The Making of Mia (22 page)

Jo looked at Gable – who was technically the most stunning man she had ever seen, even though she preferred William – and
she felt disdain at his American slang, his self-centredness and the way he didn’t get irony. Jo hadn’t realised that men
could be bimbos too, and she felt a pang for William, who was rougher around the edges and could have a conversation, too.
She forced herself to finish her mojito and went to the bar to get several more for both of them. Once she was drunk she’d
find him less irritating.

Four hours later Jo and Gable were wandering home, singing JLo songs at the top of their voices and stumbling into each other.
Every time Gable’s hip brushed against hers Jo felt waves of lust vibrate through her body and when she could stand it no
longer she grabbed hold of Gable’s waist, walking with her head against his chin. He smelt salty, masculine, and she told
herself to ignore the fact his face was baby soft without his usual designer stubble. She tried not to think about how William’s
bristles had rubbed her raw when he had kissed her, and how much she had liked it.

‘Way over there,’ Gable slurred, gesturing at the ocean, ‘is England. That’s, like, where you’re from.’ Gable prodded Jo in
the stomach and even though she was drunk she still recoiled slightly. She was very aware of the layer of fat that separated
her skin from the abdominal muscles she knew she had underneath. ‘Don’t be fooled by the rocks that you’ve got, you’re still,
you’re still Jo from the block,’ he sang in an off-key voice and Jo smiled. It was true, in a way: despite her glamorous haircut
and expensive dress she was still the
same old Jo Hill. They stopped to look at the Atlantic Ocean rippling on the beach, and Jo looked up at Gable as he stared
at the sea. It was a perfect romantic moment, and Jo knew it was time.

‘Gable,’ she said softly, as she positioned her body in front of his. Jo pushed her hips against Gable’s groin and then she
wrapped her arms around him, smiling as Gable hugged her back and drew her into his body to keep her warm. His body was hard
against hers, and Jo ached to feel his chest through his T-shirt, to run her hands down his washboard stomach to the top of
his jeans. However, the hug was a friendly, platonic gesture, and Jo felt impatience sear angrily through her body. What was
up with this man? she thought. Why didn’t he get her?

‘One day when I’m old I’m going to come back to the beach and stand right here,’ Gable said in a husky voice. ‘I’m gonna remind
myself of how young and ambitious I was, and I’m gonna look back through my life to see how far I have come.’

Jo shut her eyes to prevent them from rolling in exasperation. She supposed Gable was being romantic, was trying to tap into
Jo’s determined, career-hungry side, but it wasn’t having the desired effect. She didn’t want American-style romance that
sounded like something from a dumbed-down version of
Dawson’s Creek
– she wanted sex. She didn’t want to be a twenty-two-year-old virgin any more.

‘That’s sweet,’ Jo murmured into Gable’s T-shirt, and she wondered if she should just go for it, if she should kiss him rather
than waiting for him to kiss her. Jo stepped back and stared at Gable until he moved his focus from the waves to her, and
just as he began to look confused Jo moved closer to him, swooping in and placing her lips on his. Before he had a chance
to realise what was happening, Jo was kissing him, and in a moment of absolute daring for her she darted
her tongue into his warm, mint-flavoured mouth. Through her drunken haze she briefly wondered why she wasn’t as turned on
kissing Gable as she had been with William, but she forced the thought to one side and began to move her hands from Gable’s
waist to his bottom, and then to the front of his thighs. She wondered if she would feel his erection through his jeans.

Gable suddenly pulled away, and he stared down at Jo incredulously. ‘Jo …’ Gable ran his hands through his hair nervously,
as Jo felt her heart sink. He didn’t fancy her. He had a girlfriend. He had a wife.

‘Oh, man …’ Gable began pacing up and down the deserted road and Jo felt embarrassed. What was wrong with her? Was she still
too fat? Too ugly? All of Jo’s drunken confidence fell away and she felt vulnerable and exposed. She felt like an idiot.

‘Look, I should have told you, I had no idea you felt that way, that you thought this was a date.’

Jo couldn’t speak. She could taste bile in her mouth and she wondered if she was going to throw up. Suddenly she felt dizzy.
She stared at Gable mutely and burned with embarrassment, and felt stupid for thinking that a man would ever fancy her, and
that she could ever pull a man so beautiful as Gable.

