SIX
I was going to be sick, I was going to be so sick. How was I even meant to play this? Cool and reserved? Act like nothing had happened and hope he’d do the same? I had to pretend in that way that everyone pretends when they see someone from their past. I had to be the charming, plucky girl I was when Jason bumped into me in line at that restaurant: Look how well I’m doing.
But Dylan could always see through my fake smiles a mile away.
When he got to the table, I stood up, waiting for him to recognize me.
“Oh my god,” I started, and he laughed, looking at me.
“Well, that’s quite the greeting!” Dylan held out a hand, laughing as he met my eyes. “Dylan James, good to meet you.”
I felt my face drop. I stood there, still holding his hand, suddenly shriveling. I wanted to yell, Dyl, you idiot, it’s me! But the way his eyes met mine stopped me. This wasn’t accidental. He was pretending on purpose.
Somehow that was worse than fake niceties.
I felt suddenly weak, and sat down, dismissed.
“This is Aly and Tola,” Nicki trilled, focused on her phone in her hand, not even looking up. “They’re business coaches. I’ve been talking to them about a couple of my projects, but I actually think they’d be really good to help you ahead of your big meeting. What do you think, baby?”
She looked up at him, clearly expecting an enthused response. Dylan rubbed the back of his neck and winced a little. “I think I’ve been here thirty seconds and you’re already trying to fix my life.” He kissed her temple to take the sting from his words and took the phone from her hands, placing it on the table. Nicki raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
God, you have no idea.
“So . . .” His eyes met mine, and I could feel myself glaring. Say something, go on, say something. “If I hired you, I could depend on you to be there when I needed, right? You’ll be around for the whole month? Wouldn’t want to end up needing you and just find you’d disappeared.” He looked away and took a sip of the beer that a waiter brought over, nodding his thanks to him. “That wouldn’t be very . . . professional.”
Oh, so that was how it was going to be.
I wanted to let out a stream of excuses and arguments—I left for uni, you had a girlfriend, and also, fuck you—but I stopped myself.
I let Tola respond with how we worked in London and had met a few years ago, that we still worked at an agency whilst starting up our own business.
He sat back in the booth, relaxed as anything, smiling and nodding, completely pleasant. And then those blue eyes met mine like they were a dare.
“And what about you, Aly, was it?” You know my name, you bastard. You know my middle name and my mum’s name and the name of the bunny rabbit I had when I was twelve.
“Alyssa.” I turned on my work smile, though it felt like chewing glass. “What about me?”
“You can be trusted? If we hired you, you’d be there?”
Somehow, this arrogant man smirking at me was the boy who’d held my hand when my parents got divorced. The boy who’d cried on my shoulder when his mum died. The person I’d shared my first cigarette with, my first beer with. All my secrets with. Up until there was one I couldn’t share.
“If people tell me the truth, I’m loyal until the end.” I smiled tightly, meeting his eyes. I got the satisfaction of watching them flash with irritation. There was no getting away from history. Dylan James could pretend all he liked, but knowing who someone used to be is a peculiar power.
I don’t think I’d realized we’d been staring at each other for so long, until Tola narrowed her eyes at me and said, “We’re open books. What other information can we provide?”
The whole time, Nicki watched us with interest, her chin resting on her hand. Like we were a TV show she couldn’t stop watching. Maybe she thought this was all part of our spiel, that our act included me growling at the mark until he stopped acting like an arsehole. Still, her eyes kept flicking to her phone on the table, like she was waiting for an opportunity to steal it back. As interesting as we were, we couldn’t compete with hundreds of thousands of loyal followers, validating her every thought.
Dylan focused on Tola, thinking about his question carefully. “You two are business experts?”
“We’re experts at helping people reach their potential,” I replied before Tola could, and tilted my head slightly. Don’t you remember? You were the first, after all.
He laughed derisively. “How sweet. Hand-holding and cheerleading, then, is it?”
“Babe!” Nicki yelped, amusement surfacing alongside the embarrassment. “Don’t be rude!”
“Well, we won’t be doing your math homework for you, if that’s what you mean,” I bit back, outwardly hostile now. Even my smile didn’t hide it. He smirked like he’d won a point.
I’d been so excited to see him, even through my mortification. He could have greeted me with that same smile, that same shrug, and everything would have been fine. Instead, I felt like a fool for that brief jump of delight when he appeared. A child who should have known better.
