Still Thinking of You (24 page)

39. A Big Joke

Rich punched open the auditorium door. The plastic made a loud thwacking sound as it bounced back into place. Rich found that satisfying, but couldn’t deny that he had an urge to thwack something else.

He was shaking. Was it fear? Anger? Shit, was it lust?
Was
he jealous of Jayne and Jase? Surely not. Had Jayne’s not-so-subtle table show turned him on? Impossible. How was she managing to aggravate him so? There was a water fountain in the foyer. He walked directly to it and ran his face under the flow.

The water had the desired effect. Rich’s smudgy head cleared.

It was not lust. He did not desire Jayne. On paper she was knock-out; in reality, she was flipping him out. She could ruin everything. He had given her the power to ruin his life. He was afraid and then angry, and then afraid again. He felt a long fingernail trace the vertebra of his spine as he bent over the water faucet. Shit, she’d followed him out of the auditorium. He straightened, scowled and set off along the corridor towards the loos.

‘We need to talk, babe,’ said Jayne, as she made short, determined steps to follow him.

‘Oh, no, we don’t,’ he replied. ‘We have nothing to say to one another.’

‘Why are you being like this?’ she asked.

‘Me?
Me?
’ Rich turned to face Jayne, but pointed at himself. ‘Me being like this?’ he asked, amazed. ‘I’m not being like anything. It’s you who is being out of order.’ She laid her hand on his arm again, and he pulled away as though she’d scalded him

‘Don’t touch me,’ he bit out. ‘OK, this isn’t funny now. These innuendos and the following me about, it’s just not funny. You’ve had your giggle, now stop it,’ spat Rich.

‘I can’t lose you again,’ replied Jayne.

Rich thought he must be speaking a foreign tongue. Why couldn’t he get through to this girl? She couldn’t lose him again because she’d never found him. He’d never been hers to lose. He paused and studied her. She was at least a foot shorter than him. She was entirely pick-up-and-play, and he used to love that. He’d enjoyed flipping her every which way in the sack. Now he wished she was bigger. He felt ignoble that his adversary was so dinky. But at the same time he feared that her power was enormous.

She gazed up at him, and he had to admit she was cute. Or at least she would be if she wasn’t wearing that ridiculous expression. Her look put him in mind of his older sister gazing adoringly at the Donny Osmond posters Blu-Tacked to her bedroom wall. His sister had been about ten years old when she last wore that expression, and he’d thought it was soppy back then. Jayne could not be serious.

Suddenly, Rich saw a ray of light.

This was a joke, a wind-up. The whole thing. Jase was probably in on it. He was probably trying to get his own back because somehow he’d found out about Rich shagging Jayne on the sly, and his nose was out of joint because Rich had kept a secret from him. That’s why he’d gone on about fancying Jayne when they were on the slopes today. Jase was probably hoping to force a confession from Rich. Bloody hell. Rich started to giggle. The relief was enormous. The bastard. Jase was a bastard, a funny bastard admittedly, but a bastard nonetheless. But thank God that this was a joke. A containable joke. Tash wasn’t going to find out that he’d lied to her. He was safe. This was all a gag. Because this Donny Osmond groupie approach just couldn’t be serious.

‘What’s this about, Jayne? Is this a wind-up?’ Rich was tittering like John Travolta in those early scenes of
Grease
when he doesn’t want to look uncool in front of the T-Birds. ‘You and Jase, you are having a laugh, aren’t you? This is –’ Rich didn’t finish his sentence. If they were having a laugh, then Jayne was taking her role to the extreme.

‘Don’t be silly, Richie, babe. I want you. I want you more than any man alive, and I’ve only ever wanted you. This isn’t a joke. Why would I joke about something as serious as us?’

‘There isn’t an “us”. There’s never been an “us”.’ Rich was aware that he was almost shouting, and so wrenched his voice back under control by the end of the sentence. The final ‘us’ was issued like a hiss.

‘Oh, Richie, babe, don’t say such things.’ Jayne leant towards him and hugged him. She nuzzled her face into his jacket and, if he wasn’t mistaken, she was sniffing him.

Rich saw his hope that Jase and Jayne were having a laugh at his expense vanish in an instant. Sadly, his first theory, that she was a raving nutter, was more likely to be true. Rich couldn’t move. He wanted to push her away, but didn’t know how to. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. What had she just said, she wanted him? Rich’s mind searched frantically for another way of not facing up to the situation.

