‘You’d better get on then,’ Rob said. ‘I know I’ve said it already, but it really was great to see you. Again.’
He held his arms out and Piper stepped into them, smushing her face into the side of his neck. Her bag was digging into her shoulder, her nose was pressed sideways against his jaw, but she felt utterly relaxed. And safe. She felt him kiss the top of her head and she shivered.
‘Let me know next time you’re home, yeah?’ Rob said.
‘Of course,’ Piper said.
They smiled at each other and then the door immediately behind her closed with a whoosh of air and she said, ‘Oh shit!’ and pressed the button before climbing on board. When she got to her seat, she looked up to see Rob still standing there, smiling.
She wanted to get off the train and fling herself at him, push her hands into his hair, lick his neck, bite his bottom lip. The train started pulling away. She lifted one hand and waved.
Chapter Twenty
‘Have you been on Facebook?’ Matt said the next morning, as soon as Piper answered the phone.
‘Not lately. I’m busy.’ Piper was still riffling through her in-tray as she talked to Matt. Her boss was looking for the contract he’d drafted for still-called-Feminine Hygiene with notes from their lawyer, and she was sure she’d put it there, but there was no sign of it now. There’d been no sign of Lee either, which she had to admit was a relief.
‘Go and look,’ Matt said. Piper couldn’t quite work out his tone. He sounded slightly awed, with a hint of amusement and maybe also fear.
‘I can’t, Matt, I’m busy. Just tell me. Is it something bad?’ She gave up on the in-tray and pulled open the file drawer at the side of her desk – maybe she’d unthinkingly filed it instead?
‘Rob’s tagged you in a photo from the reunion.’
Piper stilled, her hands on the hanging folders, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear.
‘Is it horrible?’
‘No, it’s good. You’re showing quite a lot of tit, but you look really gorgeous. And he looks like a fucking Greek god, Jesus. I knew he’d got hot, but—’
‘Fucking hell, Matt!’ she said, too loudly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people in the Accounts department perk up and look over at her.
‘Sorry. And he’s put “I said you looked good on the dancefloor” with a heart and a winky face. You need to talk to him about that.’
‘So this sounds quite nice? Why are you flipping out?’
‘He’s checked in at a school – I assume the one he works at? And so there’s loads of comments from students. About you.’
Piper’s stomach felt like it was trying to escape her body. She clung to the edge of the filing cabinet. ‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah. You need to ring him and get him to delete it. But there’s already, like, edits in the comments, so it’s probably too late.’
‘Fuck!’ Piper said again, resting her forehead on the cabinet. It was cold. Either that or her skin was burning. ‘What kind of edits?’
‘They’ve put his face over your boobs. There’s one with like a tiny version of him stuck in your cleavage.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Piper?’ John called from his office. ‘Any joy?’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Matt. ‘Thanks for telling me.’
‘Okay. I’m sorry, love. Ring me in a bit.’
* * *
Piper only had time to text please delete FB photo to Rob before her boss was out of his office and bellowing at her for the contract. She spent the rest of the afternoon searching files and drawers and in-trays, along with her own bag and John’s briefcase, before concluding that it was lost.
And while it wasn’t her fault – probably wasn’t her fault – she hated letting people down, hated anyone being annoyed with her, so John’s faffing and stressing in his office while he tried to figure out if he could have actually done something with it/passed it on to someone to look at/lost it somehow stressed her right out. So she was enormously relieved to find Matt waiting for her when she left.
‘I thought you might need a drink,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘I do. And I haven’t even been on Facebook yet.’
‘He deleted it,’ Matt said, sliding his arm through hers and hugging her close. ‘Or he untagged you, at least. I can’t see if it’s still on his page cos we’re not friends. But…’
‘But?’
‘Like I said earlier, there was already screenshots and edits. It’s…’
He coughed and Piper squeezed his arm. ‘You can tell me. It’s okay.’
‘It’s on LADbible.’
Piper stopped walking and stared at him. ‘Oh fucking hell!’
Over the course of the afternoon, Piper hadn’t been able to hold onto a single emotion for more than a couple of minutes. At first, her stomach had swooped so much that she’d genuinely thought she might be sick. Her hands had been shaking and she’d had to escape to the loo for a cry. She’d almost checked her phone then, but she knew that if she did the day would be a write-off and she’d been so sure she’d be able to find the contract –she’d never lost one before.
Searching for the contract had given her time to think and she’d told herself it didn’t matter what Internet randos thought about her body. She was happy with the way she looked. And Rob apparently thought she looked good too. Not that she needed his validation. But it was nice to know he hadn’t been appalled. She’d received enough shitty comments on her blog and Instagram (and Twitter and Facebook) to know that this was par for the course for the Internet. Mostly they didn’t even hurt any more. So was it just because it was Rob? Because she knew Rob would have seen the comments before he made the photo private. Did she really think that knowing that other people thought she was gross would affect how he felt about her? If he felt anything beyond friendship, which probably wasn’t even the case anyway.
