If I Never Met You(98)

Laurie took a shaky breath.

‘Can’t I have kissed him for the reason anyone kisses someone, when knee deep in cheap plonk at a Christmas party?’

‘Number one, he was a right dozy twat. Number two, if it was to make your ex jealous, he wasn’t witnessing it. Number three, it contravened the agreement we made, so you were taking a risk. Number four, fucking kilt. There are four compelling reasons for not kissing Angus from Experian.’

‘… You know when you want to do something totally out of character? The fact I’d never kiss someone like that or do something like that. That was why. It was spontaneous stupidity. That was all.’

Jamie looked at her from under his brow, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenching.

‘OK. I didn’t ask exactly what I wanted to ask. What I really meant is: why did you kiss him, and not me? It seems to me that if you take a Fake Boyfriend to a party, and you’re going to do some meaningless copping off, you probably would do it with the Fake Boyfriend. I know we’re in an unusual situation and a lawyer should be able to cite precedent, and I can’t, but, you know …’

Laurie folded her arms, play-acting insouciance when she was in a state of excited terror.

‘Jamie, do you think you’re so irresistible it’s against the laws of physics for a woman to kiss another man, instead of you?’

‘Objection: deviation. I knew you’d say that and in the words of District Judge Tomkins, it’s a fallacious argument.’

She saw that look again in Jamie’s eyes. That look of starstruck fondness she wanted to see so much, and didn’t trust.

‘What’s Angus got, except a stupid kilt, the goofy tartan wearing nationalist?’

‘It would’ve been … weird to kiss you. We’re friends.’

‘Friends,’ he repeated.

Laurie nodded.

‘When we were dancing together, it felt like two people who are much more than friends.’ He paused. ‘It’s the closest I’ve felt to anyone in my entire life.’

That, in a nutshell, was what Laurie felt.

A silence developed. Laurie didn’t trust her voice.

‘When the song finished, you gave me this look, this look like we were … actually in bed together, or something, this total intimacy that I felt too, and then you bolted. Next I know? ANGUS.’

Laurie sucked in air and wished she’d not lit candles or put Prince on.

‘Please, don’t do this. Don’t turn one of the best friendships I’ve had into the shock twist that we sleep with each other for a while, and then fall out when one of us, who, shock twist, will be you, doesn’t want to keep doing it anymore. It would turn gold into scrap metal. I don’t want to be your millionth fling. This is bigger and better than that.’

‘I agree with all of this.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘To tell you that …’ Jamie paused. ‘I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be together. Somewhere along the line this stopped being a pretence for me.’

A beat of blood in her ears; time seemed to slow. Should she try to stop this?

‘What about what you said about thinking you were falling in love with someone? What happened to her?’

‘In Lincoln?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was talking about you.’

Laurie’s jaw dropped. ‘No, you weren’t, because you said …’

‘I made a dick of myself by blathering about how I’d know and not thinking you’d ask “why” and then I had to do that lame mislead. I thought you guessed?!’

‘No,’ Laurie said, replaying it in her head. Her? She was Eve?

‘Take anything I’ve said as part of this performance art from, oh, I don’t know. At least from Lincoln onwards. Possibly at fancy steak restaurants. I meant everything I said. I felt what I felt before I knew what I felt, you know what I mean?’

She remembered how reluctant he’d been to tell her how he rebuffed that girl at Hawksmoor: I don’t want to share you. He’d spooked himself because as he’d said it, he knew it was true?

Laurie laughed, in nerves and shock and disbelief, and yes, even if she didn’t admit it, joy. ‘You said love was a temporary manic state, like a debilitating psychosis!’

‘Yes, and I was wrong. I was ignorant, and arrogant. I thought because I’d never experienced it, it didn’t exist. It’s not being out of your mind. It’s being in it, it’s complete certainty. When I’m with you, I know I’m where I belong. I want this to be real, Laurie. I want you to be mine. I want to be yours.’

Prince started on ‘I Wish U Heaven’: his music should be regulated, as a Class A intoxicating substance.

‘And,’ Jamie said. ‘I think you feel the same way, but you won’t trust it, or me, because of who I was when you met me.’

Laurie sucked in a breath that went to the bottom of her ribcage.

‘It’s true that I haven’t got the strength for another rejection, after you try out being a one-woman man and find it’s not for you.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I just do.’

‘Bit risky …’