Her big, brown eyes go wide as she figures it out, and she grips my wrist, a set of bracelets clattering together with the movement. “Was that a player? Oh my God, who?”
“Lachlan Ramsay?” I offer tentatively. Sheepish doesn’t begin to cover it—I can actually feel my shoulders go up in a pitiful display of self-consciousness.
“Lachlan Ramsay?” She googles a picture of him and shoves her phone in my face. “This Jude Law–looking motherfucker just rang you and made you laugh like that? Tell me everything. Immediately.” Now she’s shaking my arms up and down, and my phone flies out of my grasp and lands on the affordable, resilient (washable!) cushions of the VRETSTORP.
“Ah, Jude Law, yeah, I guess I can kind of see that. But, like, young Jude Law, when he had hair and did rom-coms. Sidebar, why did he stop doing those? He was so good inThe Holiday.”
“Abigail Middle-Name McIntyre, do not try to distract me with sidebars. Are you hooking up with a footballer?”
“No!” I shout, again loud enough to scare off yet another couple trapped in the special hell that is the Ikea living room section. “God, no. Absolutely not. My heart is far too mangled to even contemplate someone new. And anyway, he’s married.”
“Funny you should mention that.” She fishes a magazine out of her bag; it’sLOOK!,one of the cheap tabloids obsessed with footballers and their WAGs. She flips through a few pages then drops it in my lap with the flair of a lawyer making a dramatic closing argument. I look (LOOK!) down to see several grainy pictures underneath a bold headline:ADIOS AMOR? Lachlan Ramsay’s WAG spends holiday in private beach club in Mallorca cozying up to his ex-teammate after Scot returns to Liverpool—without her.
It’s hard to sort out the reaction this provokes in me. Empathy for Lachlan if it’s true, because being cheated on is hard enough without having it splashed across the papers. Satisfaction at understanding the Claire puzzle a little bit more. But also a healthy amount of skepticism: Am I really supposed to buy what this rag is selling? What’s next, I start listening to podcasts about Bigfoot?
When I don’t respond, Amina prods me with the magazine. “So? Thoughts?”
“The only thing I take from this is that their headline writer must be paid by the letter.”
“Come on, she’s totally having an affair.”
“Amina, how can you read this trash? This is a vaguely woman-shaped person next to a vaguely man-shaped person on a vaguely balcony-shaped structure. I mean, where were these photos taken from, space? And even if it is her, they’re just standing there. Oooh, call the divorce lawyers.”
“All I’m saying is you might have an opening.”
“And all I’m saying is you’re deranged.”
She laughs and puts the magazine away. “Fair enough. I’ll let you just be friends—for now. But I do need all the details.”
“And I need pillows, so can we focus on that? Also, we were talking about you before Lachlan and theblur-who-might-be-Claire so rudely interrupted. I want to know everything about the baby.”
She waves her hand. “Whatever, it’s a fetus, it’s doing typical fetus things. We’re closing in on twelve weeks, we’re due in January, we don’t know the sex. Your news is way more exciting.”
“I promise I’ll tell you everything if you help me buy sheets.”
“Sheets you’re going to shag Lachlan Ramsay in,” she says under her breath.
I slap her arm. “Say that again and I’ll throw you a baby shower.”
Amina stares at me like I’ve pulled a gun on her. “You wouldn’t.”
“Cucumber sandwiches and everything.”
“Okay, I take it back. You’re not going to shag Lachlan Ramsay.”
“Thank you.”
I drag her up off the couch, link her arm in mine, and wind us to the bedroom section, dodging her increasingly lewd questions as best I can and trying desperately to keep the resulting images out of my mind.
Chapter Nine
I may have disagreed withSteven on a lot of things—like whether it was okay that he was fucking someone else as I planned our wedding—but the one thing we did agree on was our honeymoon. A totally clichéd beach trip in Hawaii or Mexico. Poolside margaritas. Idyllic sunsets from the deck of a catamaran. It would have been the perfect vacation.
Except I would have been wrong, because it turns out my perfect vacation is actually a work trip: Twenty-five professional footballers. Five hours of scrimmage every day. The French Alps. It’s Mersey preseason camp, and it’s actually heaven. And as an added bonus, nobody here is cheating on me!
We’re high enough that the air is noticeably brisk, a lovely fresh breeze, with plenty of light coming off the jagged, sun-drenched mountains. Sure, there aren’t any margaritas, but did I mention the twenty-five professional footballers? It’s like summer camp for adults: The lads go on bike rides, go kayaking in the nearby river, play tennis and croquet, and occasionally spend some actual time on the football pitch. There’s no campfire at night, but I bet the cooks would whip up s’mores if the boys asked. Phil and I just have to sit back and watch, capturing as manyteam-bonding moments as we can and publishing them on socials to shamelessly promote ticket and shirt sales.
Watching them train together as a team, seeing their inside jokes develop, seeing the new joiners get bedded in—it’s all wonderful, and it makes me so excited to witness it. While my concerted efforts to unlearn my couple habits and reclaim my independence have been successful over the past few weeks, I’m now aching to fill the Steven-shaped void with as many people as I can, and I worry the team can sense that loneliness, desperation rolling off of me like a bad smell. Like if anybody gets too close to me, I’ll glom onto them and not let go until they say we’re friends.
