Page 41 of You Belong With Me

What’s a sagacious council?

Edie laughed out loud. She trusted Elliot; she really did. She realised some part of her had been holding out on that, waiting until it was tested. Now it had been.

The strangest thing was, trusting him felt barely less frightening than not trusting him.

21

Edie

Declan, can I get you a Caffe Nero and breakfast on the way in today? Please be quite bold: I intend to run a workspace that prioritises ongoing open dialogue, easy reach solutions and a front-footed treats policy. E x

Declan

Thanks, I will have a large Americano, pain au raisin, and a scrubbing of my temporal lobe of all memories of end of last week. D x

Edie

Coming right up. I will organise a Toyota Avensis drive-by: a second concussion should do it. x

Declan

AAAAAAAARGH X

Auto-kisses with a male colleague off the bat wasn’t the way Edie would usually do business, but these were special circumstances. If the man wasn’t going to shrivel in ignominy and request a humanitarian transfer back to London within a month, they needed to be comrades. Before the streaking, they were well on their way. They’d have to treat trauma as glue.

Edie marched in with line manager authority at just gone nine a.m. and was glad of fussing with setting down his drink, pulling the pastry out of her pocket, risking a quick glance and a chirpy ‘Morning!’

Declan looked up at her with haunted eyes as she set her own coffee down on her desk. Edie wanted to break the ominous gap where casual chatter should be but couldn’t think of a thing to say.

‘Sorry, Edie,’ Declan said. ‘I keep having Vietnam flashbacks, and as soon as I do, I think how much worse it must have been for you and your sister … It was such anuntowardthing to put you through.’

He looked not sheepish but actually quite broken.

‘Hey!’ Edie said. ‘Stop this. You havenothingto apologise for. May I remind you that the person here who’s made an absolutely horrendous arse of herself in front of ALL her co-workers isn’t you? You’re blameless.’

Declan grimaced and nodded in a silent gratitude, and it occurred to her that he was more upset than she had realised.Perhaps unfairly, she’d thought some fallback of laddish bravado might have helped, but no.

‘You know, every minute since I’ve managed to think about something else, BAM, it rears back up at me,’ Declan said. ‘A fresh wave of self-hatred. Like, how long was I there for? I don’t even know.’

‘Hardly any time at all,’ Edie said, though as she said it, she thought Nude Seconds were an hour in clothed world. ‘Not to be insensitive, but this is a dynamite pub story at some point, you know. It will alchemise. My worst embarrassments are my best anecdotes.’

‘Comedy is tragedy plus time,’ Declan said. ‘Sorry for forcing you to witness the tragic sight of me on its way to becoming comical.’

‘You weren’t a tragic sight,’ Edie blurted, and then almost imploded with self-reproach. There it was –top fuckin’ marks, Edith,she thought:the one thing you knew you shouldn’t say, so you made sure to say it.

She and Declan met each other’s eyes in a second of wordless, blank tension.

‘If it distracts, I had quite the shit explosion on my holiday,’ she gabbled. ‘A tabloid decided Elliot going for dinner with his co-star was proof of boning, and I had to read about their being a “new couple”. I felt like I’d been forced into public polyamory.’

‘Ah, really?’

Declan was not a natural liar, and Edie interpreted from his tone that this was not news to him. He didn’t seem like he’d read gossipy tittle tattle about hot actors …?

Oh.

‘… Wait. Jessica’s been crowing with delight that I’ve been cuckolded, hasn’t she?’

Declan mumbled indistinctly, and Edie said: ‘It’s all right – don’t feel put in the middle. None of it was true, and Elliot and I are still together. I know you’re going to be treated as conduit to That Slag Edie.’

---