Call Me, Maybe

by Call Me, Maybe (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m not going to be disappointed,’ I say. ‘I just know I’m not.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. She tucks her feet under her. ‘So here’s an idea. Invite him to the wedding.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Yep. Invite him. When you're visiting. It’s quite a big deal being invited to a wedding as a plus one, especially if you need to travel that far for it. That will give you an indication of how invested in this he is. If he says yes, then love with reckless abandon. If he’s not so into it, then guard your precious heart.’

  She’s right. It is a big deal. It would make a bit of a statement. He’d be in the photos, his name written on the card. Lots of love, Cassie and Jesse. He’d be woven into memories of that day forever. My parents will be there, too, and there’d be no getting around that. I’d have no option other than to introduce him to them. Dad would bumble through and make well-meaning but embarrassing comments about how I used to have posters of him on my bedroom walls. There’d be questions about what exactly happened, and awkward jokes about how sad I was when the band broke up. Mum would cluck around. She’d dine out on me bringing a once minor celebrity as my plus one for weeks, and it would almost certainly deflect her not so subtle comments about the state of my love life, at least for a while. When are you going to meet a man, Cassie? I was married with a toddler at your age. It’s all very well being focused on your career, but what about a family? Look at Rachel’s life, Cassie. Look at where she’s achieving and you’re not.

  And if Jesse was there, George’s bizarre and wildly inappropriate plan to set me up with handsy Marcus would be foiled, and I wouldn’t have to subtly smack his hand off my arse during the dancing.

  ‘Is this like some sort of test?’ I say. ‘Because I don’t want to invite him if that’s the case.’

  ‘No,’ she says slowly. I don’t know if I believe her.

  ‘But you’ll hold it against me if he says no. And he might have a valid reason to, it'll only be a few weeks until the big day at that point.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I want him to say yes. I want you to be happy and to love with reckless abandon.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you. I’ll ask him.’

  ‘One thing, though.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Please don’t stop being excellent. I don’t mind if George takes more of a back seat as long as I have you helping me.’

  I know what she’s really saying. Don’t lose your focus on me, Cassie, if he comes to my wedding.

  ‘I promise,’ I say.

  ‘You’re all lit up,’ she says, smiling. ‘It’s nice.’ She pours us both another glass of wine, and I decide I’m staying in her spare room tonight.

  * * *

  Have/hope you’re having/had fun

  Say hi to your friend.

  I stayed in her spare room last night. Didn’t feel like traipsing all the way home on the bus.

  You don’t have a car?

  No. I live in London remember?

  So?

  So not everyone has a car here. We just jump on the tube.

  Everybody has a car here. I bet things are crazy in London right about now, right?

  For the Olympics? Yeah it’s heaving. The HR team at work are going to watch the athletics. Not so much fun to be had in our dept though.

  How did they get to go and you didn’t?

  They won Team of the Year but my manager reckons it was rigged! Mainly because one of the HR ladies is shagging someone in senior management. They like to think they’re discreet but they’re not. Everyone knows.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cassie

  There’s an away day at work. It’s held in a conference centre in Earl’s Court in a venue with grey carpet tiles that haven’t seen a hoover this side of the millennium and strip lighting on the ceiling. There are team building workshops, one of which involves blindfolds, falling backwards, and a lot of trust. I don’t like it. I’ve been paired with Polly, the merch assistant, a crotchety little finance graduate with a taste for poorly fitting trouser suits and calf-length grey skirts. Sam’s thought she’s abhorrent ever since she missed him off the tea run and offered an unsolicited opinion on gifts for pets at Christmas.

  ‘Don’t get me started,’ he’d said to me after. ‘I just find her despicable.’

