“Before we could get to the honesty part, I lost it and behaved like a complete shit. Now she won’t give me the time of day. Anyway, she’s not interested, Toby. She wasn’t interested when we were teenagers, and she’s still not interested now.”
“The way she looks at you does not suggest disinterest to me, my friend.”
“She looks at me like she hates me.”
“Exactly.”
I grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed for a moment. “I felt like I was back there again when she told me to piss off at the building site,” I said in a quiet voice. “Back there as the geeky teacher’s son who doesn’t quite fit in amongst all the glamorous rich kids. Then I stormed off like a two-year-old.”
“That fucking school,” Toby muttered in a dark voice.
When Toby and I had met at the LSE I’d been at my most antisocial. We were in the same dorm, and at the time I was deeply shy and reclusive, basically only leaving my room for classes, to eat and to go to work the jobs I needed to stay afloat. Toby was my study partner and we had a similar dry, self-effacing sense of humour. So, after a whole six months of me dodging his invites, he stole my laptop and wouldn’t give it back unless I came to the pub with him. Gradually, Toby’s friends became my friends. I got a haircut and started going to the gym more, discovered girls actually liked me, started seeing some action, and realised that at the LSE pretty much everyone was a geek, and proud of it too. It had taken a while to accept the new normal though, and there had been bumps in the road. Like the time Toby and his friends had been planning a ski trip. I’d been there for all the discussions and nodded along, but it was only when Toby asked me if I had checked my passport was up to date that I realised that they actually wanted me to go with them.
“What do you mean you didn’t think you’d need it, Hazza?” he’d asked in front of everyone whilst we were all ensconced in a small booth in the pub. “Don’t tell me that you’ve actually mastered teleportation now? I knew all those extra hours in the lab had to be for something.”
“No, I–” I glanced about at the curious faces around us and shrugged. “I just assumed it was just you lot. Like, a mates’ trip.”
“You lot?” Noo asked, her eyebrows in her hairline as she leaned further into Toby. “What does that mean? Aren’t weyourmates too?”
“Um…”
“Well, that’s bloody charming,” Marco put in. “Last time I buy you a beer, you bastard.”
My face felt red hot as I looked down into my empty glass and muttered, “I’m sorry, I just haven’t really had mates before. I wasn’t sure if I was… well…” I trailed off and gripped the back of my neck, thoroughly embarrassed and upset that they might think I thought myself too good for them when the opposite was true.
Toby huffed out an exasperated breath and used his free hand that was not around Noo’s shoulders to push my head to the side whilst ruffling my hair. “Well, for your information, Hazza, you may be a salty bastard, but you’re mybestmate. So you’d better get your arse in gear and sort out your passport to come on holiday with us lot. Right?”
It took me a moment to answer and when I did my throat was tight. “Right, yeah sure I’ll get on that.” If I sounded a bit choked nobody commented on it, but Noo did give me a hug before we left for the student bar and Toby slapped me on the back a few times, before giving me an awkward one-armed hug of his own.
“Downingham has got a lot to answer for,” Toby said. “But it’s in the past now. And anyway, you always said that this girl was the only good thing about school. She made it ‘tolerable’, remember? Before all that shit with your dad kicked off, and the stuff her brother said. Which, by the way, may well not be true – you still don’t know all the facts.”
Not for the first time I wished I hadn’t always been so open with Toby. He’d been like a dog with a bone ever since Verity came back on the scene, and Noo wasn’t much better. To her it all had the potential to be the romance of the century. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her how I’d behaved since our dinner at The Ivy. I don’t think romantic heroes insult their heroines after kissing them, dredge up old grudges from the past, and basically fuck everything up royally before they’d even managed to have an actual conversation.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said in a dejected tone. “I’ve been way too much of a bastard for her to ever give me the time of day. The annoying thing is that she doesn’t seem to be just angry about what happened last year. For some reason, she’s painted me as the bad guy from when we were at school, which makes no sense whatsoever.” I shook my head. “Either way she’s made it clear that I need to stay away from her.”
“Hmm,” Toby said as he stared off into the middle distance.
“Don’t even think about interfering, you prick,” I said. “I’m serious Toby. This isn’t uni where you can set me up with whichever bird you like, and it works. I…” Verity’s pale face, her eyes swimming with tears, floated through my mind and I swallowed. “I don’t want to upset her anymore. It’s better we just leave it.”
“Okay,” he agreed, way too quickly for my liking. “I’ll leave it if you agree to get off your arse and come out with me this weekend.”
“Where to?”
“Surprise.”
I frowned.
“Look, you’ll die early if you carry on working all the time. How about this – either you agree to come out with me this weekend, or I get your mother on the phone and have a cosy little chat about how you’re not looking after yourself. You loved it the last time she visited the office, remember?” He was grinning at me unrepentantly now and I had no doubt he’d follow through with his threat. Mum loved Toby. She’d be on the next train down if he told her how hard I was working. The scale of my business and my capacity for hard work had always baffled my parents. As had my ambition to get out of that stifling boarding school town. Dad was happy as a maths teacher, and Mum had been happy to help him run the boarding house when he was housemaster. After Dad lost that post we’d had to move into a tiny, terraced house in the town. But despite the humiliation and the accusation of wrongdoing that he endured, he still loved that damn school. Part of the reason I never told my parents how miserable Downingham had made me was because he had loved it so much. But the crap time I had at that place, together with my parents infuriating lack of financial ambition, was what had pushed me on to build this company I had today.
They were proud of me, of course they were, but all they really wanted was for me to be happy. My grandad had died of a heart attack, and they were always issuing me with ominous warnings about my family history and how I should limit stress. Mum sent me an article just yesterday about a Japanese businessman who had dropped dead from overwork – if Toby rang her now she’d be down here in a shot and, worse, she’d be worried and upset.
“Fine, whatever,” I muttered. “But if it’s a big social thing then you know that’s not exactly something I’ll find relaxing.” There were basically four people I liked to hang out with, beyond that I wasn’t keen on humans in general.
Toby rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, the crew will be there. We won’t let any of the other scary humans talk to you.”
“Other humans aren’t scary, they’re just boring.” Very few people I met ever said or did anything interesting. I hated small talk with the strength of a thousand suns.
“Just be ready at seven on Saturday night. And it’s black tie by the way.”