Her brain had gone over it and over it. Round and round. Fighting between thinking that it didn’t matter and that it would all be over soon, and that it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Becoming a body positive blogger had been an amazing thing. She was proud of herself. It had changed the way she felt about her body and herself in general. But always under the surface lingered comments that people had made in the past. The comment that Rob had made. Always just under the surface was the fear that she wasn’t happy with how she looked, that she was kidding herself. That the girl who hid chocolate wrappers under her bed, the girl who would say she was too sick for a party when what she meant was that she was too fat for the clothes she’d planned to wear, the girl who had to make a joke when the boys were picking her friends up, throwing them over their shoulders and running down the beach because she knew they wouldn’t be able to lift her – that that girl was still there and that this would bring her out.
* * *
Piper waited until she’d drunk just over half of the vodka and grapefruit Matt had insisted on buying her before she let him open Facebook and show her the photo. She was relieved that it was nice, even though she couldn’t remember it being taken. She was on the dance floor and she was laughing, her head tipped back. Rob was standing behind her with his arms around her, pressing her arms to her sides, which had pushed her boobs together and given her quite ridiculously deep cleavage. He was looking at her and laughing too and he looked… fond. She ignored the tiny version of Rob stuck between her boobs.
‘I know you said it didn’t, but are you sure nothing happened?’ Matt said. ‘Between you? When you were home?’
‘No!’ Piper said, still staring at the photo. ‘I would’ve told you if it had.’
‘He looks like he’s into you.’
He did. He really did.
‘That’s just Rob though,’ Piper said. ‘He’s really friendly. And nice. And he loves his friends.’
* * *
‘I’m so sorry,’ Rob said straight away.
‘It’s okay,’ Piper said, automatically.
‘Of course it’s fucking not. Some of the comments, Pipe—’
‘The comments aren’t your fault.’
‘No. But if I wasn’t a dick who can’t use Facebook properly—’
‘It’s just one of those things,’ Piper said. ‘It’s not your fault. I don’t know why people have to be so fucking horrible, but I can’t say I’m exactly surprised. I’ve been getting shitty comments on my Instagram and my blog for years.’
Piper could hear Rob blowing out a breath. ‘I’m sorry you have to deal with it at all,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry I made it worse. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to it quicker, I was teaching and—’
‘Honestly, Rob,’ Piper said. ‘It’s fine. And it’s not even really worse. Just different.’
‘How are you so calm about this? I wanted to reach into the Internet and smash some heads.’
Piper laughed. ‘I used to feel like that. I used to argue with people and I’d be shaking. I used to want to take screenshots and send them to their girlfriends and parents and employers, put them on a billboard, all of that. And then I read a tweet that said something like “I don’t know how to explain to someone that they should care about other people” and I just thought, yeah. I could shame them into an apology. I could get them in trouble. But I can’t force them to feel empathy. All I can do is carry on living my life and writing blogs and taking photos and maybe one day they’ll see something and they’ll get it. That’s all.’
Rob was quiet for so long that Piper started to worry he’d got bored and hung up, but then she heard him blow out a breath.
‘God, Pipes. You’re amazing.’
‘Pfft,’ Piper said and then rolled her eyes at herself.
‘You are,’ Rob said. ‘You’re so strong. And kind. You always were.’
Piper laughed. She’d always tried to be kind, but she’d never thought of herself as strong.
‘Shut up,’ Rob said. ‘You are. But I’m sorry you’ve had to be. And I’m sorry again for fucking up.’
* * *
Piper lay in the bath and thought about the comments on Rob’s post. Ten years ago, they would have devastated her. Ten years ago, she was only putting tightly cropped photos online so no one would know she was fat. Or at least, she hoped that was the case. She’d felt like she was sort of okay with being fat herself, as long as no one ever commented on it. Then she’d had a period of mentioning it first, joking about it first, as if it would then hurt less when someone inevitably said something. But it hadn’t. And then, slowly, eventually, she’d come to love herself.
It was hard to admit now that one of her plans for moving to London had been to lose a load of weight and then go home, looking completely different and astonishing all of her old friends. And she’d tried. She’d joined WeightWatchers as soon as she’d started uni and had a free membership at the gym, and while she frequently lost a bit of weight, she always put it back on again. She told herself university wasn’t conducive to weight loss, what with the whole ‘Freshman Fifteen’ thing, that she couldn’t actually afford decent food, didn’t really know how to cook and ate most of her meals sitting at her desk working on essays. It was fine. There was plenty of time. She carried on going to the gym because she liked it – she hated the classes and the bikes, but loved the weights, swimming, the treadmill. She loved feeling worn out afterwards, loved the way her body buzzed and she slept better. Even her skin was better. So the gym plan continued, but the diets… not so much.
A few months into her first year, a boy in her seminar group asked her out. Andrew was tall – over six foot – and what her mum would have called ‘well built’, with fair hair and rosy cheeks. He was witty and kind and she’d already liked him, so when he suggested they go see a film at the cheap Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square, she’d said yes.