  We sit through a dreadful talk given by someone in a shiny suit and horrible loafers who earnestly tells us all that assuming things makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me,’ and he scribbles it on to a flip chart to reiterate his point. He draws a smiley face next to it which I think is to show us that he’s a lighthearted sort of fellow, but actually he’s woeful, and I reckon he probably drives a Saab. Sam grabs the fleshy bit just above my knee and squeezes under the table. He takes his phone out of his pocket, types, and angles the screen so I can see.

  I’m biting my cheeks.

  Me too. Awful.

  Can you believe we have to stay for lunch?

  WHAT? I was hoping we could escape to a pub?!?

  I look up at him but he shakes his head, sadly.

  Not a chance, doe eyes, Paula is on the prowl! She knows if they let us leave we won’t come back.

  ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t all have gone to watch the athletics,’ he sulks to Mimi as we’re queuing for the buffet. ‘That would have been far better for team morale than listening to this prat.’

  ‘Because there’s supposed to be an element of professional development,’ she says, and then lowers her voice. ‘It’s a box-ticking exercise. I completely agree that it’s a pile of old shite, though.’

  After a lunch of egg and cress sandwiches with curled up corners, stale crisps and dry melon, we are forced into an endless game of charades. It’s mandatory. Paula, the head of buying for Beauchamp and Taylor, doesn’t let anyone off the hook. She’s got a glass bowl full of folded up bits of paper with movie or song titles on. She thinks it will be fun, but it’s not. It’s terrifying. When it’s my turn, I am lumbered with Back to the Future. How am I meant to act out Back to the Future? I tap my back. Everyone gets it. I hold up two fingers. Everyone gets it. I flail around. No one gets it and I feel myself losing the will to live. How is no one getting this from back and to? Who are these pop culture ignoramuses I am forced to work with? They’d all be shit at a pub quiz. I try to act out a flux capacitor and Sam takes photos on his phone. In the end I flip him off and flounce back to my seat.

  ‘Back To The Future?’ he asks.

  ‘You’re a bellend,’ I hiss.

  ‘You love me. I’m your work husband.’

  ‘I might work divorce you.’

  Later on, he uploads his photos to Facebook. I look like I’m doing the robot in a couple. He tags me in them. Jesse likes all the photos. I am mortified.

  Nice pics. Definitely more entertaining than track and field even if it is the Olympics.

  Oh God. Don’t. I am cringing.

  Are they your best moves? Am I going to see them when you’re here?

  Behave yourself. Or you’ll see nothing. Nada.

  You don’t mean that.

  You’re right. I don’t.

  In other news. Not too long now! It’s like counting down to the summer holidays when you’re a kid in school. I used to make a chart and mark off each day. Did you ever do that?

  Well, we were home schooled from when I was 14, so we could concentrate on the music. So I don’t really remember counting down the days to the summer vacation. We didn’t stick to a school year as such.

  Ah yeah that makes sense. Who taught you?

  My mom. She’s a teacher so she kind of knew what she was doing. Kind of. It was pretty lax at times. I think we’d have been better off with a tutor, but having someone else in control wouldn’t have worked for Dad. At all.

  He does this occasionally, drops little hints about his life but never quite enough for me to really connect it all up. But the more he does, the more I am absolutely convinced a lot of shit hit the fan with Franko, and I’m dyi
ng to know about it.

  Have you told anyone about me? Or are people going to be really confused to find a random English woman hanging out in your house?

  I may have mentioned you to a couple of people…

  Ooooh! Who?

  And what did you say? Have you told anyone I used to listen to your music back in the day?

  Trav knows you’re coming. So do Brandon and Lainey. So here’s the thing. I haven’t actually told anyone you liked Franko. To be honest it was just simpler. I think it would dredge up a lot of stuff that’s better left in the past. So that’s really just between us at the moment. Is that OK?

  Yeah that’s fine. What did you say about how we met though?

  Just in a bar. I kept it vague.

  Works for me. It’s sort of true in a tenuous sort of way. I won’t be bringing my old Franko t-shirt then ;-)

  OMG, please don’t bring that. That would be so, so weird.

