
I thought he understood that, and I thought he saw and loved who I was.
I thought he’d be the last person to tell me I needed to change.
I walk out onto the roof terrace to get some air. It’s full of people I don’t know. I realise they’re mostly Freja’s broadcast team because I recognise the TV producer guy, Stevo Simms, a softly spoken Geordie with kind eyes and a stubbly face. I’ve only had two glasses of champagne, but I already feel tipsy. I swear my alcohol tolerance level is getting poorer day by day. I find a spare chair in the corner of the terrace and let the night air calm me down.
“Are you alright, pet?”
Stevo stands over me, his shirt sleeves ballooning in the wind. “Yeah. I think so . . . Yes.” I hear the words coming out of my mouth and I cringe. I sound like I have dementia.
“You sure, love?” He squints at me. “You don’t look alright. Should I get someone? It’s Violet, isn’t it?”
Oh, for crying out loud. Is it not obvious I just want to be alone? “I just needed some air. Think I must have drunk too much. I’ll be okay in a minute or two.”
“Well, I know all about that. I’ve had a few too many bevvies myself.”
“Ah, there you are! I’ve been looking for you.” It’s Max. And oh my god, he’s got half a Serrano-ham vagina hanging out of his mouth. This isn’t helping my state of drink-and-heartbreak-induced nausea.
“I think she’s a bit worse for wear, mate,” Stevo says.
“Are you pissed already?” asks Max.
I barely hold on to the contents of my stomach as I watch a string of white ham fat dangle out of his mouth. He sucks it up and licks his lips.
I draw in as much oxygen as my lungs will hold.
Max pulls a chair across from the other side of the terrace, mumbling “Excuse me” to the three people he bumps into on the way. When he sits back down, I catch the worried look on his face and I know it’s going to be a long night. “So, what’s wrong?” he asks.
I should tell him, but instead I say, “Nothing.”
“Don’t be such a fucking woman,” he replies with an exasperated sigh. His breath is savoury and slightly eggy. I recoil as I’m hit by another wave of nausea. Surely I haven’t drunk that much? “Oh fuck, you look like you’re going to hurl.” He slams backwards in his chair as far away from me as he can get.
I grip the bridge of my nose and take in a lungful of fresh air. “Max, your breath stinks. What the hell have you eaten?”
He shrugs his shoulders and looks wounded. “Just the buffet like everyone else.” He breathes into his cupped hands and inhales. Then he screws up his nose. “I ate practically the entire tray of Serrano ham hors d’oeuvres.”
“I don’t know how you can eat that stuff. And the way they folded the meat into those pieces of avocado . . . It’s as if they were deliberately trying to make a pair of beef curtains.”
“It wasn’t beef, it was ham.”
“I know. I said ‘beef curtains’. You know what I mean.”
He stares blankly at me. “If you knew it was ham, why did you say it was beef? That’s stupid. At least say it looks like ham curtains.” I giggle as I realise that yet another vulgar English phrase has gone completely over his head. “Why are you laughing? The key to a great piece of meat is how beautiful the folds are.”
Oh god, surely he must know what he’s saying? I laugh until my sides hurt, but he just sits next to me with a confused look plastered across his face. Which makes me laugh even harder, so I play along. “Max, what’s the best . . . uhm . . . folded meat you’ve ever tasted?”
“Ah, now this is something I could talk about all night,” he says innocently. “A couple of years ago I made a Spanish tapas dish with home-cured ham. I folded the meat around some chilled salmon and it made the folds unbelievably moist.”
Oh. Sweet. Jesus.
“But unfortunately – thanks to the salmon – it smelled a bit fishy.”
I laugh so hard I need to cross my legs just in case.
“What are you laughing at now?”
I wouldn’t know where to start. I wipe the tears from my eyes and take deep breaths, but it takes a couple of minutes before I can compose myself. Max hands me a tissue from his pocket and I ask him if my mascara has run. He tells me I should be more worried about my red nose. I laugh a little bit more.
“So now that we’ve finished that weird conversation, I’ll ask you again. Why are you out here? You looked sad before.”
I don’t want to answer Max’s questions. The words are too difficult. I look out over the city; I can just about see Big Ben and the London Eye over the trees and rooftops. This would be the perfect spot for New Year’s Eve.
“Is it Ethan?”
I sigh and meet his gaze. I always think Max occupies his own strange little world, so it amazes me when he seems to catch everything that’s going on, even when the things that are going on are hidden deep inside my cast-iron brain. I nod slowly and look back to the view. The cold December air bites at my arms and stings my wet eyes.
“Are you still broken up? I hoped you might have patched things up in Paris.”
