Who’s That Girl?: A laugh-out-loud sparky romcom!. Mhairi McFarlane

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       14

      Edie finally had a reply from Jack. Six days after he’d unpinned a grenade and lobbed it into the middle of several lives at once, then scattered before the smoke had cleared.

      She was getting ready for what could be grandly called ‘an evening out’, applying her make-up, peering into the old milky mirror of her youth with the plastic red frame, rummaging around in a cosmetics basket that had a topsoil of shattered kohl pencils and lidless grey eye shadows.

      The name that used to give her such a sting of excitement appeared on her phone screen. Now it just stung. Involuntarily, Edie recalled how his lips felt on hers before she pulled away. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about that until now.

       Hi you. So. Sorry about everything. Hear you’re up north for now? Take care. Jx

      That was it?!

      Trembling slightly, Edie hammered out three different replies of varying sarcastic rage, and deleted each of them in turn. This man had dabbled with her heart like it was a finger- painting kit and he never ever took responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

      But if she got too emotional, he could simply drop the conversation. How did Jack always manage to shield himself from feedback? Actually, he couldn’t, not without her help. She needed to breathe deeply and be smart, here.

       Hi yourself. ‘What were you thinking’ might be a cliché but, what were you thinking?

      Near-insta ping back.

       I wasn’t, clearly. I know you weren’t either. Apologies for inviting you to a wedding that had an ‘aftermath’ in place of a ‘reception’. Man alive. Jx

      And this was how Jack’s wiles had sent her slowly mad. Within seconds of receiving this ostensibly self-deprecating reply, Edie realised he’d apologised, but neatly stopped her screen-grabbing the conversation and using it as proof of his guilt. To her, it worked as Jack’s usual easy charm: ‘I assume nothing from your momentary reciprocation’. To anyone else, it read as if they were equally to blame.

      She had to find a direct question to ask that he couldn’t wriggle out of. She steeled herself and typed:

       But why decide to kiss me?!

      ‘Edie! Time to get going?’ her dad called from downstairs. He’d volunteered to drive them to their dinner. Edie had thought the best way to get her dad and Meg out was to promise to pay but let them choose the restaurant. Which meant, Meg choosing.

      As they crushed into the back of her dad’s old Volvo, footwells lined with old newspapers, Edie wondered why her dad burning a fossil fuel was OK with Meg, but taxi drivers doing it was not.

      Meg also gave them a long explanation about rewarding venues that offered solid vegan options, to justify picking Annie’s Burger Shack. Edie suspected the ethical reasoning boiled down to Meg fancying a burger. She was just relieved that Meg hadn’t found some café full of nubbly seed-filled discs of tempeh and hemp burgers that looked like something you’d leave on a bird feeder table.

      It took a lot longer to get a response from Jack this time and given the starkness of her question, Edie wasn’t surprised. Evade THAT, motherfucker. She tried not to twitch her phone out of her pocket every sixteen seconds as they rumbled towards the city centre, to see if Jack had replied.

      By the time they were seated at Annie’s, had the menus and ordered drinks, bingo, a reply finally limped in. Edie had started to grind her teeth that he’d simply ignore her.

       I was drunk and all over the place & I thought we had a special connection. Events overtook me with the wedding, I didn’t have my head straight. Honestly, E.T., I can’t say sorry enough. You don’t deserve СКАЧАТЬ