63.
Josh
July 2016
On Andrea’s thirty-eighth birthday, we go to a new bar to celebrate. It’s one of those subterranean speakeasies, all velvet and no lighting and cocktails that taste even grimmer than they sound. I feel out of place, even as a supposed twenty-something.
When I get there – late, because my college class overran – Andrea is deep in conversation with Polly. But Rachel is alone, looking at her phone, so I take a seat next to her.
I glance at her martini glass, which is garnished with a pickle. Ever since Giles let slip that she and Oliver have been trying to conceive, I occasionally find myself checking to see if she’s drinking, wondering if today might be the day she tells me she’s pregnant again.
Misinterpreting my curiosity, she nudges the glass towards me. ‘Try it. It’s actually not bad.’
‘No, thanks. Think I’ll stick with the most disgusting drink I’ve ever had.’
She lets out a laugh, though it’s almost lost to the noise of the bar. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Headline ingredients are chocolate and absinthe.’
‘That sounds dangerous.’ Her brown eyes meet mine, just for a moment, then she looks away, sips the pickle-martini. ‘Hey, do you have any book news for me?’
I’ve told her before that I’ve been working on something. But she doesn’t know yet that I have something pretty big to share with her.
I finished writing my latest novel just a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been out on submission less than twenty-four hours. And now – after being apathetic for so much of my career that I’ve sometimes wondered if he’s died without anyone telling me – my agent, Melvin, has apparently pulled off the impossible. The news came in this afternoon, via a rare phone call: a sizeable pre-empt has landed, from one of the Big Five publishers.
When he told me, I dropped to the floor in shock and promptly hung up. Then I lay flat on my back and stared at the ceiling.
Bloody hell.
It’s already earned me more than my first five novels put together. It is, as my mum would say,silly money.
Rachel covers her mouth when I tell her. ‘Oh, my God. Josh, that’s—’
‘I know.’ I can’t stop the smile from breaking over my face. ‘I know. It’s mad.’
‘It’s better than mad. It’s bloody brilliant.’ She puts her arms around me, buries her face in my neck. She’s had a drink, and maybe she wouldn’t be hugging me like this if Oliver were here. He’s not, though: he’s in London at some entrepreneurs’ networking back-slapping thing, which means for once I can chat to Rachel without feeling pickaxed by his gaze.
Anyway, tonight, I don’t care. Rachel was there through so many of my writing ups and downs. She helped get me where I am tonight, and I want to share this with her.
We hug for a couple of moments. Her gold hair is spilling through my fingers. It’s still long enough to reach halfway down her back, has barely changed since she was twenty.
Suddenly, my skin senses that someone is watching us, from across the room. And I know without having to look that it is Andrea.
Releasing me, Rachel springs to her feet, then dashes to the bar, orders three bottles of champagne. ‘We are celebrating,now.’
Which is when Andrea comes over to ask what’s going on, and I tell her, and she just stares at me, like,What the fuck?
We get back to my flat at around midnight. After four years of dating, Andrea and I still haven’t moved in together. Eventually I stopped asking, and tried to appreciate what Andrea kept saying about the flexibility of having two separate places, especially where writing is concerned. She spends much of her working day wandering about making coffee and talking to herself and getting her beta readers on the phone. I am more of a headphones-on, do-not-disturb kind of guy. So it is probably better, on balance, that we do have two flats, albeit they are in different parts of town.
I switch on the overhead light, just in case Andrea has been thinking I’ll try to incognito my way out of this.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, before she can speak. ‘That isn’t how tonight was supposed to go.’
‘The biggest moment of your career, and you tell Rachel – no, in fact, you lethertell the entire bar – before you tell me. I mean, it was actually quite impressive, as a territory move. Announcing your news as if it was her own.’
I swallow. My mouth still tastes of that dodgy cocktail, a horrible combination of absinthe and the kind of non-chocolate you find in health food shops.
It is unforgivable, I know. Aside from anything else, I have no doubt that Andrea’s influence on my writing has helped get me to this point. And she’s my girlfriend, for God’s sake. I owed her at least the basic courtesy of sharing the news with her first.