I put my elbows on my knees and rest my head in my hands. “We did a bit, but we’ve just had a terrible fight. I don’t think we can even be friends anymore.”
He doesn’t reply for a moment, so I turn to look at him. I’m expecting to see sympathy, but I see nothing but irritation instead. “Do you need me to sort him out?”
“What? No. Please, don’t say anything.”
“Well, what do you want me to do? Why can’t you be friends? Tell me, because if he’s hurt you, then I swear I’ll go for him.”
“Max, no. It’s my fault.” He looks as confused as he did during the ham conversation, so I realise I’m just going to have to give myself up. “I bumped into Ryan. He was over from the States for a few days. He kissed me.”
“He didn’t?” Max looks h
orrified. “When?”
“A couple of weeks ago. Before Paris.”
“What was it like?”
“Max, what the hell?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean what was it like, I mean what happened next?”
My brain hurts when I think back to the fights, the pain and the tears. “All hell broke loose. I told Ethan straight away, and that’s why we broke up.”
He looks sad and he also looks disappointed in me. “Do you want Ethan back?”
“At this moment in time I want to ram his head through a brick wall.” Max nods with understanding. He’s known Ethan longer than I have, so he has a valid reference point for my frustration. “He’s just told me that he thinks I am as cold as everyone says I am. Finally, he’s seeing me the way everybody else sees me.”
“That’s bollocks and you know it – and I’m mad with him because he should know it too!”
I sniff and twist my nose to keep my tears at bay, but I don’t know if water is filling my eyes because I’m upset, or because I’m freezing bloody cold. “Promise me I’ll always have you,” I say with a smile as a tear escapes. Then I break down, and he puts his jacket around my shoulders.
“I’m going nowhere and I love you. All of you. You’ll work it out.” He takes hold of my hand and places it between both of his. My fingers feel like they’ve been out building snowmen, so the warmth is welcome. “Just promise me one thing. Don’t let him change you. I couldn’t bear that. I didn’t know what a friend was until I met you, and I love you just the way you are – including all the weird, wonky, wrong bits.”
I grab his hand and pull it to my cheek. “Thanks for trying to make me feel better.”
“I mean every word of it.”
“I know you do, my friend. I just wish you had the power to make me stop feeling like this.” There’s nothing I want to do more than just hold Max and let him hold me, so that’s what I do.
* * *
When we go back inside, the music has switched up tempo and the furniture has been rearranged to make a space for people to dance. Max and I retreat to our corner. I don’t see Ethan anymore, but I see Jadine dancing with Penny, Ruby and my new copywriting recruit, Bianca, whose hair is so glossy I could use her head as a mirror to put on my make-up. I feel relieved that Ethan isn’t with them. And I hate that I feel relieved. And I check my watch again – 11.30 p.m. Time to leave.
BANG!
All eyes turn to the kitchen area. Three almost-empty trays of hors d’oeuvres crash to the floor on top of a completely shitfaced Freja. All I can see from where I’m standing is her feet – one with shoe and one without. All I can hear is her screaming with laughter.
“Oh my god, who put this freaking kitchen here?” The room laughs and Ethan is the first to come to her rescue.
She stands with his help and brushes a smattering of brioche crumbs off her black pants, including a crust which is stuck to her bottom. “Shit, now where’s my shoe?” They both laugh, then they do a quick scan of the kitchen floor and find her shoe under a stool. Ethan bends, shoe in hand, like he’s the prince in a fairy tale. She places her foot in the shoe, wobbles, and then falls over again. “Oh my god, please tell me nobody saw that.”
“Hey look,” says Max, nudging my elbow. “At least there’s somebody over there who’s having a worse time than you.”
I follow Max’s glance over to a red-faced, seething Harry Hopkins. “Oh dear, he looks like he’s been roasting his head in an oven.”
“You’re telling me. He’s fought with Freja three times already tonight and he’s been brooding on his own for the last hour.”
“Jesus, really?” I wonder if the fuck-buddy relationship with Freja is on the rocks. I hope she’s okay.
“Yeah, I guess he doesn’t like Freja fooling around. Who do you think would win in a fight – Harry or Ethan?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” And that’s the truth. I’d usually vouch for Ethan in a punch-up, but Harry looks like he could do seven rounds with Tyson and still have all his teeth by the end of it.
“I need to pee. Back in a minute.” Max disappears to join the toilet queue, and as I fill up my glass yet again, I’m suddenly conscious that the room is spinning. The sensible part of my brain tells me to go get some water. The defiant part of my brain grabs another flute of champagne and heads for the sofa.
I attempt to sit down gracefully, but the seat is lower than I expect so I fall down instead, my legs shooting into the air in front of me. I gasp as half my champagne lands down my front and the other half splashes all over the man sitting to my right.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Did I get you?”