He’d held her hand during the film and it had been nice, his thumb stroking over the back of her hand, sending shivers up her arm and across her shoulders. Afterwards, he’d suggested going for a pizza and she’d said she couldn’t, she was on a diet. He’d looked her up and down, a confused expression on his face, then he said, ‘Why? You look great to me.’
She’d started to tell him how much weight she had to lose. The figures on the book she took with her for the weigh-in each week. How she had a target and she needed to lose at least a pound a week or she’d be going home in the summer still fat and she didn’t want to take that chance. But she stopped herself. Because she felt great. She was wearing a black maxi dress and boots and she felt comfortable and happy and strong.
‘Fuck it,’ she’d said instead and they’d had the most delicious pizza and dough balls and wine and she’d laughed so much she’d spat a bit of pepperoni across the table and simply said ‘Oops’ rather than panicking and worrying that it would make him think she was greedy or otherwise out of control.
They’d walked back to Halls, talking the whole time and, when they found that Andrew’s room-mate was still out, had sunk onto Andrew’s bed. He’d stripped off her maxi dress and she’d wriggled out of her underwear, but neither of them had been able to undo the straps on the sandals so she’d kept them on while they slid their hands and lips over each other, hips pressing and legs curling, and the best thing of all, still laughing.
Afterwards, Andrew had pushed himself up against the headboard and passed Piper a bottle of water.
‘That was fucking incredible,’ he’d said. ‘You’re incredible.’
She’d kissed him just next to his nipple, rubbing her cheek against the patch of hair in the centre of his chest. She hadn’t been able to speak. She hadn’t known sex could be like that. She’d slept with one boy before – on their last family holiday, just before she’d left for London – and the entire experience had been hideously disappointing. But with Andrew it had been exciting and sexy and fun.
‘Can we do this again some time?’ he’d asked into her hair. ‘Are you busy tomorrow? Next day? Day after?’
Piper had laughed. ‘Next weekend?’ She had an essay due.
‘Hmm,’ Andrew had said. ‘Not sure I can wait that long.’ He put the water down, flipped her over and crawled down between her legs, hooking her thighs over his shoulders.
When Andrew told her at the end of that year that he was leaving London, giving up his degree and moving back to Scotland to work for his father, she’d been upset. But not as upset as she thought she should have been. They were good friends. They’d had a good time. But they weren’t in love. The main thing that she worried about was that sex would never be as good with anyone else as it had been with Andrew. And so far, it hadn’t been.
She’d looked him up on Facebook not long ago when a song on the radio had reminded her of him. He was married now, with a tall, ruddy-cheeked wife, a couple of small, ruddy-cheeked children and a Rottweiler named Blue.
After her bath, lying on her bed, wrapped in a fluffy towel and with Mary Lambert on Spotify, Piper messaged Rob and asked for his address.
I’ve got something to send you she wrote. While she’d been looking for the contract, she’d found a CD by a band they’d signed a while ago, but whose first album had flopped badly. But Piper had loved it and thought maybe Rob would too.
Looking forward to it he replied, straight away.
Chapter Twenty-One
At lunchtime, Piper walked up to Fulham Palace Road and bought a prawn and avocado baked potato to eat at her desk while she checked her social media.
The photo Matt had taken had more likes and comments than any photo Piper had ever posted before. At first she was worried that it had been picked up by some dickhead again, posted to Reddit with ‘This is what a fat feminist looks like’ or some
shit. But no. It had been regrammed by a super popular BoPo blogger and featured in the Instagram story of another site Piper loved.
And for once the comments were almost entirely positive, calling her smoking hot and admiring her confidence. She felt confident just looking at the photo. She loved it. She was going to have to buy Matt a bottle of wine or something. Maybe cook him dinner.
When she opened her emails, she found she had a message from a journalist writing a piece about body positivity who wanted to interview her in person, along with a photoshoot, plus a couple of emails from brands offering her stuff to review. She’d done a bit of work with brands over the years, but the emails were from better-known companies than she’d worked with before. She made a note to get back to them as soon as she could after work. She also needed to check her PR page and make sure her terms were up to date.
After lunch, she found she had an all caps ‘urgent’ email about the girl band name. The list now included The Muffin Tops, Scratch That Itch, Play Nice, The Sugar Mice.
‘The Sugar Mice?’ Piper said out loud.
‘I know, right?’ someone said from further down the office.
It's a Girl Thing, The Crush, Sux, The Vacations, Eleven.
‘These are all terrible,’ Piper muttered, deleting the email.
She opened Facebook, intending to grab Rob’s address for the padded envelope in her in-tray with the CD and card ready to send, but instead typed: I’m going to be home this weekend. Are you around? Want to get a coffee? I could give you the thing instead of sending it.
Once the message was sent, she shut Facebook down to ensure she didn’t spend the rest of the afternoon refreshing the page.
John had left some dictation tapes in her in-tray and after she’d finished the second tape, she headed to the kitchen to make a tea and instead found three of the A&R guys, including Lee, gathered over someone’s phone, snorting with laughter.
The Invitation_The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 11
