‘Ali?’ Sam was leaning over to catch her eye and Ali frantically scrolled through possible scenarios and outcomes in her head. ‘Hey?’ He waved a hand in front of her face with a playful grin, then he cupped her cheek and whispered, ‘I love you, Ali.’
I love you too, she thought but couldn’t say.
If she said it back, she was staking everything on this one person. On them loving each other for ever. And it wasn’t just about her anymore. She had to think of the baby as well. It was all too much.
‘I think I need to go home, Sam. I feel a bit overwhelmed.’ She tried to clear the lump from her throat and smile gently at him. ‘Maybe we should …’ She ducked her head, embarrassed. ‘Maybe we should go on a date?’ She felt uneasy. Was she just buying time? But no, if they took it slow, she could control her feelings and maybe that would keep her and the baby safe from any uncertainty.
‘A date?’ Sam sat back abruptly. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
‘No.’ Ali was defensive. ‘I’m just …’
‘Just what?’ Sam’s eyes were steely. It was like the day he’d read the thesis all over again. ‘Just a fucking game-player? Fuck you, Ali. You’re conning me again.’
‘Sam!’
He started pulling his trainers back on. Only Sam would wear battered Reeboks to a wedding, Ali thought. It’s why I like him. He shoved his way out of the car.
‘Sam, please!’ she tried again.
He turned back to her. ‘What?’
‘I’m just …’ Ali hesitated. She let the silence drag for a beat too long and Sam slammed the door shut.
‘I’m just scared,’ Ali said, but it was too late.
She sat and cried in the empty car for a long time before she eventually managed to pull herself into the front seat to start the engine. She had no more tears, her throat was raw and a strange numbness had invaded her. She drove home carefully and burrowed into her bed without going in to Liv, as she usually would’ve done. Under the blanket in the darkness she cradled the bump.
‘I’m sorry. I think I’ve fucked it up with him. Again,’ she whispered.
A foot or an arm poked her either in agreement or exasperation, she couldn’t quite tell. Probably both.
Chapter 26
A week later, Ali paced her tiny dressing room as the sound of the audience taking their seats beyond the door rose from a low hum to a wall of noise. The opening night of My So-Called Best Life had finally arrived, and it was already being heralded as the commercial hit of the festival. Ticket sales had been unbelievable, and they had even added matinees to the run when the original four shows had sold out.
Every time Ali felt the churning terror start up at the thought of performing for a real live audience, she looked at the total sales on the website. Selling out a 500-seat theatre for eight shows was a tidy sum, even minus the overheads. She and the baby would be making out with a rake of cash. Plus, Terry had even said he wanted to donate his cut to the Baby Jones fund. Ali couldn’t believe how kind everyone had been: the whole of Dublin Insta was coming, and the Twitterati had rallied, presumably ironically but still, sales were sales, and even the theatre luvvies had been wildly supportive, probably because of Miles.
Now, all I have to do is live up to all the bloody hype. Ali glared at her reflection in the mirror over her dressing table. The table was crowded with flowers and cards from Liv, Amy, Mini and even Shelly. She checked her WhatsApp thread to see if Sam had responded to her last message. She’d put a ticket on the door for him. The message was blue-ticked but no sign of a GIF or answer.
Given how silent he had been since their botched car sex at the wedding, it seemed highly unlikely that Sam would come.
When she’d related the incident to Liv and Amy later, they had all agreed she did not play it well and that Sam’s reaction was understandable. It would have been a cancelling offence if a guy banged his pregnant ex in the back of his car, then, instead of getting back together, suggested they go on a date.
‘Everyone would be, like, what a toxic asshole! Put him in the bin,’ Amy had mused.
A knock on the door was Ali’s signal for ten minutes to curtain. She scrolled Insta to distract herself.
‘We’re at the opening night of @AliJones new one-woman show and cannot WAIT to see what she’s come up with,’ @CrystalDoorley was gushing on Stories, seated in the auditorium just down the hall.
Oh God, the pressure! Ali sat at her dressing table to run through her little pre-show ritual, which she’d established before the first full dress rehearsal and was now too superstitious to abandon. She tapped the table three times, the mirror twice and knocked once on her chest, muttering ‘Miles, Miles, Miles’ as she went.
She stepped into the corridor where Emma, the assistant stage manager, was ready to bring her to the stage.
‘Deep breaths, Ali.’ She smiled, adjusting her earpiece. ‘Full house out there. Even B13.’
‘Sam? Really?’ Ali couldn’t decide if this made her more nervous or less.
‘Yep, he’s there. We’re all rooting for you, pal.’ Emma squeezed her hand and gave her the plastic urn for the first scene.
Ali could feel the audience relaxing into the swing of things after Blake Jordan’s erroneous pregnancy announcement, which played out onstage with Real Ali seamlessly slipping into the role of Blake and delighting the man himself, who was sitting near the front, while Rational Ali begged Thirsty Ali to be reasonable. There were audible gasps and laughs at Thirsty Ali’s kamikaze decision to play along and pretend to be pregnant. Ali was so thoroughly rehearsed she found she could both stay in the moment onstage and simultaneously freak about Sam sitting in the second row. As yet, he hadn’t registered a single visible reaction to the play and she was tense as her reenactment of their meeting, when she told him she was pregnant, approached. It wasn’t written to be slapstick. If it was deprecating towards anyone it was her, but you couldn’t always predict audience reaction.
Luckily, the spectacle of Ali lying to Sam in Grogan’s while Rational Ali begged her to see sense played out to horrified silence in the theatre.
Thank God, Ali thought as the lights shifted for the next scene. She couldn’t have coped with them thinking it was funny while Sam sat right there.
The following scenes of Ali’s misadventures in Instaland were lighter and the crowd was laughing in all the right places. But as the play drew closer to the climax in Miles’s hospital room, the tone palpably shifted, and many people were wiping their eyes by the time Real Ali stood in a lone spotlight cradling her ukulele in the wake of her father’s death.
‘So that’s the true story.’ Ali sighed. ‘I’m a villain. I’m a liar. I’m thirsty. I’m selfish. I’m flawed. I’m rational – sometimes. I knew what I was doing. I knew the potential for hurting a good person, but I did it anyway. And my punishment? I’m bigger than ever on the ’gram!’
The audience laughed and she waved her hand as if to bat away the guffaws.
‘Jokes, jokes.’ She grinned. ‘My punishment is that I lost two people I loved, and I have to live every day with the knowledge that I didn’t treat them right.