“Well, leave me your business card, it’s getting rather exhausting harnessing all this potential on my own.” He laughed, more genuinely that time, and winked at me. Winked at me. I bristled, but he’d already moved on, asking Tola about her customized leather jacket and getting Nicki’s input on fashion, generally coordinating a conversation that bypassed me altogether.
Dylan had always been charming, even as a gawky teenager. He had a way of getting you to smile, no matter how annoyed you were at him. He knew that once he had you smiling—didn’t matter if you were a girl with a crush or a teacher looking for geography homework—you were a goner. I always wondered whether that charisma and friendliness would grow into untempered narcissism without me around to make fun of him, to remind him to be real. And it seemed I was right. But it was unfair that he got to be handsome, too.
Nicki had picked well. She acknowledged every waitress who glanced his way, every woman who turned her head as she walked by, and no doubt she loved it. It was a fraction of the attention she would have gotten when dating that reality TV star, but still a little recognition that, yes, this one was special.
Dylan had filled out. He was solid and broad shouldered, and his shirtsleeves tightened around his biceps as he reclined against the booth. I supposed that wasn’t a surprise; his dad used to be in the army, he always made him do drills on Sunday mornings to keep fit. Some things were the same, though. Those dark eyelashes were still lush and curly. I’d spent endless minutes complaining about how unfair it was that he got Bambi lashes whilst I had to near blind myself with curling contraptions and mascara wands. He always just fluttered his lashes and grinned at me, saying, Why’d you bother with any of that crap anyway, Aly? It’s just us, no one cares. I’d been the best friend, never a girl.
I knew Dylan could feel my eyes on him because his gaze kept flitting back to me, before refocusing. I wanted him to wonder what I thought of him, whether I was measuring him up and finding him wanting all these years later. I just didn’t want to wonder what he thought of me.
When we said our good-byes ten eternal minutes later, Dylan didn’t meet my eyes. Instead he focused on my left earlobe as he raised a hand in farewell, still relaxed in the booth.
“Really lovely to meet you,” he said, stony faced and thin lipped.
“Yeah, Mr. James,” I said, overenunciating, “really illuminating.”
I watched as the irritation appeared again and knew I’d won. Which would have meant something if I didn’t have the strange desire to burst into tears.
When we finally escaped out onto the busy street, Tola grabbed my hand. “What the hell was that?”
“Unfuckingbelievable, that’s what that was.”
I felt like I’d been hit by a car, and the bright grays of a London sky and the people milling about us on the pavement weren’t helping. I must have looked as faint as I felt, because Tola took charge.
She took me to a bar around the corner, sat me down, then marched up to the bar and ordered us two martinis and a share platter of fried goodies, because, as she often said, onion rings are good for the soul.
By the time she returned, I’d started to feel a little more normal. Tola placed the drink in front of me and gestured for me to sip, like it was a ceremonial beginning to our conversation.
“Good?” she asked, and I sipped and nodded.
“Okay.” She splayed her hands. “Spill.”
It was hard to know where to start, or how much to reveal. Whether I should leave the embarrassing stuff out, downplay how much he’d been a part of my life. Keep it simple.
“Dylan James is my best friend.”
Tola frowned. “Didn’t look like that.”
I winced. Idiot.
“Was. Was my best friend.” Though he hadn’t had much competition over the years. My last real friend before I’d met Tola and Eric, which was more embarrassing than I wanted to admit. I wasn’t easy to get to know.
The years after Dylan I had been head down, focused on my studies, not wanting to get hurt again, dating a guy who most of the time barely even noticed I was around. You make it difficult to like you, Aly, he used to say. Three wasted years with someone who didn’t even like me very much. Someone who took the place of friends and hobbies and all those experiences you’re meant to have when you’re away from home for the first time.
Which was why I left university with a first-class degree, and no one to hug good-bye at graduation.
“I met him on the first day of secondary school. We were the only ones who really got each other . . .”
I kept trying to place the image of a teenage Dylan onto the man I’d just seen, but it was almost impossible. The Dylan I knew smiled all the time, and not that tight, fake smile but real and wide. He had the loudest laugh I’d ever heard.
“And you had a huge argument and never spoke again?” Tola filled in. “Because that was what that looked like. Except for the weird ‘pretending not to know you’ thing.”
“It was a bit more complicated than that . . .” I sighed, trying to figure out how vulnerable to make myself. But Tola smiled and patted my hand.
“Tell me.”
