I Was Born for This(40)

‘Oh.’

Juliet is now eyeing Bliss carefully.

‘I had plans,’ says Bliss. ‘Plans for my life. And now …’ She starts to laugh. ‘What’s gonna happen to me now? All I’m ever gonna be known for is being a band boy’s girlfriend.’

‘It’ll die down,’ I say. ‘Stuff like this is only hot news for, like, a week, isn’t it?’

‘This is The Ark we’re talking about,’ says Bliss. ‘Come on. You’re in the fandom. You know what it’s like.’

She’s right. This won’t die down in a week. The Ark fandom will be talking about it for the next three years, at least. People will track down Bliss’s every move. She won’t be able to move house, go to university, go on holiday, go anywhere without someone spotting it, posting about it, talking about it.

And they’ll hate her. The ones who are in love with Rowan, anyway, which is a lot of them. They’ll hate her.

‘Everything will be all right,’ I lie.

She laughs. ‘You’re sweet.’

‘Maybe you should talk to him,’ says Juliet in a small voice.

‘And say what?’

‘I don’t know, tell him how upset you are?’ Juliet fiddles with her hair nervously. ‘Maybe he’ll be able to do something.’

‘I don’t need his help.’

‘But … he’s your boyfriend. You act like you’re not even friends.’

Bliss frowns. ‘It’s different. We don’t see each other very often because he’s always busy.’

Juliet looks away with an eyebrow raise. ‘Okay.’

‘Look, I know you’re just sceptical because you’ve got a thing for Rowan.’

Juliet’s head snaps back towards Bliss. ‘What?’

‘Yeah, Angel told me yesterday.’

Both of them look at me.

‘Oh wow,’ I say. ‘You’re not about to start arguing about a boy, are you? Because then we’d have reached a new level of pathetic in this conversation.’

Juliet sighs. ‘No.’ She looks back at Bliss. ‘I’m not, like, in love with Rowan. I mean, he’s hot, yeah, but I ship Rowan more with Jimmy than anything else. I think I’m more upset about that.’ Her voice quietens. ‘This week has been a rollercoaster.’

Bliss chuckles. ‘Oh yeah. I forgot that was a thing.’ She shakes her head. ‘He really hates that.’

Juliet puts her head on her knees. ‘I don’t want to talk about boys any more.’

Bliss nods. ‘I don’t want to talk about boys ever again.’

I look at them both, feeling quite glad that I don’t have to deal with this sort of situation in my life.

‘They do love each other, though,’ says Bliss. ‘Rowan and Jimmy.’

My heart does a little leap.

‘Not in that way,’ she continues, ‘just in a friend way. But … I don’t think that’s any less special.’

Oh. I guess I never thought of it like that.

Juliet nods. And then she smiles.

‘You seem cool,’ she says to Bliss.

Bliss grins. ‘So do you. We should be friends now.’

‘Yeah. Fuck these boys.’

‘And not in a sexual way. In a “throw them in the bin” way.’

‘Yeah.’

Bliss holds up a hand for a high five, and Juliet reciprocates, and they both laugh a little and then look at me.

I think of Jimmy and feel like a traitor, but then I meet Bliss’s high five too.

Bliss stays for the whole afternoon. Every time we suggest she might want to call Rowan, or her mum, or a taxi, she says no.

I think she just wants to pretend that nothing is happening.

When it’s afternoon prayer time, it finally hits me that she’s here, and I helped her, and that has to be a sign.

It has to be fate that we met.

The good news is that Bliss being here takes Juliet’s attention away from Mac almost entirely. The three of us bond over watching ridiculous Jowan fan videos on YouTube – extra dramatic ones comprised sad Hozier tracks and slow-motion glances between the two boys – which Bliss finds even more hilarious than we do. We sit for a while and talk about our lives, Bliss telling Juliet all the things about her that she told me yesterday, her school life and wanting to save nature and her horrible HMV job, and Juliet telling Bliss about her dream of being a theatre set designer and all the private-school pranks she’s been a part of. Then we all decide to play Cards Against Humanity, which I win spectacularly after I match a card that says ‘This is the prime of my life. I am young, hot, and full of ____’ with a card that says ‘Poor life choices’. Juliet doesn’t even drink the milkshake Mac went out and got her. It just sits and gets warm on the kitchen counter.

‘Oh dear,’ is Dorothy’s reaction when the situation is explained to her.

‘Oh dear, indeed,’ says Bliss. She laughs, but I think she’s crying on the inside.

‘Well, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you’d like,’ says Dorothy, linking her fingers together on the kitchen table. She’d been out for most of the afternoon at a ‘health club’. I have absolutely no idea what a health club is, but I hope I can spend my whole retirement at one. ‘I’ve rather been enjoying having so much excitement in the house.’