I Was Born for This(68)
‘Where to, lad?’ asks the taxi driver as I open the door and sit inside. He’s an older man, greying and large, with a thick northern accent.
‘Er …’
Fuck. Which bit of London would Angel live in? Does she even live in London? I check my phone again. She hasn’t messaged me back yet.
‘Just … just to King’s Cross.’ That’s safe. There’ll be more taxis there.
The man doesn’t reply, so I look up, wondering if he hasn’t heard me. He’s looking at me curiously in the rear-view mirror, squinting.
‘You’re from that boy band, aren’t you?’ he says. ‘The one that got famous on the internet.’
‘Er … yes.’
‘Haven’t you got your own taxi to take you places?’
‘Er … not right now, no.’
The man looks at me for one more second. For a moment, I feel a sudden fear. He’s big. I’m small. He’s a gruff, northern, older white man, and I’m a posh, transgender, mixed-race boy wearing very tight skinny jeans. But then he just shrugs and says, ‘Well, all right. You seemed nice enough when you did that X Factor performance last year. You’ve got a nice voice, I’ll tell you that. Well, better than the nob-heads they put on that show.’
‘… thanks.’
He pulls the taxi out of the bay.
‘You know, my wife is a big fan of The X Factor but I reckon if Simon Cowell and his crew want to find the real talent, the internet’s the place to go, ain’t it? That’s where the younger generation are, ain’t it?’
The taxi driver continues talking, without leaving room for me to reply. I glance down and look at my phone. The missed call count is up to fourteen. And Rowan’s started texting me. Can’t bear to read them.
Instead, I check my Twitter DMs. And there she is.
Angel Rahimi.
angel @jimmysangels
I have it!! Can you get to st pancras?
Btw I only took it because I thought someone would steal it if I left it It looks really precious
Anyway yes I’m at st pancras!! Will happily return it to you if you can get here! Or I can come to you!
Whatever you want!!!
angel @jimmysangels
Whatever you want!!!
I’m dying. Dead. Deceased. Rest in peace, Angel.
Jimmy messaged me. Which means he must have remembered my name and literally searched for me on Twitter. Thought about me, decided to message me, typed out my name and clicked on my profile.
I mean, the circumstances are understandable.
And I know that the boy I’ve been fangirling about for the past five years isn’t exactly the real Jimmy KagaRicci.
But, still.
I’m grinning uncontrollably.
And it won’t take long, will it? I just give him the knife, say goodbye, and then I can go back to Juliet, sort everything out, and make things right again.
I don’t have to choose between them. I can have both.
I head into the nearby Starbucks and buy another cup of tea. I almost get a cake as well but decide that I don’t want to accidentally have cake in my teeth when Jimmy shows up.
God, I’m not even wearing good clothes today. I’m wearing travel clothes. Just a pair of slim joggers and an oversized hoodie.
Shit.
Okay. Calm down. It doesn’t matter what I wear. Jimmy probably won’t care. He just wants his knife back.
I sit down at a table and open my rucksack again, looking at the knife inside. I’ve wrapped the blade in one of my jumpers. Now that I’ve had time to look at it properly, I can see that it’s pretty blunt. Still, it’s an antique and I don’t want to scratch or break it. Don’t want to do anything that might make Jimmy upset.
I take a sip of the tea and check my phone again. There’s a little tick underneath it – he’s read the message.
I know I shouldn’t feel happy but I do. Despite the fact that he clearly isn’t the Jimmy persona that I’ve loved for years and years and years. Despite everything, I feel so, so happy.
Which is kind of sad, really.
Jimmy KagaRicci @jimmykagaricci
Okay will be there in about 30 mins
Jimmy KagaRicci @jimmykagaricci
Okay will be there in about 30 mins angel @jimmysangels
Okay!!! I’ll wait inside Starbucks!! Just message me when/where you want to meet!!!
Angel is very enthusiastic about this, for some reason. I thought she’d be annoyed at having to go out of her way to give me back the knife.
I didn’t think she’d still be a fan of me after seeing me have a meltdown yesterday.
They don’t like seeing you sad.
By the time we’re nearing St Pancras, Gary, the taxi driver, has just about told me his entire life story. It was pretty interesting to listen to, actually. Growing up in the outskirts of Durham, the story of his first wife and how she cheated on him with the man who came to fix the boiler, and how his twin daughters are both studying astrophysics and are definitely going to get to space someday. Sometimes I forget that there are people who have good, pure, normal lives, that don’t involve rather complex lying every single day.
There are a lot of people walking around in London. I duck down a little bit when we start getting into the pedestrian areas and pull my hoodie further over my face. It’d only take one person to glance into the taxi and spot me and tweet my location and that’d be it.