“I developed a crush. It was the last year of school and I thought if I could just get to uni and meet someone new, it would pass, you know?” I pressed my lips together. “I’d start my whole new life, and he’d still be my friend, and everything would be perfect.”
“But . . .”
“We were at this party, playing truth or dare, and one of the guys dared Dylan to kiss me. As if it was the worst, most ridiculous punishment they could think of for him.” I evened my voice out, tapping my fingertips on the tabletop. “And I don’t know if you’ve ever been kissed by someone you like in front of a room full of people who think it’s hilarious, but it broke me. It was like everything I’d wanted and the worst humiliation I could imagine all at once.”
He’d smiled down at me after, thumbed my cheek with affection in his eyes, and for the smallest moment my heart had leaped with hope. Maybe it had meant something. Then he turned round to everyone else and said, “All right, you’ve had your fun, you weirdos, next person!”
“I got absolutely hammered. Like, half-a-bottle-of-tequila-and-a-whole-freaking-lemon hammered. I was completely gone.” I blinked to stop myself cringing.
“Hey, it happens, you were a teenager.” Tola shrugged one shoulder and nudged me gently, as if reminding me she was right there next to me.
“But you know when you look back and realize how fucking dangerous it was, to be so out of control? How you treated yourself with so little care?”
Tola tilted her head and gave me a look, as if to say, You still do. She didn’t speak for a few seconds, and then said, “Babe, is this story about to get super dark?”
I shook my head, and she nodded, just once. I knew in that moment, no matter how dark the story might have become, she would have responded the same way: taking a sip of her martini, smiling gently, and encouraging me to continue in my own time.
“Dylan found me, took me home, and looked after me. I don’t remember much, I don’t remember what I said. I know I was sick, I know he gave me his T-shirt. I must have given myself away somehow because I said something and all I remember is his eyes widening in shock. He was horrified.”
God, telling this to Tola, even so many years later, was hard.
“And then it was morning, and I was under the covers and he was asleep on top of them, and his phone buzzed. Messages from his girlfriend, annoyed that he’d looked after me instead of ‘deflowering’ her as they had previously arranged, I guess.” I tried to laugh it off, but Tola didn’t laugh with me. She just looked sad, as if she could see where this was going. “And the messages he’d sent back whilst I was asleep . . . about having to look after me, about what a burden I was and how he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore when I was across the country at a different uni . . . well, I’d always felt a bit like a hanger-on, him being so popular and fitting in so easily everywhere, but I’d never thought he’d seen me that way, too.”
He made me into the sad little pathetic sidekick, embarrassingly in love with him. Always hanging on, always hoping.
“So I snuck out, and went home and asked my mum if I could go spend the summer with my grandparents in Crete until I went to uni. I blocked his number and I disappeared, and we never saw each other again.” I splayed my hands.
“Until today. Oh, Aly,” Tola said. “But that still doesn’t explain why he thinks he has the moral high ground here. Or why he pretended he doesn’t know you.”
“I guess I ghosted him instead of having the big argument. I wasn’t great at confrontation back then.” I shrugged and sipped my drink. Okay, I’d bared my soul. That wasn’t too bad.
“Oh, yeah, because you’re brilliant at it now, doing Hunter’s homework and constantly waiting for Felix to give you that promotion instead of just demanding it.”
“I have been demanding it! Anyway, it’s not the same . . . I’d trusted him and been proven wrong. All those years of friendship felt like a lie. I thought I’d seen the real him and he’d seen the real me, but I was wrong. I was too embarrassed to have a big argument about it.”
I got on a flight that night. In a small village in Crete, I let my cousins stroke my hair and talk about broken hearts, and I drank coffee with my grandmother. In the evenings, I watched as she and my grandfather danced together under the awning on the stone veranda, huge bunches of juicy red grapes hanging above their heads as they swayed. And I remembered that there was someone for everyone, if you were just patient enough. I had a whole life ahead of me, I would go to university and find my people. It felt like hope.
And then, of course, I went off to uni and I didn’t fit there, either. I didn’t make those friendships everyone always talks about. I was still on the phone every evening with my mother, who was somehow worse now that I wasn’t there to play the grouchy teenager and keep my dad at arm’s length. I threw myself into my studies, because that was what I was there for.
And then I’d met Timothy and I’d built a world around him, because I hadn’t found friends and it seemed so very hard to trust someone again. And by the time I realized Timothy had been a bad idea, that I was a lonely, homesick little husk, I only had a few months left before graduating, and everyone was busy in the library anyway. I didn’t have time for friends. I only had time for my plans: a first-class degree, a master’s course I could do from home—where I could keep Mama safe—and a job that would lead me straight to a corner office.
