Page 47 of The Cocktail Bar
Chapter Twenty-Four
GEORGINA
It was now or it was never. There was no time for rationale, the devil inside her head had spoken, and she’d succumbed to his brainwashing within seconds.
“I’m sorry.” Alice, about to start the vacuuming on account of Georgina’s delay, dropped plug and cable to the floor, somewhat stunned as Georgina held out her hand to shake her love rival’s. Georgina grimaced inwardly at the emptiness of her words as Alice accepted her hand and then outstretched those stick thin, model-like arms for a full-on hug. How could she forgive so easily?
Weirdo.
“I think that we both needed one of these,” she said and Georgina nodded, a weak smile upturning her lips as their union broke apart again.
Oh just turn that friggin’ white noise on, woman, and drone this conversation out of me already – that and the short snappy warmth of the arms of another, a potentialone of them, afriend.
But now she had started there was no going back. The words, etched in her mind like a tombstone would be the perfect beginning of Alice’s end.
Georgina proceeded to slump herself on a chair, head cupped in her hands as if it were a weight she could no longer support with her shoulders alone, realising she may as well go the whole hog with the dramatics. She began to sniff and snort, gradually releasing her hand to tug at her shirt sleeve where a ragged tissue poked out, so she brought it to her eyes, dabbing pathetically at the tear ducts.
“Oh, Georgina, what’s up?”
Alice was poised beside her, where she began to rub her shoulders. It felt undeniably good, yet once again she tried to ignore the warmth, the fact that in this moment, right now, she could change the course of fate by saying something, just about anything else than these treacherous words.
“I can’t say,” she sniffed. “I’m just too scared… sc…scared of what people will think, what he will do.”
“Has somebody been hurting you?”
Oh, the concern in Alice’s voice was crippling. How could she be such a bitch to her? Of all the things she had ever done, surely this was one step too far.
Pushover! The devil inside her took over. Do you want her out of his life and yours? Blake’s besides, or not?
“I’m pregnant.”
There, she’d said it.
And actually, technically, she really could have been, for she was a day overdue – not that this was anything unusual, her cycle never having been regular as clockwork. That fact alone made her feel a little more justified, easing her into the act she had slipped on like a well-fitting cloak.
“Oh my, right I… um… I see,” Alice sat down next to her now, those rubs lessening in meaning and intensity. “It’s River’s I suppose.”
She got a childish kick out of noting Alice couldn’t bring herself to say the B word.
“Well, I definitely haven’t been with anybody else… so… yeah, the baby is River’s.”
She couldn’t resist but to give proper reference to the new life that almost certainly wasn’t within, careful as she had always been with contraceptives, because who in their right mind fancied the prospect of being lumbered with the ‘me-me-me-ness’ that was a child? Still, she let the very utterance of ‘baby’ promote her to a level above and beyond whatever it was that was taking shape between Alice and River. How could anybody compete with the status of Mother of his unborn son or daughter, carrier of his genes; his precious bundle of joy?
The atmosphere between them hung heavy and uncertain, Alice undoubtedly adding the months forward and back in her mind in an attempt to pinpoint the where and when, the changes this invisible child would bring into his life, the sacrifice she was going to have to make so that two had a clear path to become one again… and now three, heck, possibly even four.
“Have you told anybody else?”
“I can’t.”
“How many weeks do you think you are?”
“Ten or so.”
Too many for the deed not to have taken place after our apparent cooling-off period, Allie, sweetheart; oh Gee, she mocked herself silently, you are a bloody legend and a half.
The stairs creaked then and River appeared, looking from one to the other of them, evidently puzzled by the scene.
“Guys, I was kind of hoping we’d be ready to rock up here. None of the customers are clearing off downstairs and I can only keep the next ones at the bar for so long with complimentary Japanese rice crackers. Any chance you could get a shifty on?”
