About a Girl (34 page)

‘I’m sure it isn’t your fault,’ he said. ‘You get really stressed really easily, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was trying very hard not to cry. It was a long time since I’d looked in a mirror and even longer since I’d applied so much as lip balm. Bright red eyes weren’t going to make me any more attractive. ‘I needed this one thing to go right for me.’

‘One shit shoot doesn’t make you a shit photographer, Vanessa,’ Nick replied, missing the point entirely. ‘It just means the next one will feel like a holiday compared to this.’ He waved his pipe around our luxury accommodation and smiled. ‘Which is, when you think about it, ironic.’

The sky was clear again, with dozens of constellations I didn’t recognize stretched across the sky as far as I could see. When we were little, Amy and I used to sneak off into the fields around the village on summer evenings and lie on our backs making up stories for all the stars. It was weird to think these were the same stars. I walked a little way onto the beach and lay down in the sand. It was still warm from the sunny afternoon that had been and gone. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t wished on the first star I saw every evening, and I could barely remember a time when that wish wasn’t ‘please make Charlie fall in love with me’. As angry as I was with Amy, as upset as I was with everything in my life, I could at least see one thing clearly. It was time for a new wish.

‘Do you have a nickname?’ Nick lay down beside me and looked up at the sky.

‘A nickname?’ I asked, quiet alarm bells starting to sound in my mind. Had he heard Paige calling me Tess?

‘Yeah, you can’t be Vanessa all the time to everyone, can you? It’s so dramatic.’ He laughed a little and flashed his hands above his head. ‘Vanessa.’

‘No nicknames,’ I replied. I wanted to tell him the truth so badly. I wanted to roll onto my side, prop myself up on an elbow and say, ‘Listen, it’s a funny story, but my name is actually Tess …’ But I didn’t. Because I was terrified. I just didn’t know why.

‘I’ll have to come up with one then.’ He crossed his legs and kicked off his shoes, burying his bare feet into the beach.

‘Were you really smoking a pipe?’ I asked. ‘Like, a proper old-man pipe?’

‘I was smoking a proper old-man pipe,’ he confirmed with that grin that made my entire body fill with helium and hyperactive kittens. ‘I find it relaxing.’

‘I bet you like jazz too,’ I said with a smile. He was so close, I could smell him. He was like a cross between catnip and prozac ? just being near him made everything else seem totally insignificant. I was completely calm and buzzing all at once.

‘I love jazz,’ he said, his voice full of smiles. ‘Am I enough of a cliché for you?’

His fingers found mine in the sand and we lay there, quietly holding hands, not saying anything. I let my head fall to the side and rest on his shoulder, half expecting him to pull away and hoping that he wouldn’t. He didn’t.

‘So, a couple of nights ago,’ I whispered, not wanting to talk over the sound of the waves. Seemed rude. ‘You were telling me what an absolute bastard you were. Is that part of the jazz-loving, pipe-smoking bollocks?’

‘Ha ha.’ He knocked his head against mine gently and I buried myself into his shoulder. ‘I am a complete bastard. All of this is just a ruse to work my way into your good graces before I steal all your granny’s silver.’

‘My granny hasn’t got any silver,’ I said. ‘She’s got a lot of Argos catalogues and figurines of geese, but that’s about it.’

‘Why the geese?’ he asked.

‘Who knows?’ I replied. ‘Paige said you were seeing someone.’

Nick rolled onto his front, showering me in a light dusting of powdery white sand, and looked at me with narrowed blue eyes. I pulled my hand away from him and pushed it underneath my body to keep it warm.

‘Did she?’

‘Yeah.’ I didn’t know why I’d said it. I didn’t even know where it had come from. ‘I thought you might have mentioned it. You know, to me.’

‘If there was something to mention, I would have.’

‘Right.’

It wasn’t really an answer and I wasn’t sure I felt any better. Either he was lying to me or he was lying to Paige. Awesome. All I had managed to establish was that Nick Miller was a liar. I’d never had to deal with issues like these when I was sitting behind a desk for eighty hours a week, pining after my best mate and coming up with wacky slogans to sell cling film.

