Page 83 of Hot Nights in Morocco
“Max!” cries Rachel.
This shuts him up. She’s never so much as raised her voice before.
We watch together in silence as he stalks off in the direction of his Winnebago.
“Don’t take any notice of him, Charlie,” she says, slipping her arm through mine again. “He’s just being overprotective.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I extract myself gently. I don’t deserve her comfort. I sure as hell don’t deserve her making excuses for why Max said what he did.
“Brad’s a manipulator and a liar. You’re not the first woman to fall for his crap.”
But it’s not just him. It’s everything. Max called it like it is, and now I’m riding out an internal landslide of emotion debris.
I stagger away from her, walking blindly in the direction of Waterloo Station, my tears streaming unchecked.
“Charlie, wait!”
She hollers after me twice more, but I’m too cocooned in my own agony to stop. I made a bad judgment call in accepting Brad’s job. In doing so, I hurt Jake. I hurt him with my actionsandmy silence.
The sidewalks lining the station are packed with lunching corporates. I jostle my way through their plumes of chitchat and cigarette smoke, aware of the glances that my red eyes and smudged mascara are attracting. I know what the women are thinking. I can feel their silent vibes of solidarity. No doubt I’ll be lining up next to them tomorrow and clutching my glass of chardonnay—the single girl’s answer to a lovey-dovey handhold.
Somehow, I board my train and make it all the way back to Balham, but I can’t say how I did it. Every movement feels like it belongs to someone else.
The apartment is still and silent. Lucy’s at work. I collapse into bed and wrap the silver quilt around me. I’m too numb to cry anymore.
Evening falls and darkness steals into my room. I think about a time long ago when I didn’t dare move for fear of what might happen if I did. Now the horrors that await me are of my own making. Jake and I are not so different underneath it all. We’re both products of catastrophic childhoods, of innocence that has been twisted and broken by the people that were meant to have loved us.
Sometime later I hear a key turning in the lock, and Lucy comes hustling into the flat, accompanied by the sound of grocery bags catching against the doorframe.
“Charlie? Are you here?”
When I don’t answer, she comes to find me. I must have left my keys in the dish by the door. I haven’t seen her for ages—not since I bolted from the house to meet Brad for dinner—and she’ll be on the prowl for details.
My door opens. I feel her indentation on my bed. Without a word, she curls up next to me, and tucks her arm around my waist. We lie like this for ages, with me drawing comfort from her warmth and her ability to keep quiet without judging me when I really, really need her not to. Through the wall we listen to the hums and roars of a football match coming from our neighbor’s television set.
“I take it the date didn’t go so well?” she says eventually.
I smile vacantly at the darkness. “It was more the after-dinner digestive that sucked, followed by some really bad indigestion.”
Her arm tightens around my waist. “He didn’t try anything, did he?”
I shake my head against the pillow. “Nothing physical.”
“Oh, Charlie.” She breathes into my hair. “What happened?”
“I saw Jake again.”
“You did?” Lucy rears up in excitement, catching me in the ribs with her elbow. “Did he fly in to see you?”
“Actually, he flew in to demote his producer and fire his director. I just happened to be in the same room.” I sit up and rest my shoulders against the headboard. My whole body is aching.
“Pah, semantics. How did he look?”
“He looked…good.” I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them for comfort. “Lucy, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I open up about my past? If I had, Jake might have understood why I kept pulling away, why I found it so hard to trust him. Now he’s turned himself into this ultra-aloof businessman. He’s all about the studio. He thinks he owes his father this huge invisible debt, and I can’t seem to reach him anymore.”
Lucy regards me thoughtfully. “Did Jakehaveto fly over to do all that stuff you just said?”
“I suppose he could have fired Ramirez by phone.”
