‘You almost ready?’ Sam asked in a whisper, despite the fact that my recent photo-smashing incident had probably already woken Jamie – and the neighbours as well.
I looked at myself in the mirror again. If I was going for the homeless-meets-scarecrow look then yes, yes I was ready. Emotionally, on the other hand, I couldn’t think of anything worse than another day spent tangled up in Sam’s new life whilst trying to untangle my own.
‘Almost,’ I lied. Just a couple of shifts at CreateSpace and I’d have some money to move, not that I hadn’t outstayed my welcome already. If my comatose response to Jamie’s church-going confession didn’t do it then my anger at Sam’s omissions certainly would.
‘Great, I’ll start the car,’ I heard Sam call, before his muffled footsteps faded into the distance on the other side of the door. Shit.
Quicker than a Katy-Perry-at-the-VMAs costume change, but much less glamourous, I slipped on a pair of ripped black jeans, my favourite bra (and the only one I could find) and an oversized sheer white blouse and headed for the door. Sam sat in the driver’s seat, door open, shirt collar undone, sunglasses on, a silly grin dancing across his face. Oh God, did he have to look like that? All this time and I still wasn’t immune to Sam in a suit. I smiled back. Thank God he didn’t have to wear a tux to work. A tux. Just like the one he would wear in two months. Eight weeks. Fifty-six days. And my smile was gone. How the hell had Sam convinced me to stay without telling me he planned to stay with Jamie forever?
‘Taken the laid-back look for your first day?’ Sam joked. How dared he? If he assumed we could just forget about yesterday’s humiliation and move on, he didn’t know me that well.
‘Hey,’ I began, hand on hip, hating every inch of that smile I had once loved. ‘I’ll have you know artists love the no-make-up look.’
‘Yeah, it was more the no shoes look that I had in mind.’
I looked down at my feet. Oh crap.
‘Be right back.’ I turned on my naked heels as I heard Sam, against all his better judgement, burst into laughter behind me.
Kitten heels on, I strutted towards the car, sliding into the passenger seat. Sam closed his door and turned to me, the same smile circling around his silly, pretty mouth.
‘Yes?’ I asked, all attitude, eyebrow raised. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Apart from your crazy ex-girlfriend to prove she can dress herself in the mornings.
‘Where to?’ he asked, grin holding fast. How dare he? Was he actually joking? Trying to make light of the fact that he’d lied me back into his life – well, kind of.
‘Across the city,’ I replied, turning to close the door behind me.
‘But where?’ Sam’s smile broadened. He was going to make me say it. Woolloo…?
‘CreateSpace,’ I replied defiantly.
‘I’m going to need you to say it,’ he said, ‘just one more time.’
‘You’re a wanker, you know that, right?’ I smiled oh-so-sweetly in reply, never meaning words more. ‘Just drive.’
Sam laughed again as he turned the key in the ignition – clearly this, us, was a joke to him. Or maybe it was the lightness and laughter he missed? His mornings must be so much less entertaining now that he wasn’t landed with a crazy woman for a girlfriend. In fact, I knew his mornings would be less entertaining; Sam always loved to wake up and… shut up, shut up, shut up. I turned the radio up to drown out my thoughts. A couple of tuneless tracks later, he reached to turn the volume back down.
‘Thank God,’ I half-joked, rolling my eyes. Sam’s taste in music was as bad as his taste in movies.
‘J,’ Sam began earnestly, not taking his eyes off the long, commuter-filled road before us. ‘About last night.’
I inhaled silently, heart beating faster. Why did it still do that? Didn’t it know that it wasn’t supposed to do that around him any more? He was engaged. Engaged. But as much as he should have been the one to tell me, the fact that this broke my heart was my shit to deal with, not his. He had welcomed me into his home after a shock neither one of us could have ever expected. After spending our early twenties thinking we had everything mapped out, we were now in uncharted territory. Plus, if we were going to chart up our recent lies and omissions, I wasn’t sure I had any legs – or shoes – to stand on.
‘I overreacted,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ Sam nodded, still not taking his eyes off the road. I thumped his arm. ‘Ow!’
‘That’s not your line!’ I moaned, turning to face his stubbled, strong profile.
‘Well, you did.’ He didn’t back down. ‘But I owe you an apology all the same.’
‘I think so.’
‘Jess, would you shut up for one moment?’ Sam asked. ‘I’m trying to apologise.’ He elongated the word. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was living with Jamie when we met, and I’m sorry you had to find out about our engagement from her. That wasn’t fair – at all. It’s the last way I would have wanted you to find out and I guess the truth is, I knew you’d be bothered. Because… well… the truth is, I’d be bothered too. Really bothered. We spent university together, we thought we were in love.’
Thought? I was. Hopelessly, uncontrollably. Impossibly.
‘We were each other’s first…’ he continued. I raised an eyebrow. We both knew I was far from his first. ‘…real relationship, each other’s first real love.’
Or so we thought, Sam.
‘I know we talked about our own wedding.’
Mix-tapes as favours and ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’ for the first dance.
‘And I know it was all tongue in cheek…’
There was nothing tongue in cheek about Will Smith.
‘But I knew that when one of us got engaged for real, it would hurt and, well… I didn’t want to hurt you. I was going to tell you, obviously I was going to tell you, but I just knew that if I did you’d never come back to ours and I was so excited to see you, and I’ve missed you and… I’m sorry.’
Silence filled the inside of the car and for the first time in my life I longed for Sam’s music.
‘I…’ I began, looking out at the rolling coastline. ‘I’ve never heard you say so many words in one go.’
Sam took his eyes from the road to flash me a mock-evil stare, a hint of his playful grin dissolving the tension between us.
‘Okay, I’m sorry too. I overreacted. It’s just you – here now, on the other side of the world, with me again – and Jamie – she just caught me off guard.’
‘Yeah me too,’ Sam agreed, his grin unfolding like the cat who got the cream. ‘This whole thing, you being here…’ He shook his head at the road, the sentence dissolving. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess. Honestly.’ His sincerity softened my hurt. I hadn’t been perfect either and neither one of us had seen this, any of this, coming. He sighed again, genuinely gutted at the mess he’d got us into. ‘Do you think we can start over? You know, as friends?’
I sighed too. We had never been just friends. From the first night of Freshers’ Week to a whole year after graduation, we’d become best friends, sure, but we’d never been just friends. And here I was lapping up every kind scrap about our relationship Sam cast my way. I didn’t want to be just friends. But he was happy now. And I wanted him to be happy – kind of. And then there was the small detail that his offer of free accommodation and this temporary job was the quickest way I could think of to get a deposit for my own place without telling anyone back home what a royal screw-up I’d made of this whole new start. Without telling Sam that all my moves and lies had always led back to him. Just a few days, a week, tops – of long shifts, of cash in hand – just to keep me going until the summer set in.