That was it, she wanted him. Her pride had been dented. He
had
been a little unceremonious in his exit, he supposed. Clearly, she wanted to get him to the point where he admitted he still fancied her and then she’d back off. She’d have clawed back a little self-respect. She didn’t
really
want him. She just wanted him to want her. It wasn’t exactly mature, but that was women for you, all mind games, never played anything straight. She’d never wanted him in all those years when they were… well, not together. Because they weren’t ever together. But, in all those years when they… had sex. She’d never once hinted that she’d like to take the sex further than that. He’d just say some nice things to her and then she’d back off.

‘Look, Jayne, you are a very attractive girl.’

Jayne broke away from the embrace, and laughed, ‘I know that.’

She tossed her hair and sort of stuck out her tits, in one practised move. Clearly she thought she was being irresistible. She put Rich in mind of a very expensive hooker he’d once hired for Jason’s thirtieth birthday present. Rich shook his head and grinned. She was an odd one. Lacking in confidence one minute, brimming with it the next.

‘You are a stunner, and a very clever lady, too.’

Rich wanted to sound sincere, or at least smooth. He was aware, however, that he sounded like his father or even his grandfather – patronizing and dated. His throat was squeezed with stress. He didn’t know how to adjust the tone of his voice and couldn’t think of anything convincing, let alone truthful, to say.

‘You could do loads better than me,’ he said, although he was aware that in reality no one ever minded shooting out of their league. ‘Why are you wasting your time with me? What you should be doing is concentrating your energies on working things out with that boyfriend of yours.’

‘What boyfriend?’ asked Jayne, her dreamy look momentarily interrupted by a bemused one.

‘The boy –’ Rich corrected himself, ‘the man that you split up with just before you came here. The one that upset you so much that Kate and Ted were worried about you.’

Jayne started to laugh, ‘Babe, I thought I’d explained when we were on the slopes yesterday. That is
you
. I was talking about
you
.’

She was staring at Rich as though she were his mother and he was four years old. His crime? Something small and boyish, like eating a snail or refusing to say thank you for the gift of a sweetie. Her expression was supposed to look stern, but the effect was blurred by the wide, indulgent smile.

‘I know we’ve broken up before, but we’d always made up pretty quickly. This time you hurt me, babe.’

‘Is that how you see it, breaking up and making up?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But we were never a couple. And will you stop calling me “babe”.’ Tash called Rich ‘babe’. Jayne called everyone ‘darling’. What was she playing at?

Jayne exaggerated her indulgent-mother-of-four-year-old-tearaway look, and Rich thought he might laugh. This was comical, or it would be if it were happening to anyone else.

‘Don’t say such silly things. Not to me. Admittedly we weren’t conventional, but we were a couple. You even met my mum and dad,’ said Jayne.

‘You didn’t introduce me. It wasn’t as though you took me home for tea. I met your mum and dad at Kate and Ted’s wedding. Ted is your brother and that means you happen to have parents in common,’ insisted Rich. Jayne tutted as though he were splitting hairs over an insignificant detail. ‘You are scaring me, Jayne. Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you need help.’

‘I love you.’

Rich started to laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

He looked at Jayne again, and she hadn’t moved a muscle. She was still staring at him with those dopy, droopy eyes and that lost-puppy look. He couldn’t remember her eyes during sex, but he was pretty sure she’d never worn that expression. She’d been feisty. She’d been fun.

That was all she’d been.

But now. God.

‘You can’t love me.’

But even as he said it Rich was already terrified that Jayne did think she was in love with him, which was much, much worse than her teasing him or playing with him. Women in love did peculiar things. Tash, for example, had agreed to marry him after knowing him for only a couple of months. Although he was delighted that she had, he did think it was a bit extreme. Scorned women in love were even worse; they were scarily extreme. They scratched cars with keys, cut holes in suits, sowed cress into your carpet. Women were bitter, vengeful and excessive. You read about it all the time in
GQ
and
Loaded
.