The evening was warm and quiet, and everything that had happened before I stepped out onto the beach felt like a million years ago. Fighting with Amy, hanging out with Paige, taking hundreds of terrible photos … for ever ago. The only thing that registered was lying on the beach with Nick and not wanting to move. It was not very Tess-like. Old Tess would have been back on the phone to Amy apologizing, whether she was right or wrong. She would have been sitting playing Bejeweled on her phone in Paige’s bed while Paige slept, just to make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit in the middle of the night. Old Tess wouldn’t be crossing her legs and tensing her shoulders to force her body to stop thinking about how soon she could be having sex with this man she’d met four days ago. I looked upwards at Nick’s stubbly jawline and full bottom lip and wondered what he was thinking about.

‘So, any word from that bloke back home?’ he asked.

Ohhh.

‘Nope.’ I replied. ‘Not a peep.’

‘Are you going to call him?’ Nick rolled over onto his back again, moving slightly closer to me. I followed like a magnet, and for the first time in my life I did not want to talk about Charlie Wilder.

‘Was the interview really that bad?’ I asked, changing the topic as quickly as I could without even answering. ‘Artie was really that terrible?’

‘Really that bad, really that terrible.’ Nick apparently didn’t need an answer. ‘Nothing I can do now. Just like your pictures.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I groaned, an image of Artie with his plastic crown and grumpy face flashing in front of my eyes. ‘I hate not being able to fix this. I hate being so out of control.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t have let Paige take charge at the shoot,’ Nick suggested lightly. ‘Too late to try and play the control freak now.’

‘You’re not helping,’ I instructed, pursing my lips and wondering whether or not he was right. What would I have done differently? ‘Paige was the art director, it was her concept ? what was I supposed to do?’

‘Oh yeah, you only had the camera in your hand,’ he said, pulling sharply on my hand. ‘What could you have done?’

‘Shut up.’ I could feel myself getting annoyed, and I didn’t want to be annoyed. I wanted to be orgasmic. Then hungry, then eating Cheetos, and then asleep. And then maybe orgasmic again. ‘You don’t know.’

‘Actually, I think it’s going to be good for you not to get your own way for once.’ He pushed his messy blond fringe back out of his eyes. ‘You clearly have some control issues that we need to work on.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I replied. I believe my tone could have been referred to as ‘haughty’.

‘It’s beyond me how you haven’t gone mad yet, if you let every last little thing get to you as much as this job has,’ he went on. ‘I know a lot of photographers who are perfectionists, but you’re taking this so personally. I don’t get why you’re so angry about stuff you couldn’t change when you didn’t change the things that you could have.’

‘Like what?’ I demanded. ‘What could I have changed?’

‘You could have told her the props looked like a joke instead of waiting for me to do it,’ he said. ‘You could have told her the clothes looked like shit. You could have got rid of that fucking crown.’

‘She really wanted the crown,’ I muttered, angry only because I knew he was right. I should have said something, I’d just been too afraid. ‘She thought it was a good idea.’

‘Well, Paige thinks a lot of things are a good idea,’ Nick said. ‘She’s not always right.’

‘Fine, I should have said something,’ I accepted, folding my arms over my chest. ‘It’s all my fault that the shoot was terrible and the pictures are awful and Paige is probably going to get fired. OK, is that better?’

‘Yeah, I think you’ve probably gone a bit too far,’ he relented. ‘It’s hardly your fault Bennett dropped off the face of the earth, is it?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ I shrugged. ‘Might be.’

‘And you couldn’t have been prepared for Paige fucking up the location. Or a freak rainstorm? Let alone those God-awful clothes Artie the Arsehole turned up with.’

‘It just stings that there’s nothing I can do now. If you’re dedicated and you work hard, you’ll always get to where you need to be,’ I said, repeating words I’d told myself over and over and over. Usually on the Saturday nights when I sat in the office ignoring Amy’s texts to come out and meet her. ‘I should be able to fix this.’

‘So everyone who works hard succeeds, do they?’ he asked, pulling my arm from across my chest and taking my hand in his again. ‘No one ever gets shafted, no matter how talented they are or how many hours they put in?’

Oh. Hmm. Bugger.

‘Because I worked really hard on this interview, and it’s still a piece of shit.’ Nick seemed to be losing his temper a little bit. This did not bode well for my getting laid. ‘And regardless of what I do or how late I stay up to work on it or what research I manage to pull out of my arse, it’s still going to be shit. It’s still going to be published and people will still read it and think I did a shit job.’

‘Maybe they won’t?’ It was the best I had.

‘Maybe they won’t think your photos are shit and maybe you won’t be embarrassed to see your name next to them.’