  I’m just kidding! My mother threw it out when I went to university.

  I often forget that about you.

  That I am educated? Bit rude…

  Haha no… the Franko thing.

  Well I often forget that you were a dreamboat pop star in a past life as well. Will you tell me how it all went the way of the pear?

  Maybe. Probably. I’m sure it’ll come up at some point.

  Only if you feel like it though. I’m not going to bug you for info.

  Thanks Cass.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cassie

  On August twenty-ninth, I’m startled awake. The house is quiet and it worries me. I’m positive I’ve slept through the alarm on my phone, and when the radio comes on automatically for an hour, and the every day noises Sara and Jon make clattering around, getting ready for work ­– boiling the kettle and making toast, and Jon’s bizarre and somewhat antisocial seven a.m. hoovering habit. They’ve left the house and gone for the day, I’m sure of it.

  I squint at my phone. Six fifteen. Good grief, I’m on edge. Can’t wait for a nice calming gin on the plane. The house is quiet because no one is up. My alarms won’t go off for another fifteen minutes. The plane definitely has not left without me. I lie in my bed for a few minutes, mentally going through everything I’m taking until I hear Jon scuttle down the hall to the bathroom, and Sara pad downstairs. Passport, check. Clothes and shoes for almost every eventuality, check. A lot of expectation and hope and the potential for the most broken of hearts, check, check, check.

  Downstairs, my bags are stacked up by the front door and I join Sara in the kitchen for a coffee.

  ‘Today’s the day then,’ she says. She pushes down the cafetière plunger and I pull out a chair. ‘You’d better get dressed before you go.’ She pours us both a cup and laughs at her own joke.

  ‘Aha, yeah, good shout,’ I say, humouring her.

  She looks earnestly at me. ‘So what do you think it will be like?’ she asks. Her eyes are wide and catlike. Her kimono-style robe is pulled tightly around her, right up to her neck. She adjusts her septum ring.

  ‘What do I think what will be like?’

  ‘You know,’ she says, widening her eyes and nodding her head. ‘Going to California, staying with a man you hardly know…’

  ‘Pretty sure it’s going to be fine,’ I say. ‘And it’s not like we’re strangers. We’ve seen each other’s bits, so how bad can it be?’

  ‘You like him a lot, don’t you?’ she says.

  ‘Very, very much so.’ I sip my coffee and she rests her chin on her fist.

  ‘I wish I was gutsy enough to do that,’ she says. But it’s never really occurred to me that flying out to stay with Jesse is gutsy, it’s just what you do when you like someone, isn’t it? You make yourself available and you see them whenever you can. Maybe things are just on a bigger scale when there’s five thousand miles between you. Maybe it just seems brave because I have to leave the country. ‘I hope it all works out for you,’ she smiles. ‘I think Jon’s out of the bathroom. Any second now,’ she says, and we both know what’s coming. Directly above us, he turns on the hoover. The sound moves rhythmically across the room. Sara and I simultaneously look at the clock. It’s five minutes to seven.

  ‘There it is. For goodness’ sake,’ she mutters. ‘God knows what the neighbours think. I’m going to sneak into his room and turn up the volume on his clock radio. Then we’ll see how much he likes loud noises early in the morning.’

  ‘Mean,’ I say. She laughs.

  ‘You’d better get on. I’m on a late shift today, so you can use the bathroom now.’

  An hour later, I’m ready to leave. I’ve dressed in a pair of summery, ankle-grazer trousers and a grey v-neck t-shirt. There’s a fresh one in my hand luggage, along with some make-up because there’s no way I’m walking through the arrivals hall at an airport looking like I’ve just spent a day on a plane. No way at all.

  Sara’s lighting some incense in the lounge as I’m heading out and she stops as I poke my head around the door.

  ‘Have a great time,’ she says. ‘Don’t expect Jon wished you bon voyage before he left, did he?’