The man laughs as he brushes the champagne off his skin and dabs at his shirt with a napkin. “Just a little bit. Don’t worry about it.”
I’m not sure who the guy is, but he’s very good-looking and – huge bonus for any lady – he appears to have come to the party dressed as Mr Darcy. He has dark floppy shoulder-length hair, a ruffled purple silk shirt which opens low at the neck, and trendy velvet trousers that are rather form-fitting. Did Mr. Darcy wear tight velvet trousers? Well, I seem to remember some tightness in the movie, but probably no velvet.
“And you are?” he asks in an accent which is only marginally less posh than Georgie’s.
“Violet Archer. I’m Tribe’s creative director.” I extend my hand, probably too formally, but that’s what a man talking with received pronunciation does to me.
He shakes my hand. “Cosmo Hines. I was the art guy at Diablo Brown. I’ve just returned from a working holiday in Azerbaijan, so I start at Tribe tomorrow.” Wow. Posh, good-looking and worldly. But “Cosmo”? Were his parents high on Haley’s Comet when they named him?
“Well, I hope you enjoy working with us, Cosmo.”
“Me too.” His eyes light up. “I also have a confession to make.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I already knew who you were.”
“Really?” I say apprehensively. “Erm, that’s weirded me out a little bit. How?”
He laughs. “Let me explain. There was an ad that Barrett McAllan Gray did for Swan beauty products a couple of years ago. I totally fell in love with it. That was yours, wasn’t it? I remember asking who had created it at the time.”
I feel myself blush. “Ah, yes, that was mine. Well, it was mine and Ethan Fraser’s. Thank you.”
“You used my favourite poem by Keats, look . . .” He unbuttons his shirt sleeve, rolls up the silk material and shows me a tattoo written in script on the inside of his forearm. “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art . . .”
“Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.” I finish the quote for him.
“I got the tattoo done ten years ago. I went through a post-Romantic phase when I was at Oxford.”
He smiles again, and when I look into his eyes something amazing happens. I start to relax. Well, I say “look into his eyes”, but I’m pissed and the world around me is a haze of different colours and shapes, so it’s much more accurate to say I look into his blurry things.
“Do you ever feel like Keats’s bright star?” he says, and I think it’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever been asked.
“No, I don’t think I’m a star.”
“Well, I think you’re a star. And I know I’d never get tired of looking at the night sky if you were in it.”
Wow. That’s beautiful. But is he coming on to me? I honestly don’t know. “That’s a very lovely thing to say. But I’m . . . kind of not in a great place right now. If you know what I mean.”
He holds his hands up and smiles at me again. “Say no more. We can enjoy each other’s company while we’re here. I feel a bit like a spare part tonight. Parties like this aren’t really my thing.”
Good god, he’s a male version of me.
Our conversation is interrupted by raucous laughter coming from the far side of the living area. A group has gathered around Freja, who is dancing sugges
tively on the dining table, using an empty champagne bottle for a microphone. She’s singing along to a pop song I don’t recognise and teetering on five-inch heels which look ready to give way underneath her.
“Freja, I don’t have my pole anymore so you don’t have to work it tonight!” calls Lucas. The crowd around them erupts with laughter.
Ethan joins in. “Get down before you break your neck.”
I look at Cosmo and he’s wearing an expression that I’m sure mirrors my own. It’s a kind of embarrassed half-smile coupled with eyes that don’t want to look, but can’t look away.
Freja coerces Ethan into getting up onto the table with her, and he suddenly morphs into Patrick Swayze. He holds her by the waist, swinging her backwards so that her mane of red hair swishes to the music. The audience that has assembled cheers them on. If this is what confidence is, then I know I absolutely don’t have any, because even after downing half a sparkling vineyard I know I couldn’t act like this. Freja is fun to be around. I’m not.
The dance moves get more active, and I start to worry about the damage Freja’s Jimmy Choos might be doing to Lucas’s polished oak dining table, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact he looks like he’s having the time of his life.
“Freja, get down! You’re making a fool out of yourself.” Harry Hopkins’s voice is barely audible over the awful pop music, but I watch as Lucas places his hand loosely around the Aussie’s shoulders and whispers something into his ear. Harry shrugs him off. “Freja!” he yells at the top of his voice.
The room quietens. All I can hear is the rhythm of my own pulse sloshing around in my inebriated head.
Freja stops dancing and almost plunges off the end of the table, but Ethan is there to help her balance in shoes I know I’d have trouble walking in, never mind dancing in. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she shouts at Harry.
Harry’s already roasted face burns even redder and his eyes darken. “You need to get down now and sober the hell up.”
It's Complicated (The Agency Book 2) Page 19
