I waited for Dec to snap back, to remind him I had a name or ask what he was talking about, but he just . . . chuckled. Chuckled! As if that kind of comment was pithy and engaging rather than patronising and gross.
A couple of broad-shouldered men moved between me and Dec’s group, and I peered round them just in time to hear another of the identikit Allsopp, Hudson and Clarke boys chime in, ‘Nadia? I thought you were asking Liesel.’
‘What’s going on, O’Connor? I heard you were going after Aimee.’ This from yet another of the men who’d grazed my cheek with his own not half an hour before, but had clearly been expecting someone else.
‘Ah, well.’ Dec’s back was turned to me, but I knew that tone, he was being playfully bashful. What. The. Hell? ‘I asked Nadia first, but she said she was going to some engagement party tonight, and Liesel said her boyfriend probably wouldn’t appreciate it. As for Aimee–’ he blew an exaggerated breath out through his lips, ‘–she just plain said no.’
The men roared their laughter at this and Dec had to wave them down to finish: ‘Her loss, boys, her loss. I mean, come on, as last resorts go, Gio’s not too bad, hey?’
I didn’t stay to hear what the response to that was.
Turning away, I drank the rest of Vanessa’s cocktail in one sharp swallow. The alcohol burnt as it went down, but not as painfully as the lump that had wedged itself firmly in my throat did. I felt sick and unsteady and stumbled awkwardly through the crowd until I found something to lean against. I didn’t realise what it was until a voice said, ‘What can I get for you?’
A bar, I was leaning against a bar. As Dec’s voice repeated ‘as last resorts go . . .’ over and over in my head, I decided to take it as a sign.
‘Can I have an acai cosmo, please?’ I asked, hoping that the bartender understood what I was asking because my tongue felt strange in my mouth and there was a buzzing in my head that made hearing my own voice difficult.
Either the bartender had a history of deciphering garbled requests – a handy skill for anyone who served alcohol – or my exterior wasn’t in as much turmoil as my interior because, within a few short seconds, a cocktail the same as Vanessa’s, except full, was presented to me.
I mumbled my thanks, took the glass carefully between my hands and then wondered what next. For a moment I considered whether I should’ve just left the party immediately, but a few seconds’ introspection pointed out that I was in no fit state to go wandering out into the world. No, what I needed to do was find somewhere quiet where I could drink my cosmo and nurse my hurt feelings.
Unfortunately, as large and tastefully lit as the room was, it had an irritating lack of nooks and crannies for me to hide in. I could’ve gone back to the bathroom, but I felt sure people would try to talk to me there, especially if I was – and this was a very real possibility – sobbing my eyes out.
It was then that my gaze fell on the French doors leading out to that famous balcony. It looked invitingly dark and uncrowded, the nip in the air perhaps enough to keep most people inside. So that was where I needed to be.
Maybe I should’ve kept a lookout for Dec to make sure he didn’t see me making my escape, but I couldn’t cope with the idea of seeing his dearly familiar face and having to connect it to what I’d just overheard, so I relied on blind speed to get me out without being spotted. It worked, too, as I slipped through the doors onto the white stone balcony without incident and breathed the chilly air deep into my lungs.
I’d been correct in thinking that the outside space was relatively unpopulated. Without investigating the dark corners too closely, I came to the conclusion that there were a few couples dotted about, engaging in activities that conclusively kept the cold at bay, and only one guy by himself leaning against the railing, his phone in his hands.
I mirrored his stance a few metres away, leaning my elbows against the concrete edge and slugging down another mouthful of cocktail. The delicate flavours and exquisite mixing deserved more attention, but rattled as I was, I was unable to give it the respect it deserved.
For a split second, I felt like a teenager at a party that’d gotten out of control; like I wanted to call my mum and dad, to give the situation over to them and get them to take me home. But I obviously couldn’t do that, not only because I was well past my teen years, but because I wouldn’t be able explain the reason I was so upset to them. Together with Aggie, they’d pretty much brought Dec up. He still went with me on my regular trips home for Sunday lunch, and, while I suspected they’d guessed about my crush on him, it was hardly something I wanted to get into with them.