Gable moved slowly towards Jo and reached for her hand, raising it to his lips and kissing it gently. Jo felt her heart leap,
and she wondered if she had misunderstood him, if maybe she had just come on too strong. What was it that Americans had? Bases?
Maybe she had jumped over some bases and scared him off, she thought. Maybe he did like her but she had just been too brash,
too British about it.

Jo looked up at Gable hopefully, but she could tell by his discomfort that he definitely didn’t fancy her. He looked at her
guiltily and tried to crack a grin.

‘I’m sorry, babe, but I’m more into men. I’m gay.’

Jo was people-watching on the beach, comparing the tired, lined bodies of retired domino players to the sleek, nut-brown limbs
of roller-bladers. She looked down at her own tanned thighs and wondered why being slimmer than she’d ever been before didn’t
make her as happy as she’d hoped. She gazed out to the ocean and remembered how unhappy she’d been in London, how lethargic
eating junk food had made her, and how miserable she’d been every time she’d dressed in the morning and found her clothes
were tighter than they’d been the day before. Jo admitted to herself that she’d finally learnt the value of moderation – that
eating one bar of chocolate wouldn’t make her fat, but that eating as many as she wanted to in a row would ensure that the
pounds piled back on. As if to prove a point to herself Jo bought a small ice cream from a man who was walking around with
a cool-bag slung low on his shoulders. As she chose her cone he winked at her, and she smiled. If the wedding ring on his
finger was anything to go by, at least he was straight.

Jo’s mouth watered as she ripped of the paper on the ice cream – it had been months since she had eaten anything sugary apart
from fruit – but just as she stuck her tongue out to scoop up the soft, gooey vanilla cream she suddenly found she had lost
her appetite.

Gable was standing over her, his head blocking the sun and his blond hair burning like a halo around his head.

‘I’ve been looking for you since for ever,’ he said, slumping down on the white sand and looking at her casually. ‘I worried
when you ran off the other night, but hey, you’re cool, so I’m glad I didn’t get search and rescue out.’

Jo wondered if it would be considered rude to just stand up and walk away from him. She decided she didn’t care and started
to pick up her brand-new Kate Spade.

‘Hey, not so fast,’ Gable said, the sunlight making his eyes glitter. ‘Don’t you want to chat about what happened?’

Jo looked down at the sand. ‘Gable, look – you’re gay, I didn’t know at the time, but I do now, so what’s there to talk about?
Why do you Americans always have to analyse everything? There’s nothing to discuss.’

Gable grinned, and he leant back in the sand. He looked relaxed and happy and it maddened Jo. ‘There’s loads to “discuss”,’
he said, eyeing a group of twenty-something men who were throwing a frisbee to one another. Jo didn’t think any of them were
remotely attractive – they all had arms like pipe-cleaners and thin, brittle chests. ‘The question is, why are you Brits so
uptight when it comes to sharing your feelings?’

Jo’s face burned. She supposed she deserved that, but she was still too mortified from trying to kiss him to admit it.

‘Even if we did spend a couple of hours analysing every single part of the evening – right up to the point where I threw myself
at you – what good would it do either of us? Or do you just want to relish the memory of an English girl who was too thick
to know a gay man when she was speaking to one?’

Gable looked out at the ocean for the longest time, and just as Jo was wondering if she had offended him he spoke.

‘I apologise for leading you on,’ he began, ‘if that’s what I
did, but I’m not going to apologise for playing it straight.’ He turned to look Jo in the eyes, and once again Jo was struck
by just how gorgeous he was. He was breathtaking, even when he looked sad. ‘If I thought you liked me like that I’d never
have gone out with you – I thought you were just a lonely English kid who was looking for friends. I had no idea you were
nursing a crush on me.’

Jo looked at her melting ice-cream cone and she licked it cautiously. Like much of the food in America it didn’t taste of
anything – it looked great, but there was no flavour.

‘I don’t have a crush on you any more,’ Jo said, and the moment the words left her ice-cream-covered lips she knew it was
true. After spending the evening with Gable her attraction for him had begun to wane, and now, sitting next to him and knowing
he was gay, she felt nothing for him at all, just embarrassment at her misjudgement.

