Page 59 of Someone Like You

‘Gabs?’

Crappy timing, Raff. Can’t you see I’m being seduced by the hot guy?Or am I doing the seducing? Either way…

‘Yes?’ I say, stepping back from Peter, who emits an audible groan of disappointment.

‘Julia here has been to Seattle.’ He waves me over.

I can predict how this conversation will go: we’ll compare favourite haunts, saying, ‘Oh, yeah, that place is great,’ then we’ll run out of places we have in common and that will be that.

But the real issue is that Raff is supposed to be flying solo now.

And, yeah, having done my duty, I was about to cut out early with the Jude Law lookalike.

I plaster a smile on my face and join them. ‘You don’t say?’

15

GABY

‘What a brilliant night,’ Raff says. If we were in a room, not a town car, he’d be bouncing off the walls. ‘I mean, the event itself was wonderful, of course, but I never in a million years thought I’d meet someone out of the blue like that!’

Out of the blue! Hah! If you only knew.

And given that he recently gave Freya carte blanche to find him a girlfriend, heshouldknow.

‘So, you liked Julia I take it?’ I ask, sending a forced smile across the backseat.

‘Yeah, she’s great,’ he replies, beaming back at me. ‘I’m hoping to see her at the weekend.’

‘But this weekend is CiCi and Devin’s Christmas party.’ Oh shit, is he considering bringingJulia?

‘I meant Sunday. A bit early for “meet the family”, don’t you think? Even for me,’ he quips.

I smile again, then turn and look out the window. I should be happy for him. He met Julia and they hit it off – exactly as Poppy and I planned. But I’m not happy for him. I couldn’t be further from happy for him.

Which makes me a shitty friend. A shitty friend who’s had a shocking realisation.

As we ride in silence through the mostly deserted streets of London, scenes from the night pop into my head like jump scares in a horror movie.

Raff and Julia laughing, sharing a joke. Julia touching Raff’s forearm and Raff briefly covering her hand with his. Julia asking Raff to help when a tendril of hair caught in the clasp of her necklace. Raff watching her walk across the room when she went to the bathroom, then sighing. Them exchanging phone numbers at the end of the night. Him texting her while we waited for the car.

I witnessed all this firsthand because the second I was called away from Peter the Player to talk about the hotspots of Seattle, he disappeared into the crowd to find a surer thing. I saw him leave twenty minutes later with a petite, dark-haired woman who had balloon lips and eyelashes so long she could sweep chimneys with them.

I tried to leave soon after, but Raff insisted I stay and ‘have a good time’ because I ‘deserved it’. What Ideserveis a swift kick up the butt for not realising sooner how I feel. Because I know the signs of Raff falling for someone – I’ve seen them before, dozens of times.

But I’ve never been jealous before.

A sudden wave of nausea crashes through me, and I stab at the button to lower the window, but the switch must be locked.

‘Excuse me,’ I say to the driver, tapping him on the shoulder, ‘could I please have the window down?’

‘Of course, madam.’

The window lowers and I suck in great gulps of the cold night air.

‘Are you all right, Gabs?’ I feel Raff’s hand on my back, pattinggently, and I want to flick it away. But it’s not his fault I feel sick. ‘Too much champers, do you think?’

His back patting ramps up and I raise a hand to make him stop – it’s not helping. I focus on steadying my breathing – in through my nose, out through my mouth – and soon enough my stomach settles – well, mostly – and I swallow the build-up of saliva in my mouth, then sit heavily against the seat.

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