The city was beautiful, spread out in a series of twinkling lights before me. I tried to concentrate on that rather than the sheer betrayal of what I’d just overheard. It didn’t work.
Last resort. I was in love with Dec, and he just saw me as a last resort. It was what Zoë had been trying to tell me for years, what she’d tried to tell me that very afternoon, in fact, but I’d refused to listen. Well, I was paying for it now and Zoë would well deserve her ‘I told you so’.
But then, murmured a softer voice inside my head, did one callous comment, said without him knowing I could hear him, really mean that much? Hadn’t Dec been there for me when it had mattered most over the years? Hadn’t he basically been part of my family? Hadn’t he been one of my closest friends for years and years? His work was his be all and end all, the thing he’d been working for and towards for as long as I’d known him, and he was clearly just trying to fit in with the bully-boy types he worked with.
Then again, ‘as last resorts go . . .’
And so it went for the next little while. I drank, I remonstrated with myself, I drank, I made excuses for him, I drank, I dismissed the excuses, I drank . . .
Eventually my cocktail was finished and I was left staring into the empty glass in consternation. What was I supposed to do now the drink was gone?
Emboldened by the alcohol whizzing through my blood like popping candy, I turned my head to check whether I could see Dec through the doors. The man next to me came into sight as I looked round, but I didn’t really notice him until I ascertained that I was still in a Dec-free zone and twisted back again.
Hang on, wasn’t that?
I looked to my right.
Yes, it was.
‘Hey, neighbour.’ The words were automatic, an involuntary response to seeing the guy with the ridiculously pretty green eyes who lived across the hall from me. The Nod Next-Door.
He turned his head and the shadows around his cheekbones deepened in the soft glow thrown by the discreet balcony lighting. It was a very striking effect.
‘What are you doing here?’ I blurted as I moved towards him, sounding almost accusatory, as if he’d deliberately intruded upon my emotional breakdown.
And then – I never thought I’d see the day – I actually heard his voice. It was deep and even, composed, as if he regularly deigned to bring his vocal cords into our interactions.
‘I work with the people in there.’ He flicked his gaze towards the crowd milling about inside to show who he meant, and I cast another quick look that way as well.
The other party goers looked sort of unreal from where we stood in the shadows, like people on television or stage. Certainly they seemed a lot further away than just a door’s width.
Unable to decide whether I appreciated, or was slightly unnerved by, the sudden feeling of isolation, I switched my focus back to my sharply dressed neighbour. I’d never seen him stationary before and took the opportunity to get more than just a glimpse of him.
He was quite a bit taller than me, but he wasn’t skyscraper material like Dec. His blond hair was cut in a similarly sharp style to his workmates’, but there was a slight wave that rippled through it, as if rebelling from being controlled and, in general, he seemed very . . . clean. That was really the only word to describe the sheen that he radiated even on the dim balcony. It was the kind of polish that said: ‘This man is the product of generati
on upon generation of people who have been fed, clothed and treated well’. Seriously, even the shimmer of gold stubble on his cheeks looked designer.
‘I came here tonight with someone who describes that lot as people he works for.’ I surprised myself, not realising I’d made the comparison with Dec until I’d spoken it out loud. Still, giving it a moment’s consideration, I decided my comment had merit and added, ‘There’s probably something in that, right?’
If my neighbour found this question a bit out of leftfield, he didn’t show it. In fact, he didn’t even glance at me as he pocketed his phone and agreed mildly, ‘Maybe.’
There was, I was sure of it, and it went a long way in explaining what Dec had said to those tool workmates of his. It all came down to that tight little nugget of insecurity he’d always carried around with him. This might have been my first time actually meeting any of the people at Allsopp, Hudson and Clarke other than Dec, but it hadn’t taken more than a quick scan of the party to see that ‘being the best’ was something of a company motto. Although, despite the number of times I’d asked Dec, I still wasn’t entirely sure what they were being the best at.
