“Exactly, so who cares if Karen figures out you and Beck. You still get the job. You still move forward.”
I might still get the job of a lifetime but somehow, I needed more than that. I had to believe that I could be more than the girl whose best friend and boyfriend got married. “I need evidence,” I said. “Yes, the job’s important. I need the chance to get my design business up and running, but I need something else too. I’m in a rut—or I’m on a losing streak or something. At the moment, if I got that job, I’m worried something would happen to stuff it up. I need this pretend boyfriend thing to go right to break the pattern.”
“To end your losing streak?”
I put the key in the lock and pushed the door open into the hallway. Absolutely nothing about coming home had changed since Matt had left. Except Matt wasn’t here. The coat hooks still had too many coats on them, even though they were just my coats and jackets now. The succulent his mother had brought on her last visit still sat on the console table. The deep red carpet still made the hallway look dark. “Exactly. Maybe.” It wasn’t exactly a run of bad luck I was having. But I’d gotten into a pattern of bad s
tuff happening and it was starting to feel normal. “Something good needs to happen. And you know what? I want to convince everyone at that wedding, including Karen, that Beck is my boyfriend because I want to know that people think it’s possible.”
“I’m not following you. Think what’s possible? That you could date a guy like Beck?”
“Sort of. I mean, he’s good looking, hardworking, he has a great body, his own business. He’s funny—sometimes. He’s got nice friends. I don’t know, I just want people to believe that I’m worth someone like that. That I’m worth something more than a cheating boyfriend. I swear people think that I must have done something to deserve it.” The fact was, I was always trying to figure out what I could have done differently. What I could have done to have stopped Matt cheating.
“Stella, I believe you’re worth more than a man like Matt.”
I didn’t like the tinge of pity I heard when she said my name.
“You don’t count. You’re biased.” I pulled open the bedside drawer that had been Matt’s. When I’d packed up his stuff, I’d forgotten this drawer, and when I realized, I didn’t bother to tell him. And I hadn’t emptied it. It was almost as if I didn’t want to get rid of the last pieces of him for some reason. Now a packet of mints, a pen that he’d gotten from his dad when he got his first job, and a dog-eared copy of Into the Wild were the only things of Matt left in this flat. In my life. I slammed the drawer shut. “It’s not just the Beck thing—I want people to think I’m strong and capable. And that my whole life hasn’t been busted into a million pieces.”
“You want everyone else to believe that?”
I did. I wanted the entire world to believe that I was okay. That I was not only capable of surviving Matt and Karen’s betrayal, but I had thrived despite them.
If everyone else believed it, maybe I could too.
The sound of a message arriving bleeped on my phone.
“I’m putting you on speaker,” I said. If Beck was online, I wanted to make the most of it.
Beck: J Sheekey. You?
So he hadn’t died. And I liked his choice in restaurant.
Matt always liked Rules for the venison, so we used to go there a lot. I preferred something a little more modern and less stuffy. Like J Sheekey or Scotts. But Matt didn’t like fish.
Me: Scotts
Beck: Nice. I like it there too. Do you have brothers and sisters?
I grinned and flopped back on my bed. Beck was taking this seriously.
“You think this will be one of those things that I look back on and say, thank God that happened? Thank goodness Matt cheated on me and ran off with Karen and married her within weeks?”
“Absolutely,” Florence said as if she were in no doubt. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they were divorced by the end of the year.”
“And I won’t even notice they’re divorcing because I’ll be so busy at work.”
“And you’ll be having amazing sex with an intelligent, handsome, funny guy who treats you like gold.”
“Actual sex? Or the make-believe sex like I’m having with Beck?”
“You never know—by the end of a week in Scotland you might be having actual sex with Beck,” Florence replied.
I ignored the fizzle under my ribs at the thought.
“I just want the design job. I can live without his penis.”
“I bet it’s super handsome. Just like him,” Florence said.