One Day in December(8)

‘Laurie?’ Sarah turns her attention to me. ‘Isn’t he every bit as gorgeous as I said he was?’ She’s laughing, proud of him, as well she should be.

I nod. Swallow painfully, even as I force a laugh. ‘He certainly is.’

Because Sarah is so desperately keen for us to like each other, Jack obligingly leans in and touches his lips briefly against my cheek. ‘It’s good to meet you,’ he says. His voice matches him perfectly; coolly confident, rich, shot through with gentle, knowing wit. ‘She never shuts up about you.’

My fingers close around the familiarity of my purple pendant, looking for comfort as I force a laugh, shaky. ‘I feel as if I know you too.’ And I do; I feel as if I have known him for ever. I want to turn my face and catch his lips with my own. I want to drag him breathlessly to my room and close the door, tell him that I love him, strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him, drown in the woody, clean, warm scent of his skin.

I’m in hell. I hate myself. I take a couple of steps away from him for my own sanity and grapple with my wretched heart to stop it banging louder than the music.

‘Drink?’ Sarah suggests, light-hearted and loud.

He nods, grateful to be thrown a lifeline.

‘Laurie?’ Sarah looks at me to go with them.

I lean back and peer down the hallway towards the bathroom, jiggling as if I’m in dire need of the loo. ‘I’ll catch you up.’ I need to get away from him, from them, from this.

In the safety of the bathroom, I slam the door and slide on to my backside with my head in my hands, gulping air down so as not to cry.

Oh God, oh God. Oh God! I love Sarah, she’s my sister in all but biology. But this … I don’t know how to navigate safely through it without sinking the ship with all of us aboard. Hope flares bright in my chest as I fantasize running out there and just blurting out the truth, because maybe then Sarah will realize that the reason she’s so drawn to him is that, subconsciously, she recognized him as bus boy. God knows I’ve all but drawn him for her. What a misunderstanding! How we’ll laugh at the sheer absurdity! But … then what? She graciously steps aside and he is my new boyfriend, easy as pie? I don’t even think he recognized me, for Christ’s sake!

Lead-heavy defeat crushes the delicate, ridiculous hope as reality creeps in. I can’t do it. Of course I can’t. She has no clue, and Jesus, she’s so happy. It shines from her brighter than the star of fucking Bethlehem. It might be Christmas, but this is actual life, not some crappy Hollywood movie. Sarah is my best friend in the entire world, and however much and for however long it kills me, I’ll never silently, secretly hold up signs to tell Jack O’Mara, without hope or agenda, that to me he is perfect, and that my wasted heart will always love him.





19 December


Jack


Fuck, she’s so beautiful when she’s asleep.

My throat feels like someone shovelled sand down it and I think Sarah might have broken my nose when she smacked her head back in bed last night, but right now I can forgive her anything because her scarlet hair is strewn out around her shoulders on the pillows, almost as if she’s suspended in water. She looks like the Little Mermaid. Though I realize that thought makes me sound like a pervert.

I slide from the bed and fling on the nearest thing to hand: Sarah’s dressing gown. It’s covered in pineapples, but I’ve no clue where my own clothes went and I need headache pills. Given the state of the stragglers last night I wouldn’t be surprised to find one or two of them still strewn across the living-room floor, and I figure pineapples will offend them less than my naked arse. Shit, it’s pretty bloody short though. I’ll just do a quick dash.

‘Water,’ Sarah croaks, flinging her hand out towards me as I skirt round the edge of the bed.

‘I know,’ I murmur. Her eyes are still closed as I lift her arm and carefully tuck it back under the quilt, and she makes a noise that might mean Thanks and might be For God’s sake help me. I drop a kiss on her forehead.

‘Back in a sec,’ I whisper, but she’s already slid under the fog of sleep again. I don’t blame her. I plan to climb back in there and do the same thing myself within the next five minutes. Glancing at her again for a long second, I back quietly out of the room and click the door shut.

‘If you need paracetamol, they’re in the cupboard on the left.’

I pause for a beat, swallowing hard as I open the cupboard door and root around until I spot the small blue box.

‘You read my mind,’ I say, turning to Laurie. I force a casual smile, because in truth this is really fucking awkward. I’ve seen her before – before last night, I mean. It was just once, fleetingly, in the flesh, but there have been other times in my head since: random, disturbing early-morning lucid dreams where I jolt awake, hard and frustrated. I don’t know if she remembers me. Christ, I hope not. Especially now I’m standing in front of her in a ridiculous pineapple-strewn ball-grazing dressing gown.

Her dark hair is piled high on her head in a messy bun this morning and she looks as if she’s as much in need of medication as I am, so I offer her the box.

Sarah has banged on about her best friend so much that I’d built a virtual Laurie in my head already, but I’d got her all wrong. Because Sarah is so striking, I’d lazily imagined that her choice of friend would be equally colourful, like a pair of exotic parrots perched up here in their cage. Laurie isn’t a parrot. She’s more of a … I don’t know, a robin, maybe. There’s a contained peace about her, and a quiet, understated sense of being okay with herself that makes her easy to be around.