I can’t decide if I should tell Ada her revenge plot is firing on all cylinders, or bury the information before it motivates her to absolutelyrain bloodon the reunion.
I attempt a sympathetic smile. “You are really losing it, huh?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Sorry. Look, can you just forget I said that?”
“Jake… I’m never forgetting this.”
His ears go pink. “Right.”
“In your, um,overexcitementdefence, Ada does have amazing tits.”
“She does,” he says, with such sorrowful reverence, I can’t help laughing.
“Cheer up. You’re not the first guy to lose his mind over Addy. She hooked up with my Emergency Nursing lecturer at the Auckland Med Ball when she was home on holiday once, and the guy followed her around the internet for a year with his tongue out.”
Jake’s face twists into an unholy combo of homicidal rage and misery. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Uh, shake it off? Plenty of fish, yadda yadda?”
His jaw tightens. “I want her.”
“Well, if the Med Ball taught me anything, Jake, it’s that Ada finds begging for round two about as sexy as head lice.”
“I’m not gonnabeg.I just… I like her, okay? I’ve liked her since school.”
“You never told me that.”
“Ask your brother. I used to drive him crazy going on about her.”
I blink, utterly confused. Jakecouldhave crushed on Ada since school, God knows I understand what that’s like, but I tried, and failed spectacularly, to get Will’s attention many,manytimes. The fact that Ada didn’t even remember Jake says he can’t have done the same. Which means he falls into a very familiar category where my best friend is concerned.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You weren’t one ofthose guys, were you? Those post-grad creeps who all mysteriously discovered Ada’s hot once liking her didn’t risk social death?”
Jake looks genuinely offended. “What?No.Jesus. I liked her as soon as she showed up at school.”
“So why didn’t you do something about it?”
“I tried to. I asked her out.”
“You did not!” That definitely would’ve come up at one of me and Ada’s Saturday newsagency shifts. “When? Where?”
“I don’t wanna get into it.” Jake stares at his shoes, suddenly seeming all of sixteen. “I just… I never thought she’d go for someone like me. She was smart. Weird. Cool. I couldn’t even look at her without feeling like a dumbass.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Yeah, well, Ada’s still weird and smart and cool, but you’d better figure out whether this is about you actually liking her or just living out some fantasy.”
He looks me dead in the eye. “I know exactly what this is.”
I’m not convinced. Jake isn’t the first wealthy, overconfident guy to lose his mind over Ada. Or more accurately, theideaof Ada. Name Forever Redacted was the same: rich, a big-deal music producer, connections to British royalty, the whole thing. And it was all ‘champagne and backstage passes’ until Ada moved in with him. Then the mask slipped, and the crying late-night phone calls started. NFR treated Ada like a doll: something pretty to pose, then shove on a shelf whenever someone else wanted to play with her. He chose her clothes, pushed away her friends and picked fights whenever she went out, even to perform. He demanded she getourivy tattoo removed and bought three different necklaces, trying to replace the ‘A’ pendant I gave her for her thirtieth birthday. I begged her to leave him, but NFR’s guilt trips were like expertly laid traps. Ada kept stepping into them, then apologising likeshewas the one who’d done something wrong. And the more she convinced herself she was the bad guy, the more he isolated her from everyone.
When NFR locked her passport in his safe to stop her from going on tour, I lost my shit. I told Ada to get it back and come home, or I’d be on the next flight to Paris to file a police report. Two days later, she arrived at Afterglow sobbing, with nothing but a bag of clothes and her flute case, and that day I swore I’d die before I let her fall in with anyone like that ever again.
“Cee?” Jake presses. “D’you believe me? About having a crush on Ada at school?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Jake. What Idoknow is a bunch of Pukekohe guys hit on Ada after we graduated, and she hates that more than she hates almost anything.”
Jake’s jaw tightens. “What guys? Guys I know?”
God, men are embarrassing sometimes…
