‘Wow.’
‘Yeah... Although, I’ve got to say this past few weeks have given me a bit of a wobble.’
‘I bet. I’m sorry things have been shit with you too. And here I am being a grump all day. That can’t have helped.’
‘Today was the most fun I’ve had in ages,’ Adam says, his eyes searching my face so intensely I have to look away for a moment to gather myself.
‘The thing with me is I know I’ve been blaming the way I feel on my breakup last year,’ I say eventually. ‘But… the truth is, I was feeling this way for a long time before that… It’s kind of become the norm.’
‘It will get better.’ Adam smiles at me. ‘I know it will.’
We go quiet for a moment, both lost in our own worlds.
I hold my glass up to Adam. ‘Well, I guess it’s a Merry Christmas for us!’
Adam laughs his weird loud laugh and it’s so very loud and so deep from his belly that it makes me laugh too. And despite the fact that it’s Christmas, that Mitch is here with someone else, that all this flirting is fake and that I’m only hanging out with Adam so that I can impress my boss – I realise something… I’m actually having a really good time.
Chapter Eleven
Christmas Eve 8:45 p.m.
‘My bladder is so full of vodka and Diet Coke, but I don’t want to walk past Mitch to get to the toilet,’ I moan to Adam.
‘Well, it’s either walk past him or piss yourself in his vicinity.’
‘Good point, succinctly made.’
‘Just hold your head high and stride past. For all he knows, you are dating me – the hottest man in all of Notting Hill.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Handsome, yes. But I wouldn’t say hot.’
‘Ouch.’ Adam frowns. ‘I thought my flirting was very hot.’
‘Fake flirting.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m going for a wee now.’
‘So go.’
‘I’m going.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
I stand up from the chair, and trying not to sway with tipsiness, I do as Adam says and hold my head up high, walking past Mitch and his new girlfriend. Then, of course, I stumble on the way because I am holding my head up high and not looking where I’m going. I throw Adam a dirty look for the bad advice to which he laughs and gives me two thumbs up.
Once I’m done in the loos, I walk back out through the flock wallpapered corridor towards the pub and there, blocking the doorway, smiling at me as if we’d never been apart, is Mitch.
‘I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he says, in that deep voice that used to drive me crazy, even when he was talking about something dull, like tennis or traffic. And now he tells me I’m beautiful when I have hat hair and a slightly snotty nose and am bundled up in my super puffy shiny black puffa jacket that makes me look a teeny bit like a bag of recycling.
Shit. How the hell am I going to get out of this corridor without falling apart. How, after a year, can he still make me feel this way, make me feel sad that we’re not together. That I wasn’t enough for him?
‘Good morning, Mitch,’ I say very professionally, before realising that it’s the evening and I am a knucklehead.
‘Good morning, dweeby.’
