Down London Road, стр. 60

I bristled at the thought and Cam’s arm tightened around me. ‘No, you should have,’ Cam surprised me by saying.

Blair’s whole face lit up. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ Cam dropped his arm from around me to pull his phone out of his pocket. ‘Here, give me your number and we’ll arrange to catch up.’

What?

I watched them as they exchanged numbers, Cam’s head bent over hers, and my brain just started screaming at me. What the hell was going on? He was arranging to get in contact with the ex-love of his life! What effed-up reality was this?

To make matters worse, he hadn’t even introduced me.

I stood there, attempting to appear calm and unconcerned.

He laughed softly at something she said and she gazed up at him like he was some kind of miracle. He was a miracle. He was my miracle and if he didn’t introduce me I was going –

‘Blair, this is my girlfriend, Jo,’ Cam said as he tucked his phone away. He gave me a reassuring smile that I didn’t return.

‘Nice to meet you.’ I managed to give her a small smile while inside I was flinging every swear word I could think of at her.

She didn’t smile back. ‘You too.’

When our gazes met, we had a silent conversation with each other. I resent you, she said. I think I hate you, I replied. He was mine first, she answered. He’s mine now, I growled.

Thick tension fell between the three of us until Cam broke the silence with a few polite questions.

After arranging to speak to one another soon, we left Blair to walk home via Princes Street. To my growing panic, Cam didn’t reach for me again. We walked home side by side, not touching and not talking. He seemed to have disappeared somewhere inside himself and I feared that place almost more than I feared anything else.

24

Cole knew there was something wrong as soon as I returned to the flat. I kept insisting it was nothing, which pissed him off. I knew this because he told me to my face it pissed him off. I retaliated with a lecture on swearing, which he informed me pissed him off even more, so by the time I was dressed for the party, I was mad at Cam for being an inconsiderate dimwit, terrified that I was facing the end of my relationship, and upset that my wee brother had left to stay with Jamie for the night without saying goodbye to me.

In other words I was really in the party spirit.

My depressed thoughts weren’t eased when I hurried down to Cam’s flat to pick him up and he barely registered my dress. The dress he’d found so hot pre-Blair encounter that he’d ravished me in a public dressing room.

I felt my chest tighten with anxiety as he remained quiet during the taxi ride with Olivia and Uncle Mick. Even Olivia commented on it, asking him if he was all right.

Of course he insisted he was, though we all knew (we, as in I) that he had been thrown for a loop by the arrival of his ex-girlfriend, aka the only woman he had ever loved.

We arrived at Joss and Braden’s flat on Dublin Street to find the party already in full swing. Hannah and Declan were staying with friends tonight, so Elodie and Clark were free to stay as long as they wanted. Elodie was completely smashed already – and Elodie smashed was just a heightened version of Elodie sober. She kept moving around all the guests asking them if they wanted a refill and when they said yes, she proceeded to overfill their glasses with a loopy ‘Oopsie!’

Cam, Olivia and I settled in a corner with Adam and Ellie. I tried to keep up with the conversation, and attempted to appear as if everything was all right, laughing along with the others as Adam pointed out the growing strain on Joss’s face as she was forced to mingle. At one point we watched as Joss attempted to remove her hand from the grip of the wife of one of Braden’s professional acquaintances as she peered at the engagement ring. Joss tugged politely a few times, but when that didn’t seem to get through, she actually swatted the woman’s hand off hers and then smiled prettily as if nothing had happened, leaving Braden choking on laughter while she excused herself.

We were all laughing, and I turned to Cam to share a smile with him, only to find his head bent over his phone.

‘You okay?’ I asked, looking down at the text message he was typing and feeling that ugly compression on my chest again.

He glanced up and gave me a barely there smile. ‘Yeah, you?’

‘Fine. Who are you texting?’

‘Just Blair. She wanted my address.’

‘Hmm.’ I nodded, hoping my fury wasn’t evident in my eyes. I turned away from him, cursing him to the moon and back.

Come to a party for my friend’s engagement as my bloody date and stand there not paying attention to anything anyone’s saying, tapping away at your bloody phone, talking to an ex-girlfriend you casually mention you were in love with, and expect me not to be bloody well pissed off, you bloody swine, you utter –

‘So, Jo, how are you liking the new job?’ Adam asked me, interrupting my inner diatribe against my boyfriend.

‘Oh, good.’

Adam waited for me to say more, but I couldn’t make my brain work. While my blood was hot with anger, my chest hurt, and my melancholy thoughts took up all my head space. Realizing he wasn’t going to get anything else out of me, Adam engaged Olivia in conversation and I ignored the worried looks Ellie kept shooting me.

I glanced around the room, wishing I could just escape, lock myself in the bathroom and cry. But that seemed awfully melodramatic, considering Cam hadn’t actually done anything wrong. It was my insecurities that were making me feel this way, right?

I caught Uncle Mick’s eye across the room and smiled. He grinned and then turned back to Clark. The two men were so different, one a scholar, one a manual labourer, and yet they seemed to get on incredibly well with each other. I was glad. It was nice of Joss and Braden to invite Mick and Olivia to their engagement party, but I had worried that they would feel out of place.

Turned out the only one feeling out of place was me.

I listened with half an ear as Ellie managed to engage Cam in conversation. Although he chatted with her about the new project he was creating the graphics for, an independent chocolate shop that was opening in Edinburgh, I could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his voice. I knew him too well. I knew his mind was off somewhere else tonight.

Was it really my insecurities telling me his mind was on Blair? Or was it my instincts?

I needed the opinion of a blunt, straightforward, honest couple.

Sweeping the crowded sitting room, I couldn’t see Joss and Braden anywhere. I excused myself and headed out into the empty hallway, then proceeded to check the kitchen, where a large group of people had congregated. They weren’t there either. I checked the bedrooms. Both empty.

Wondering if they’d gone outside for some fresh air, I headed down the hall towards the door and that was when I heard the deep, rumbling chuckle.

I halted, my eyebrows at my hairline as I turned to face the bathroom door.

No.

They wouldn’t.

Would they?

‘Oh, wait, I think my leg cramped up.’ Joss snorted and then giggled. Actually giggled. I didn’t know she could do that.

‘How did it cramp up?’ Braden murmured.

‘Well, I don’t know if you know this about me, baby, but my body isn’t a pretzel.’

My mouth fell open and I muffled a laugh into my hand despite myself. What position had he got her into?

‘Do you want me to massage it?’

There was a moment of silence and then … ‘Oh, yeah, right there,’ she moaned.

‘Fuck,’ Braden huffed. ‘You’ll set me off again.’

‘Seriously?’ she asked incredulously. ‘I just moaned.’

‘That’s all it takes, babe.’