Sophie was shaking her head and she rested her hand on Laura’s finger, pulling it downward. “I will,” it looked as though Sophie was saying. She nodded and Laura shook her head, before they both looked over at him and their expressions changed as they looked away.
“So just remember that, okay?” Kiki finished, and she was gone.
It was after midnight by the time Tom managed to get everyone out and was alone with Sophie.
The two of them sat on the floor of the gallery, directly in front of the photo of Sophie, the remains of a bottle of champagne between them. After all this time, he had her to himself. Two versions of her, in fact, which after a few drinks had made him feel very lucky indeed.
“I made a mistake, Tom,” Sophie said, reaching across to take his hand in hers. She ran her thumb across the top of it and traced it over his knuckles, the way he forgot she used to. How was it possible that they could slip so easily back into something that had been gone from their lives for so long? Tom wasn’t sure whether it was want, or habit. “And I’m so sorry. And I understand if it’s too late. If that girl...” she drifted off, glancing toward the door that Daisy had walked through earlier as Tom followed her gaze, air catching sharply inside him. “Or, you know, you and Kiki are...”
Tom pulled his gaze from the door and back to Sophie, snorting as she laughed too. “I’m kidding with that. I didn’t think you... I mean not that you couldn’t date a supermodel. Of course you could, I just—”
“It’s fine. Please.”
They locked eyes and laughed, nervously, Tom suddenly aware properly, again, of where he was and who he was with.
“I understand if this seems out of nowhere and if you need time and more conversation. I just need you to know how I feel. How the second I got the call today, the only person I wanted to celebrate with was you. I wantedyou.”
“Today?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “And I already knew I was coming tonight and it just felt like a sign, you know? It was meant to be. For me, I mean.”
She was saying all the right things and Tom started to push away the small parts of it that were alarming to him. So she’d made this discovery less than twelve hours earlier, but that didn’tmatter. Whenever it was and however she’d got to that decision, she’d still made it. She’d made a mistake. She wanted him.
He cleared his throat, thinking of the right words. He didn’t want to fuck it up. “Soph, you saying this is all I’ve wanted to hear since the moment you ended things.”
“Really?” She looked so unsure then, with her wide eyes and wobbling bottom lip that Tom couldn’t take it anymore.
“Really,” he whispered. He squeezed tighter on her hand, pulling her to him and kissing her right there in front of the giant photo of her own face. It was everything he remembered. Butterflies. Soft lips. She kissed him harder, leaning farther toward him and reaching her leg across until she was sitting on top of him, murmuring his name into his mouth, and every thought he had about anything that wasn’t Sophie was gone.
“Wait,” he said, pulling away. “What were you and Laura talking about? It looked as though you were fighting.”
“Oh,” Sophie said, turning her face away for a second. “It was nothing. She was just smashed.”
That night, for the first time in months, the moment his head hit the pillow, he was asleep. When he woke up it was past 8:00 a.m. He’d missed the bus.
Chapter Twenty-One
Daisy
Daisy didn’t need a message from Tom to know what had happened, but when it arrived, just after three hours into her shift, she wasn’t surprised.
She wants me back!! Your plan worked!!
She saw the text and swallowed down the shame of the words she never got to say. She’d been so caught up in the moment, going too method in her role as his fake girlfriend and fizzing with both champagne and a mistaken confidence in herself having seen Tom’s photography, that somehow she’d convinced herself it was something more than it was. For a fleeting moment she’d believed there were feelings there on both sides, and if she hadn’t already snapped herself out of that by morning, Tom’s message did.
Staring at it, she pressed down on the speech bubble with her thumb, selecting the thumbs-up.
What had she been thinking? It had all come at her in a rush as she stared at that photo of herself and heard the mutterings of what she now knew was the Dalai Lama, daring her to take a risk. Some risk that would have turned out to be.
Moving to her photos folder, Daisy scrolled back through images until she found one of her favorites of her and Zack, faces pressed together smiling at some celebratory drinks post a padel tournament Zack had won a couple of years ago. She set it as her phone screensaver for both her locked and unlocked screen, replacing an image of their garden during sunset. Whatever crazy world she’d been living in was over now. She was about to get married and she’d known from the very start that all Tom wanted was his ex-girlfriend back. That was literally the sole reason why the two of them knew each other. Sophie had done Daisy a favor, interrupting her chat with Tom when she did. Saved her the pure humiliation of getting too carried away in the moment and blurting out mixed-up feelings to a man who’d only ever been honest with her about loving another woman. And now he had her. They had done what they set out to achieve, so it didn’t matter that Daisy was disappointed when the bus pulled away from Angel Station with no Tom in sight. It didn’t matter that Daisy felt like her heart was being pulled from her chest as the bus moved farther from the spot where Tom usually stood. None of it mattered, because Daisy had a wedding to prepare for and the chances were she wouldn’t see Tom again until that day. It was probably for the best. Things needed to return to the way they were beforeOrlandocame into her life and turned it upside down.
She sat at her desk filing stories about a popstar who’d lost his driving license and a celebrity chef whose restaurant had been shut down. Clara sat opposite her, editing some audio. Once Daisy had felt Clara’s eyes on her, but when she looked up, Clara looked away. There was such an emptiness within Daisy that when she saw her phone light up again and looked down at it, it took a moment to register who it was. She was expecting a photo of Tom with his tongue down Sophie’s throat or some smug photo of the two of them in front of the giant photo ofSophie’s face. Worse still, in front of the photo of Daisy. Anything that was further evidence of how happy they were. Instead, as she finally took in the name on the screen, her heart thumped hard against her chest.Dan.It was flashing. It wasn’t a message, it was a call.
“Oh my God!” she shouted and Clara couldn’t help but look up then.
Daisy answered, and ran from the room.
“Oh my God!” she said again, this time into the phone. “Dan?”