That had been the plan for years, and I was so nearly there . . .
Tola picked at a mozzarella stick, frowning at it as she used it to make her point. “Why wouldn’t he just admit he knew you? It’s so weird. Nicki clearly noticed something was up.”
I shrugged. “He was always good at pretending to be okay.”
“Well, clearly you have that in common,” Tola snorted, and I nudged her. “He wasn’t what I was expecting from Nicki, though. From the way she spoke I thought we’d have a socially awkward guy rocking up in board shorts and video game T-shirts.”
I tried to forget what I knew of Dylan and just assess the guy we’d met. “Well, the suit wasn’t cheap, but that could be Nicki’s doing. He walked and talked with confidence; he didn’t seem like someone who needed help preparing for a pitch. He looked like someone who could stand next to her on a red carpet.”
Tola laughed. “Yep, can’t argue, he’s a pretty boy. One who won’t be taking her for chicken dinners anymore, apparently. Seems like she’s done a decent job of crafting him into what she wants already.”
“He was always pretty good at that himself. He likes to be liked. A chameleon, fitting in with any crowd, any situation. When we were teens, he used to completely change himself for whatever girl he fancied, you know? He’d be the sporty one, or the sensitive type, or the romantic one. He’d know exactly what to do to make them fall for him.”
“Why do I get the sense you were involved here?”
I shrugged. “I guess I used to help him, with school, with girls.”
“You taught him to hustle?” Tola laughed.
“I taught him how to be the perfect boyfriend. If anything, it’s funny to hear him tell Nicki that she’s playing a part. He’s been doing that since we were kids. If she told him what she wanted, he’d do it. That’s who he is. I don’t think Nicki even needs us.”
“Apart from needing to fix the fact that he doesn’t have enough followers to make it worth her while. I know the guy might have been a bit of a dick to you, but I do kinda feel sorry for him. He has no idea what he’s in for.”
“Well, good luck to them both,” I snorted, holding up my glass. “May we never have to deal with either of them again.”
“A month to get him to propose so she could be on a wedding show . . .” Tola shook her head, raising her glass to clink it against mine. “I’ve dealt with some social media divas, but really, she was off the charts.”
“Well, at least the evening ended well.” I gestured at our table. “Good food, good company, and a good story to tell.”
“Cheers to that. Aren’t you curious, though? Don’t you want to go back there and shake him and ask him why he’s pretending and have it all out? I’d be dying.”
I shrugged. “That man is not my friend. He might have been once, but there’s no point searching for the future in graveyards.”
“Damn, you’re stone-cold,” Tola laughed.
“I just don’t have time for stuff that hurts,” I said softly. “That’s all.”
We paid the bill and I wondered what kind of story Tola was going to build this adventure into for Eric tomorrow. We laughed on the tube on the way home and moved on to other stories, silly things people did in the office, the plans for the next Fixer Upper client, the drama that was going on in Tola’s (infinitely younger and cooler) friendship circle. When we went our opposite ways at King’s Cross, she hugged me fiercely before turning with no warning and almost vaulting for her train.
But that night, when I was curled up in bed, warm and comfortable, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Dylan’s eyes looking at me with a challenge, daring me to break first, to throw the game and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. I redid our first meeting over and over again in my imagination, trying to find one where it didn’t hurt. Where we greeted each other warmly and left as friends. How would it have gone if we’d bumped into each other without Nicki, if I’d just been having dinner with Tola, or had seen him in the street?
I was ashamed of the thrilled delight that hit me when I first saw him, that my first thought had been, Yay, my friend is here! I was angry at myself. But the incredible irritation didn’t stop me from finally giving in when the clock read one a.m., picking up my phone, and googling Dylan James.
I’d held out for a decade, on a strict diet of denial—no Dylan news. The most I got was when my mother mentioned seeing his dad at the local shops, and even then, I changed the subject, not wanting to wonder if his relationship with his dad had improved, or if he ever came back to visit.
Because I knew, I knew I’d be like this. Addicted to knowing more. Once I finally stopped ignoring that shadow in the corner of my vision, I’d want to see everything.
Which was why I was still awake at four in the morning, scouring the internet and devouring the tiny bread crumbs of history and achievement of the boy that I’d once loved.