It's Not You It's Me (16 page)

A
fter a good two-hour pre-karaoke night kip, I’ve lost my ‘I’ve been having a good bawl’ headache and feel I might just be able to take on the singing world. Lying face up on my bed, I turn my head to look at Jas, to see if he’s awake and ready for our Big Night Out.

Yay. A Big Night Out. I love a good Big Night Out. And I haven’t had one for…well, not since I was living with Jas, to tell the truth. I’ve had heaps of drunken dinners. Plenty of soused soirées. But no Big Night Out.

He’s still asleep. I roll over and check the clock—six-thirty-seven p.m. Just enough time to have a shower, wash my hair, get all dolled up, have a snack, a drink or two, and meet Shane and co downstairs at eight, as organised.

But first a bladder-relief trip is in order. I slide out of bed and make for the bathroom. And I’m doing what a girl has to do when I spot Jas’s mobile and his pager sitting on the bench. He must’ve brought them in here when he had a shower before. I pick up the mobile and fiddle around with
it. I’ve never had one myself. I’ve never found the need. I turn it over carefully—it really is excruciatingly tiny—and then go to put it back down on the bench.

That’s when I hear it. A
beep
! I realise I’ve pressed something. And that’s when the phone starts ringing.

Still sitting on the toilet, I quickly grab a towel from the rack beside me and wrap the mobile in it to muffle the sound. I don’t know which button to use to turn the thing off. I’m sure I could probably guess, but that would mean actually having to look, which means unmuffling, and I don’t want Jas to wake up.

The damn thing rings and rings and rings. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, it stops. I breathe a sigh of relief and gingerly open up the towel, trying to work out how I can switch the thing off, when the ringing starts up again.

Oh, God. Now what? Maybe I should answer it? Maybe it’s important? Still trying to muffle the ring, I stick my head inside the towel. ‘Hello?’ I say as quietly as I can.

‘Listen, you little shit, I’ve been trying to call you for days. Where the fuck are you? If you don’t—’

I take the phone and my head out of the towel then, and search for a button. Any button. There’s a green one and a red one that look likely. Red’s bad, right? Red’s for ejector seat buttons and stopping lifts and starting fire alarms and things like that. I push the red one. I push it hard and for a long, long time. And suddenly the voice stops yelling. I think the phone even turns itself off, because there’s nothing on the screen any more.

I decide not to pick up the pager.

I spend a good five minutes washing my hands, debating what I should do about this. About the phone call. Should I tell Jas someone called? I mean, I shouldn’t have messed with the phone. But that guy on the other end of the
line…Zed, I guess it was. Zed the dickhead. He was a nice piece of work, wasn’t he? Not even a cheery hello. Just a ‘Listen, you little shit.’ I’m taking it that’s why Jas has had his mobile and pager turned off all the time to start with. To avoid Zed. And if that’s the case Jas won’t want to know he called anyway. Right. So that’s it. I won’t tell him. If I hadn’t turned the phone on by accident there’d just be another message in his message bank, and that’s hardly likely to be missed, is it? The guilt I’ll just have to live with…

I go back and crawl into bed then, thinking I might just have an extra fifteen minutes’ rest after all the bathroom excitement. I get right under the covers, because, as everyone knows, nothing can get you under the covers—not even Zed. But just as I’m covering my head there’s a knock on the door. Jas, still asleep, thank God, stirs.

‘It’s OK,’ I tell him, throwing my blanket off. ‘I’ll get it.’

As I cross the room I remember my clothes—I’m still wearing the dirndl. Why I didn’t notice before, I have no idea. I contemplate going to get one of the fluffy white bathrobes in the bathroom, but then decide I can’t be bothered. So what if I’m wearing a dirndl? Hey, I’ve got the Oktoberfest bug, so sue me, I think, and I go and open the door in my full regalia.

Sharon’s standing outside.

‘Um, Shane just wanted to check that you guys are coming tonight,’ she says and, being taller than me, peers in a very non-nonchalant fashion into Jas’s and my room.

‘Did he?’ I try not to smile. I’d say she still hasn’t worked the Zamiel/Jas thing out fully, and I wonder for a second what Shane’s been telling her. All kinds of things, I expect. Either way, by the expectant lovesick gaze on the girl’s face, I’m doubting whether it’s
Shane
who really wants to know if we’re going out or not tonight.