Rich was standing with his back to the cinema auditorium so he didn’t see the door swing open and Mia emerging from the darkness, looking for the loo. Jayne did. It was fate. This was her moment. She lurched upwards and passionately kissed Rich. Although she was much smaller than he was, she stole the advantage by taking him by surprise. She pushed him until he was backed against the wall and had nowhere to go. Jayne ran her hands up and down his shoulders, arms and hips. She grabbed at his buttocks. She’d closed her eyes, but opened them again, just long enough to ensure that Mia had clocked them. Mia had. She was far too cool to stand open-mouthed and gape – instead she walked passed them, coughing loudly, then slipped into the loos.

The whole episode took a moment in real time. It played out as a year of agony in Rich’s head and unlimited ecstasy in Jayne’s.

Her lips were familiar, in so much as they were no different from hundreds of others he had kissed. He had opened his mouth, just a fraction, as an automatic response and not because he was attracted to her. He wasn’t even thinking about the kiss in terms of it being a kiss. He couldn’t have been because, in the same second that he noticed she was kissing him, he’d noticed that the wallpaper was frayed at the edges of the skirting board and you wouldn’t notice that if you were really kissing, would you? Jayne’s neat, little tongue had found the gap between his teeth and darted forwards to massage the inside of his mouth. It wasn’t awful, Rich thought. The tongue wasn’t, the wallpaper was. Of course it wasn’t awful. Kissing her had always been sexy. But it wasn’t right. No, this wasn’t right.

And then he saw Mia where the wallpaper had been, out of the corner of his eye. What would she think? Well, it was fucking obvious what she would think.

Oh, no. No. No. Shit.

Rich pushed Jayne off him. She gave up her grasp at the exact same moment, so his shove sent her lurching against the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. ‘I like it when you play rough,’ she grinned.

‘You are fucking insane. Now get in there and explain to Mia what’s going on,’ he yelled, pointing towards the girls’ loos.

‘What should I say, exactly? Would you like me to tell her that we’ve been lovers for years?’

‘
No!
’ Rich stared at Jayne in disbelief until she turned fuzzy at the edges.

‘Babe, don’t cry. We’ve got each other, whatever happens,’ she cooed.

She leant forwards and started to caress his head. Her long, cool fingers traced out the lines on his forehead. She kissed his jaw, tiny, little nibbling kisses. Rich was crying. Fuck, he couldn’t remember when he’d last cried. But she made him so angry. Why did she insist on distorting things? Twisting things? Making more of it than there ever was? Why would she want to ruin his marriage? Surely she didn’t really believe that, if she ruined his relationship with Tash, he’d turn to her and say, ‘Oh, well, never mind. You’re free, aren’t you? Would
you
like to marry me instead?’ How fucking mad was this girl? She was a shag-buddy. Someone he had recreational sex with. That was all. And yet looking at her now – as she caressed him, rested her head on his chest and hugged him, looked back up into his eyes and smiled at him – you would be forgiven for believing that they were passionate lovers in the midst of a soul-searching argument.

Which is exactly what Mia did think.

‘Excuse me,’ she said pointedly, as she re-emerged from the loo.

Rich tried to break from Jayne’s grasp. Jayne clung more tightly. ‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ said Rich quickly. ‘Honestly, Mi, you have to believe me.’

‘None of my business, Action Man,’ she said. She threw out an efficient smile, one which wasn’t meant to warm anyone.

‘Tell her, Jayne. Tell her,’ insisted Rich. Jayne refused to say anything. Instead she looked at the floor, knowing Mia wouldn’t be able to bring herself to think anything but the worst. Mia cheerfully raised her eyebrows as she grinned at Rich and said, ‘Leopards can’t change their spots.’ She shook her head from side to side in mock despair, and returned to the film.

Rich watched Mia walk away and wondered if he could persuade her to keep quiet. He doubted it. On recent evidence it appeared that he wasn’t very good at persuading women to do the things he wanted them to do. He used to have a knack for it, but looking at Jayne now, smiling at him like a mad Cheshire Cat, he realized he’d lost that power somewhere along the way.

He was done for. Where had he gone wrong? He turned back to Jayne.

‘I didn’t take anything you weren’t keen to give away. I never encouraged you to think we were anything other than…’ Rich searched around for the correct word. ‘… anything at all,’ he finished.

‘We were lovers.’

‘We shagged.’ Rich didn’t even want to say they’d fucked. Saying they’d fucked sounded more involved than he wanted to admit to.