Submitting to my curiosity, I turned back to the Nod Next-Door and asked, ‘Hey, what do you guys do?’
‘At AHC?’
I blame the alcohol clinging heavily to my thought processes for how long it took me to realise he meant Allsopp, Hudson and Clarke. ‘Yeah,’ I said.
He leant once more against the balcony railing, his gaze fixed on the lights of the city, before replying in that same, measured voice, ‘We assess businesses for inefficiencies and implement strategies to rectify shortfalls.’
I gave this some thought, turning the buzzwords carefully over in my mind before I said slowly, ‘So you go to organisations, figure out why they’re not making as much money as they could be and fix it?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Inefficiencies and shortfalls just sounds like code for firing people,’ I said after another moment.
In the darkness I couldn’t be sure, but I swear his mouth quirked slightly before he said, ‘Sometimes it is.’
‘So you’d be the bad guys in a Disney film?’ I asked, the acai cosmos apparently having conclusively dismantled the filter between my thoughts and my mouth. I was a lightweight when it came to getting drunk, always had been, and there’d been some serious booze in those drinks.
‘Yes,’ he said flatly, ‘but I’m sure we’d learn about the importance of love and family in the end, so it wouldn’t be all bad.’
I stared at him in astonishment for a moment and then, despite what I’d heard Dec say about me and the cold that was seeping insidiously through the thin material of my dress, I found that I had the tiniest urge to smile. My neighbour had a sense of humour. Who knew?
Of course, in that contradictory way life often worked, feeling like I wanted to smile made me think of all the reasons why I didn’t and my face fell.
A few seconds of silence passed during which I struggled to push the ‘last resort, last resort, you’re Dec’s last resort’ chant to the back of my head once again, and the Nod Next-Door continued to look as remote as it was possible for a person to look. Although maybe remote wasn’t the right word; it was more that he was neutral, as if my presence and whatever I might say made no difference to him one way or another.
I enjoyed his strange neutrality, I realised. After the exciting but full-on encounter with Vanessa and the way I’d been so ignored and then crushed by Dec and his mates, it made a nice change for the evening.
It was this impartiality that gave me the guts to ask, ‘Do you know Declan?’
‘O’Connor?’ he clarified. ‘Yeah, I know him.’
‘D’you think . . .’ I stopped, some latent common sense trying to tell me that this wasn’t a good idea, but then I rallied. ‘D’you think it’s possible that he’s sometimes not as nice a guy as he seems?’
There was a moment’s pause and then: ‘I think it’s distinctly possible.’ His even tone didn’t change, but there was something in his reply that made it clear he didn’t think it was just possible, he was sure of it.
So he didn’t like Dec. That was unusual, everyone liked Dec.
‘That’s who I’m hiding from,’ I admitted. ‘How about you?’ Because, really, who stood out in the dark and cold by themselves at a party unless they were avoiding someone?
‘I’m not hiding from anyone,’ he replied. ‘I’m just not particularly interested in spending any more time with the people I work with than I already do.’ His words could’ve sounded bitter or bitchy, but they didn’t. They sounded exactly as he’d said, as if he just genuinely wasn’t particularly interested.
‘So, in other words,’ I said, ‘you’re hiding from everyone.’
‘That’s one way to look at it.’
I don’t know whether it was because I was drunk, or it was so dark, or because I was definitely going numb from the cold, but I felt like I was in some strange state of unreality. It was like being in a bubble and, for the most fleeting moment, I was almost able to forget the way I’d so conclusively proved the ‘eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves’ proverb only half an hour or so ago.
And then the bubble popped.
‘God, Gio, there you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
*
The girl with the thick golden curls had been ‘hey, neighbour’-ing him for weeks, beaming at him in the corridor of their building with a warmth that had been confronting at first, but, as time had passed, had grown to be an accepted, even welcomed, part of his day. Still, it’d taken Theo a moment to recognise her as she’d entered the AHC party that night practically glued to O’Connor’s side.