She nods, still peering. ‘So, are you?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Both of you?’

‘Yes, both of us.’

‘OK, great.’ She stops peering now, satisfied that Jas will be making an appearance tonight. Then she gives my outfit the once-over. ‘Are you going to wear that?’

‘Maybe.’ I don’t give her any further explanation, leaving her to wonder if I prance around in a dirndl on a regular basis.

‘Oh.’ She seems a little unsure of what to make of this. ‘OK. See you later, then.’

I close the door with a smile on my face. Something gives me the feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of Sharon later on tonight. Or Jas will be, anyway. And, if she has her way, probably more than he wants.

I let Jas sleep on while I hog the bathroom. I do the whole wash the hair, shave the legs, dry the hair, primpy-preeny Big Night Out deal. I only check to see if the mobile’s really turned off or not every five minutes or so. When I’m done, I don one of the bathrobes and go out into the room to sit at the table and paint my nails. I pick up the few souvenir postcards I bought that morning and flick through them absentmindedly. As I stick them back in their paper bag I spot the dirndl, where I’ve left it behind on my bed. Trust Jas to buy me something completely idiotic I never would have bought myself but just love anyway.

I watch him as he sleeps. It’s really been great having him here, I think, as I eenie, meanie, miney, mo between the bottles of nail polish on the table. I don’t think I’d be having half as good a time if I’d had to tag along with the likes of Sharon and Tara in the Hofbräu tent. I let a chuckle escape, thinking that Sharon probably couldn’t have picked me up
and saved me in such poor heroic fashion as Jas did today, either. And I can tell Kath and Mark are pleased I’ve got someone watching out for me too. They seemed to be worrying a fraction less when I called them before my kip. Yep. Jas being here has made all the difference.

I look down and concentrate on painting the fingernails on my right hand the sparkly blood-red I’ve chosen. It really has been great, spending this time with Jas. And I think I’ve almost accomplished what I decided I wanted—for us to get our old friendship back. The one we used to have. Well,
almost.
Things are still a bit strained at times, like after that embarrassing hug the other day where I held on too long, but we can’t expect everything to get straight back to how it was right away, can we? We’ll get there, though. Of course we will.

It’s stupid, that thing people say about how men and women simply can’t be friends. Rubbish. Of course they can! It’s a ridiculous generalisation. And I guess the only way to disprove their silly theory is to show them all by example that they’re wrong. For Jas and I to have the best, closest, platonic friendship ever.

I’m halfway through my little finger when I feel it…someone watching me.

But I have to wait to check. It takes two more strokes to finish the nail I’m painting. Finally I sneak a glance up at Jas, polish brush poised.

He’s looking at me. Staring at me. And I know that for me to have felt it he’s probably been doing it for quite a while.

As soon as he sees me seeing him, he closes his eyes again with a quick smile. And I tear my eyes away. I sit there, brush still poised in the same place, winded.

What a load—I put the brush back in the bottle—of shit.

Because right then, when our eyes met, all I wanted to do was get up, go over and get into bed with Jas. It was almost magnetic, the feeling I just got from his eyes. I sit like this, staring down at the tabletop, for the longest time.

What is wrong with me?

The man is gay.

I think.

Oh, I don’t know. Either way, we’ve been through this. He isn’t interested. Not in the way I want him to be interested, anyway.

I want to give myself a good smack on each cheek for being so stupid. Give myself a slap, hoping I’ll wake up to myself. I have to realise a few things and I have to realise them fast. I mean, who do I think I’m fooling with all my ‘best friend’ bullshit?

Well, myself—for a while, maybe. But not very well.

I groan then, remembering Shane. Obviously Shane was able to see through me from the start. Why else would he ask so many questions about whether Jas and I were together? I look over at the champagne bottle, sitting on one of the bedside tables, still unopened. And, hell, if Shane was able to see through me, who else had? Probably everyone. My gaze flicks over to Jas. Please, no…he can’t have.

I close my eyes, really, really hoping Jas hasn’t noticed anything. How embarrassing would that be? For my own sanity I have to wake up to myself. Smell the coffee in both cups—as you might have noted, I never quite see the point of just one. Because I am torturing myself, always hoping that I’m going to get what I want from Jas when I know that it isn’t going to happen. At least before, when we lived together and nothing happened between us, I had some hope. Hope that he might feel the same way. Now I know that isn’t how he feels and
still
I keep right on trying. Why
can’t my brain deal with that? Get over it? He only wants to be friends.