Gable grinned. ‘So can we be pals now?’ he asked her, and Jo thought about it. Since that night, Miami had lost some of its
sparkle – it had gone from being a place where you could make all your dreams come true to being just another city, albeit
one with palm trees, fantastic beaches, and the coolest laid-back vibe Jo had ever known. As Jo finished her ice cream she
realised just how much she would like a friend in the city, and even though Gable wasn’t William he did seem like a lot of
fun. She had decided that as well as working hard she wanted to start playing hard, too, and Gable would be the perfect partner-in-crime
– especially if he knew all the doormen at the hottest bars in South Beach.

‘We can,’ Jo said, ‘but I want you to explain to me why you didn’t tell me you were gay to begin with.’ Gable eyed her warily
and Jo could tell it was a subject he didn’t want to talk about. She grinned and decided that if they were going to be friends
she needed to know what the score was. ‘You can tell me over dinner.’

*

At Tiger that evening – a new Thai place that had just opened up on the beach – Jo and Gable sat at a table and studiously
read their menus. The restaurant had fake tiger-skin walls, and the menus were fur-lined to match. Rainbow-coloured spotlights
lit up the dark wooden tables, and even though they were thousands of miles from the jungle, the restaurant had an exotic,
humid feel to it. Jo had never seen a restaurant like Tiger before, and she resisted the temptation to stroke the wall behind
her. She didn’t want to look uncool.

‘I’m going to take the beef salad,’ Gable said to the waiter, and Jo looked at him in surprise. The menu was full of delicious-sounding
dishes, and Jo could barely make up her mind about what she wanted. The meal Gable had chosen – sliced beef with cucumbers
and tomato – was possibly the blandest, most low-fat choice on the menu. Jo had a suspicion that it had been included by the
chef for stick-thin blondes – the type that were sometimes forced into eating mouthfuls of food by their partners who got
sick of paying for plates of food that were only ever played with.

The waiter turned to Jo expectantly. He had a sweet, shy smile and Jo beamed at him.

‘I’ll have the king prawns with garlic and pepper, the coconut rice, some chicken with lemongrass and a couple of vegetable
spring rolls, please.’ Jo’s mouth began to water, and Gable smiled at her.

‘I can’t remember the last time I was with a girl who ate a proper meal,’ he said ruefully, as Jo was struck again by how
beautiful he was, especially with the hot-pink lights catching his face. But despite his Viking features and striking green
eyes, Gable began to look uneasy, and Jo realised that underneath his perfect, polished features there was something inconsolable,
something that wasn’t that attractive. She wondered what was wrong.

‘So tell me about LA,’ Jo said, as she bit into a complimentary prawn cracker. Almost unexpectedly it tasted of prawns and
chilli, and Jo could feel the slight oiliness of the cracker on her tongue. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten
something fried, and it tasted perfect.

As Gable thought about LA his face lit up. ‘LA is totally amazing,’ he said, and Jo grinned at his enthusiasm. Maybe he wasn’t
in a quiet mood after all. ‘It’s the shallowest, vainest, bitchiest place in the entire world and I love it. I dig the attitude,
the fact that if you want to be a waiter you have to pass auditions against other models and actors, the way that even if
you’re the hottest up-and-coming actor you’re still treated like a piece of shit by someone higher up than you. It’s dog eat
dog and it’s great – so long as you play the game properly.’ Gable looked at the basket of prawn crackers with mild disgust.

‘It sounds like hell on earth to me,’ Jo remarked.

Gable smirked. ‘Oh, it is. It’s truly offensive. The first time I was out there I was eaten alive. It wasn’t cute. But I think
I know how to play the game now. I’m heading back soon and when I do I’m going to be a different person, one who has the bright
lights of Hollywood chasing him rather than the other way around.’

Gable picked up his knife and fork and began to cut up his tender grilled beef into tiny pieces. Jo barely noticed him do
this as she marvelled over her prawns – they were possibly the most delicious things she had ever eaten; they were succulent,
juicy and full of flavour.

‘But how are you going to do that?’ Jo said, thinking of her own life in London, and how desperate she’d been to get a job
on a magazine.

Gable stopped eating, and after a pause he flicked a small photograph of a nondescript man across the table and Jo picked
it up. She looked at it with interest.