In his defence, her customary grin had been nowhere in sight: she’d looked nervous and uneasy. And then, as he’d watched her stand silent and ignored in a group of Junior Project Officers, bored.
Theo’d been doing the done thing, kissing the rings of the company founders and steadfastly ignoring all the sidelong looks and leading questions thrown his way about the recent restructuring of his team. Through it all, however, his gaze had kept drifting back to his neighbour.
Perhaps that was why he hadn’t seen the large pack of WAGs, the wives and girlfriends of some of the members of the board with whom he seemed to be inexplicably popular, approaching. By the time he’d greeted them all, silently thanking Ari for forcing him to learn all their names, the flash of her green dress was nowhere to be seen.
As the focus of the gilded women’s discussion turned to his recent break up, as it inevitably seemed to these days, he felt both the patience and stamina required to get through this sort of evening start to wane. The constant prodding about his team dynamic was exhausting enough, but having the dynamic of his personal life just as boldly dissected was gruelling.
With as much politeness as he could muster, he excused himself from the group that had formed around him and slipped out onto the balcony.
Out of habit, he’d pulled his phone out and seen that the screen was filled with missed call notifications, none of which he wanted to return. What with one thing and another, it was getting to the point where he ignored more calls than he took.
Trying not to think about all the people he was avoiding, his attention returned to his neighbour and the caprices of coincidence that had seen her walk in with Declan bloody O’Connor. There was, it seemed, no escaping the man. Although, as she’d arrived next to Theo on the balcony, it was clear she was trying to.
The dejected set to her shoulders and the way she’d clutched her empty cocktail glass didn’t really surprise Theo; if he’d had to describe how someone would look after spending an evening in O’Connor’s company, she was it. Still, she’d been just as frank and engaging as her sunny greetings to him over the past few weeks had been and, drunk as she clearly was, he’d thought she’d begun to stand a bit taller before O’Connor found her. She’d slumped again in his presence, however, do
ing nothing to lift Theo’s mood, both in regard to the evening in general and towards her date specifically.
His neighbour had said she was hiding from O’Connor, but he hadn’t got the impression that she would be uncomfortable if left alone with him, so he drew back a few metres. He knew firsthand how excruciating it was having an audience when you were trying to resolve a personal issue, but he also wasn’t going to go too far. Just in case.
3
At Dec’s exclamation, the Nod Next-Door had faded back into the shadows, giving me the space to deal with Dec on my own. It was a courtesy I would’ve appreciated a lot more had I not been so busy staring at my best friend as if I’d never seen him before.
But he looked the same, right? Same warm hazel eyes, same pale skin, same smatter of freck– no, hang on . . . Where the hell were his freckles? I squinted slightly, trying to see his face clearly. I mean, the light wasn’t great, but I was fairly sure his nose had somehow shed its little cluster of freckles, how could that be right? Unless . . .
‘Are you wearing concealer?’ I blurted out and, poor light or not, I could see immediately by his expression that I was right – he totally was. How long had that been going on? And why hadn’t I noticed earlier? I mean, it didn’t matter, why shouldn’t guys get the same blemish cover-up capabilities that girls did? But, in light of what I’d overheard, it seemed like another thing about him that was different from usual.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked with an awkward sort of laugh. ‘Course I’m not. C’mon–’ he held his hand out to me, clearly keen to change the subject, ‘–I get that tonight probably hasn’t been a barrel of laughs for you so far, but the good news is that we’re moving on to the after-party and that’s where the real fun begins.’
I shook my head, feeling another of my curls bounce free as I did so. Well, who cared? I wasn’t trying to impress anyone anymore. ‘I’m not going to the after-party.’
‘Yeah, you are,’ he said, as if there was no doubt about it. ‘We’re the belles of the ball, remember? Without you I’m just a belle on my own and that’s no fun.’ And he gestured again for me to move.
Cake at Midnight Page 4