Good friends. Best friends.

Blah. I feel like spitting at that phrase—
best friends
. It’s so…sickening.

I remember back to when we lived together. Before I realised how I felt about Jas. When we used to do touchy-feely things all the time. A hug here. A kiss on the cheek there. But that’s all it was—a moment in time. Of course it wasn’t for me. Where I was concerned it meant a little bit more than it should have. But for Jas that’s all it was. A moment. A gesture. Nothing more.

And there’s the catch—‘nothing more’ simply isn’t enough for me. I’ve been fooling myself, thinking I could settle for anything less than the whole relationship deal. Being friends was never going to cut it for me and I should have realised that sooner on this trip.

Though, really…get a grip, Charlie. As if being best buddies could have even worked for us in the real world anyway. It would have been practically impossible. I’d never see him. I mean, every week he’s in a different city. It would have just been too hard. We would have fallen out of contact again within days. Because now that Jas is Zamiel he has a whole different life.

One that I’ll never be involved in.

One that I’ll never be
invited
to be involved in, more importantly. What it comes down to now is we’re from different worlds. He’s on the beautiful people team and I’m on the non-beautiful people team. And it’s not that I’m being down on myself or anything, it’s really just the cold, hard truth. We don’t have anything in common any more— I am of the non-beautiful and Jas has his beautiful people world to go back to after this trip. Even if he does have to
wear a whole lot of make-up and crack a whip to get through the door.

So that’s it. Realism. It just wouldn’t work out. Like the Capulets and the Montagues, our two sets are fated never to mix socially.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror then, pulling faces, and wonder how the hell I got onto Shakespeare. Beats me. I start to wonder if I’m inadvertently sniffing nail polish fumes. Maybe I just imagined all of this, including Jas staring at me? I glance up at him hopefully. He’s asleep, or pretending to be. Hoping he really is, I turn my attention back to the table and put every ounce of concentration into painting those last five nails and trying not to think about that bed and what’s in it that I want so badly.

Well, maybe I think about it once. Or twice.

But not after I drink the miniature bottle of vodka and the miniature bottle of gin mixed with some tonic out of the mini-bar. After I’ve done that, I decide to forget about the whole thing. I’d just embarrass myself if I said anything and, after all, we’ve only got approximately seventy-two hours left to spend in each other’s company before he flies to wherever he’s got to go. I’m sure I can resist him for that long. Whatever Sharon might think, no one can be
that
irresistible.

God, maybe Mark should have booked me on a drugfest tour of Amsterdam instead of this Oktoberfest caper? Right about now I could do with some of just about every illegal substance that city has to offer. Then again—I inspect the nail polish bottle—sticking my nose too close to ‘Bombshell Red’ seems to be doing the trick all on its own.

When Jas gets up I order a club sandwich and a bowl of wedges from room service—food therapy—and we share this before we head downstairs.

We don’t mention what happened before.

Downstairs, most of the people on the tour are already hanging around the lobby and Shane waves us over. ‘Hey, I didn’t know if you guys were coming. So, how’s it all going?’ he asks. ‘Enjoying the festivities? Drinking the beer, love?’ He gives me another slap on the back that makes me cough.

‘Yep, it’s great,’ I say. ‘Jas even bought me a dirndl today.’

‘Kinky.’ He laughs. ‘Champagne must’ve done the trick.’

I go to say something, but he’s turned around by the time I get my act together and is already talking to someone else in the group.

Jas hasn’t heard us talking about the champagne. I still haven’t told him about it, though I’m not quite sure why. He’s busy looking about himself, as if for an escape route. ‘Can’t believe we’re going to a karaoke bar. I might need a drink or two to get through this evening.’

‘That shouldn’t be much of a problem,’ I tell him. ‘I think drinks consumed is what tonight’s all about.’ I spot Sharon in the crowd then. She whispers something to her crony, Tara, beside her, and the girl looks over and points at Jas. Sharon grabs her hand, stopping her pointing, and says something before they both turn away. I sigh. ‘Your admirer’s back on the warpath again.’ I turn Jas towards Sharon. ‘She was at the door before, asking if we were coming. Apparently
Shane
wanted to know, but he’s as surprised to see us as anyone.’