Ed takes a step backwards and casts his eyes between Jeanette and Elly. His eyes are large, alarmed. "He doesn't look like me," he says at the same time as I say, "He doesn't look like Ed." I add a snort for good measure.
Something shifts in the room then and Ed scurries back to his original place in our semi-circle around the sculpture.
"He doesn't," I say again and when Carlos says, "He's the spitting, dear girl. No point in denying it," I scrutinise the face of my soldier and then peer at Ed, who's frowning into his mug and very much looking like he'd rather be doing a suitless spacewalk than standing in this room in this moment.
And I see it. The bone structure's the same. The deep-set eyes are the bloody same. The angle of the nose... "Shit."
"Was that...did you intend to do that?" Lutek asks.
"No," I say. Because I didn't.
"God," says Elly. "They're even pretty much the same height. Look." She grabs Ed's arm, no doubt in an attempt to pull him over to stand beside the soldier again, but he tugs his arm out of her grasp. "Oh don't be a spoil sport, Ed," she adds in a teasing tone.
At which point Ed takes himself off to sit in his chair. He turns it around, away from us, and opens one of his notebooks, his shoulders hunched.
"Ed," says Lutek. "Are you alright?"
Ed writes something in his notebook.
"So," says Elly, her grin decidedly wicked. "You've made your ideal man and he just happens to look like Ed?"
I don't think I like what's happening. I don't reallyknowwhat's happening, but I don't think I'm equipped to cope with it. Which I also don't like. "I mean. I spend a lot of time with Ed. I guess it was...unconscious? He's, like, my best friend." I laugh. It is short and flat. "Right, Ed?"
Ed offers a half-hearted nod, but doesn't turn around.
It's a logical argument. It makes sense. I scrabble around for something else anyway. "You're all artists. Art is always heavily influenced by our real life experiences. Reality bleeds into art. I needed my sculpture to look like a man. It's only natural there'd be unconscious bias towards the man I spend the most time with. There's nothing to read into that."
Now Elly looks positively gleeful. "An unconscious bias towards Ed as your ideal man. There's nothing at all to read into that."
Everybody except for Ed looks at me as if there's everything to read into that.
"I need some air," I say. I open the door and look over my shoulder before passing through it. "And all of you can fuck right off."
Except it's me who does the fucking right off. I get in the car and drive home to contemplate whether this is something I need to start freaking out about.
Chapter thirty-four
Bess
IgetLutektomakeEd and Mistral a coffee, so I can take it over to them and have an excuse to see what happens when I see Ed in the flesh after a sleepless night of wondering if Ed is actually my ideal man.
I mean, on paper, he does alright. He's got a full head of very thick hair, he makes me laugh, he's taller than me, he has a decent job in a respectable profession.
He is handsome. There's no denying that.
And he is very respectful of women. He'd treat his girlfriend extraordinarily well. And he'd definitely do romantic things for her.
My mind throws up a montage of Ed doing clichéd couple-y things with a woman. Walking hand in hand with her by the ocean, sitting beside a fire with her, handing her a bunch of wildflowers, accidentally eating the same string of spaghetti and laughing.
The woman's face turns into Mistral's, which I know is ridiculous. Ed cannot be interested in a girl-woman who starts every sentence with "Okay, so" and ends it with "basically."
I want to burn the whole idea of Ed being romantically attached to someone down anyway. Which is...novel. And entirely unwelcome.
I've known Ed likely has the capacity for doing romantic things for as long as I've known him. He's told me that himself. I've never cared he might do them with someone else before, and I have no idea what to do with that.
Once Lutek has finished practising his foam art on the top of each coffee, I lid them up and walk across the road, suspecting this experiment will have an outcome that will only plunge me further into the Land of What the Fuck?
Mistral is not at her desk. Ed is.