  ‘Course not,’ I say. She rolls her eyes, but we both know it wouldn’t have occurred to him. He probably won’t even notice I’m gone. There’s a smokey, slightly sickly scent wafting out of the room now. It’s claggy. She has nicer smelling sticks than this, and anyway, eight a.m. is a funny time to be burning incense. What’s Jesse going to think of Sara and Jon when he comes here? Will we hide away up in my room, listening to Jon’s hoovering and getting wafts of Sara’s incense? Will we all sit around the table and eat dinner, the way we do sometimes at weekends? Will Jon be happy with someone who isn’t listed on our tenancy agreement staying all that time? Will I even want to share him at all? Maybe we should stay in a hotel. Or find one of those serviced apartments to play house in for a week. I’ll have to gauge it when I’m there.

  I think about all this as I wheel my suitcase down the road towards the station, with my colourful tote bag slung clumsily over my shoulder. And how with every passing minute I’m getting closer and closer to seeing him again. The journey to Heathrow passes in a daze, the planes get bigger and lower and louder, and my heart races at every stop. I can’t wait to see him again.

  Sitting in departures, I indulge in a little people-watching with an extortionately priced almond croissant and a watery cup of tea, and I wonder if anyone here is doing the same thing as I am. Crossing an ocean to start something with someone. Seeing if it has the spark of potential you so desperately hope for. Swallowing down the excitement and the nerves and anticipating what’s going to happen when finally, after hours of travelling, you pick up your bags, get a stamp in your passport, and head out to be picked up.

  I’m daydreaming now, about the moment when I walk through and he’s there. About him wrapping his arms tight around me. About looking up into those lovely eyes and kissing him and knowing that for the next fourteen days, at least, he’s mine. My tea’s gone cold. I check and double check my boarding pass, and I can’t stop fiddling with sugar wrappers, drinks stirrers, the receipt from my order. Anything to keep my hands busy. I text Rachel for a bit of support;

  At Heathrow. Bricking it a little x

  And she texts back,

  Go get him, tiger x

  Finally, there’s a gate for my flight and I make my way down corridors and along travelators, and I sit and watch the plane I am about to get on. Baggage-handlers toss cases into its belly, to-ing and fro-ing in their little vehicles until all the luggage is loaded. A lorry loads in all the in-flight meals and smartly dressed cabin crew huddle until they are allowed on board.

  I’m seated next to a friendly American lady on her way home, who tells me about her vacation in London and how it had been her dream to stand outside Buckingham Palace and see the changing of the guard. She pulls out her phone to show me the photos. I want to tell her about Jesse, but she doesn’t ask why I’m going to LA, and I can’t slot it in there. Just befor
e departure, I fire off a final message.

  On the plane, and we’re about to take off. See you soon x

  And then the reality of it all hits me. It really is a big deal. Now I’m here, buckled into my seat, and we’re pushing back on the tarmac, moving slowly towards the runway and the sky, it does feel pretty ballsy. The cabin crew run through the emergency procedures, fastening and unfastening seatbelts and pointing out the exits, but I’m not really concentrating. We’re racing down the runway now. The engines are roaring. The entire plane judders and shakes as it soars high up into the sky. The land below us gets ever smaller and smaller as we climb. The sky above us bluer and bluer. My ears pop with the change in pressure, and tiny ice crystals form on the windows.

  Eleven hours later, after two movies, almost an entire novel, two meals, and a restless kip, I’ve flown across the Atlantic, over mountains, lakes and plains and we’re descending into LAX. I’ve managed pretty well to suppress my nerves but each time the plane bounces further down in the air, my heart is in my throat and my stomach feels like it’s housing an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies. And finally, we land. I stare out of the window as the plane taxies towards the terminal. It’s so different to London. Clear blue skies and mountains. An air traffic control tower and the iconic Theme Building. I'm in Los Angeles, and it can’t be long now until I see Jesse again. The bubbly excitement is back. He could be here right now. He could already be waiting.