This definitely wasn’t the time to go into the whole ‘by the way, I’m not actually Vanessa’ thing.

Nick sat up, resting his arms against his thighs and staring out at the sea. ‘The last time I was here,’ he said, ‘I thought I had it all figured out. How is it that the older we get, the less we know?’

‘Since I’m so much younger than you, I should have an answer to that,’ I said, thinking that Al had said almost exactly same thing a day earlier. ‘But I don’t.’

He looked over his shoulder at me and gave me a half-smile that didn’t quite make it up to his eyes as I sat up to join him. It was too dark to really read his expression, but I could see he wasn’t happy and I knew there was so much more going on than he was going to tell me. Rather than say another word, he sighed, leaned forward and kissed me. I closed my eyes, letting the soft sweetness wash over me, and leaned into him, but his soft kiss turned into a determination that took me by surprise, and his second kiss knocked me back into the sand. He pushed down on top of me, his heavy, solid body holding me in place, and pinned my arms above my head while his stubble scratched against my face and his legs wound their way around my own. It was a blessing and a curse that we were both wearing jeans.

‘We should go inside,’ I said with a little cough to clear my throat. With dark eyes, Nick nodded, making a gruff agreeing noise.

‘I’ll be a minute.’ He rolled off me and stood up, looking away. ‘Wait for me in the bedroom.’

Wait for me in the bedroom?

What did he have to do that was so important ? smoke another pipe? Before I could come back with a witty retort, he turned to me and raised that bloody eyebrow.

‘Don’t start without me.’

Muttering under my breath, I stood up, brushed off my jeans, and, on shaky legs, made for the bedroom in his cottage. I was in so much trouble.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was almost dawn when I gave up trying to sleep and rolled out of Nick’s bed. I wanted to stay. I wanted to wake up all flowing hair and glowing skin and fantastic morning sex, but I was wise enough to know that the reality was all knotty tangles, sunburn and morning breath. Besides, sleepovers weren’t our thing. Sleepovers were something couples did, and we weren’t a couple.

Clutching my sandals in my hand, I rested my fuzzy, tired head against the door frame and looked back at the bed. Nick was still fast asleep, curled up in a corner on the edge of the mattress, the white sheets wrapped around his waist, tangled up in his legs. We might not be a couple, but I was starting to think I was going to be sad when whatever this was was over. Since his unanticipated one-eighty turn into a normal human being, I was more than a little confused about him and about myself. It didn’t help that I hadn’t got a wink of sleep and desperately needed my own bed. There was too much to process, and I wasn’t going to be able to work anything out within a thirty-foot radius of his penis. It was basically a homing beacon of temporary insanity.

I opened my door and slipped inside with a sigh. It was strange how soon somewhere could start to feel like home. Nick had been clear about things in the beginning ? this was just a very fancy version of a sales conference shag. And even if I went completely mad and decided I wanted something more from him, it just wasn’t possible. As far as Nick Miller was concerned, he was sleeping with Vanessa.

On my way into the bedroom, I caught a glimpse of something small, black and shattered resting on the floor by the door. My phone. It had not fared well from being lobbed against the wall in a fit of temper. Even though the screen was still working, it was completely destroyed, the background picture of me and Amy sliced into a thousand tiny pieces. I just couldn’t have nice things, even when they were given to me by a neo-Nazi mugger. He’d think twice before giving me another phone if this was the way it was going to end up. I looked over at my laptop, still plugged in but fast asleep, just like I should be. Masochist that I was, I paused on my way to the shower to swipe my finger across the trackpad and bring the screen back to life. There were the photos, large as life and twice as shitty. They hadn’t magically got any better while I’d been otherwise indisposed. And there I’d been, hoping the Photoshop elves might have come and magically replaced them with, well, I didn’t know. Anything good would have done. Camel in a top hat. Dogs playing poker. Even the wolphin. Anything would have been better.

The shower was, as ever, hot and steamy when I stripped off all my clothes and carefully unplaited my hair. I hated washing it at the best of times, but when it was full of sand, like today, it was an actual nightmare. I would rather have taken photos of Evil Ana for another day than prop myself up against that shower wall and tease out every tangle with half a bottle of conditioner. Being a woman was so hard. Well, being a woman or Brian May. The bruises I’d acquired on Tuesday had left little dark blue dots on my arms and shoulders and were only just starting to fade away to a yellowish blur. It was all very
Fifty Shades of Grey
.