I’d been winning with Stella before my trip had been mentioned. She’d relaxed and I’d begun to enjoy her company. I already recognized the beginning of a spiral into meltdown territory.
“I can’t cancel. These meetings have been arranged for months. But it will be fine. I feel like you know me better than my own mother at this point.” The meeting in Chicago was about the possibility of converting an old hotel into luxury flats. It could turn out to be very lucrative. And I was looking forward to diversifying and spreading my wings a little.
Stella set her drink on the table and sat back, looking as though dark clouds had gathered above her. Her mouth was downturned, and her eyebrows pulled together. “I’m serious, Beck, Karen will stop at nothing to embarrass me. And I don’t think I could handle it. I’ve had enough humiliation to last me a lifetime. Being at the wedding is bad enough.”
“Humiliation? What do you mean?”
Her eyes filled with tears, which was the last thing I was expecting. Despite her claim that she and Karen were friends, it didn’t seem that way at all. But why would going to the wedding be so awful? I didn’t want to ask and risk upsetting her even more. “You could come with me to America?” I suggested.
“Don’t be crazy. I can’t follow you to New York. Apart from anything else, I don’t have enough holiday left. Especially since I have to take a week for the wedding.”
“So, hand your notice in. You’re not going to be able to do that job and do all the design on my building anyway.” What was I doing? I shouldn’t be encouraging her to give up her job. It would be better for me if she realized herself that she couldn’t do the two things and ended up pulling out of my project.
“I’ll figure it out.” She tapped her finger on the bottom of her wine glass. She didn’t sound too convincing. “In the meantime, you need to cancel your trip.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’ll be at the end of the phone. We can even FaceTime. But I’m not cancelling. End of story.”
“Oh, did I mention how stubborn Beck is?” Joshua asked.
“Piss off,” I replied. “You wouldn’t cancel in my position either. And there’s no need to. If we were having a relationship, we would talk a lot by phone, so that’s what we’ll do. I’ll call you five times a day if necessary.” Truthfully, going to the US when Stella was so jittery wasn’t ideal, but I’d have to make good on my word and call her a lot—ask her questions, answer hers. It would be fine.
“I guess, like you said, I can wait and see how confident I’m feeling and tell them I’m sick if I don’t think we’re ready.”
“We’re going to be ready. I promise you.” One thing Stella would learn about me was that I didn’t make promises I didn’t keep.
Thirteen
Stella
With Beck in New York, I was going to have to make the best of things. It wasn’t as if he were on a desert island somewhere without his mobile. After elbowing my way through the lunchtime crowds of Seven Dials, I threw my salad onto my desk and pulled out my phone. It was nine in the morning in New York. Beck should be ready for a few questions.
Me: Are u there?
Beck: Where?
Me: On the other end of the phone?
Beck: No.
He was almost funny.
I had to use the time he was away as efficiently as possible. I needed to think of the kind of digging Karen was going to do. No internet research was going to tell her anything that would be a problem. It wasn’t like Beck was secretly gay or married or a priest or something.
He liked women. His friends had assured me of that in the pub. I grinned to myself. He was always so cool and confident, it was nice to see he wasn’t perfect—the way his friends ribbed him about stuff in front of me had clearly irritated him.
It was cute.
Almost as if he wanted to present the best version of himself to me. As if he wanted me to like him.
And I did like him. So far. Not that it mattered. Although, obviously he was attractive. An eighty-five-year-old lesbian nun would be a little giddy around Beck.
But it didn’t matter. Because we weren’t dating. We were getting to know each other. That was different.
Somehow.
Me: What’s your favorite restaurant in London?
Nothing.