Page 29 of Three's a Crowd
Stepping away from her, he turned and opened the door, walking back out into the corridor and heading, she supposed, back to Adam in the living room. Or maybe to his bedroom and Lola’s warm, willing body.
Daisy stood there, trembling with disbelief, staring into the darkness, unable to comprehend everything that had just happened. She felt like screaming. Instead, she pulled herself together, brushed her teeth with a trembling hand and went toher room. Pulling off her clothes and throwing them onto the floor, she climbed under the duvet, her head buzzing.
After ten minutes of lying there, tossing and turning, she heard Adam come in to the bedroom, undress and get into bed next to her. He snuggled in close.
‘Are you okay, babe?’ he whispered into her ear in a slurred voice, stroking her arm and moving his hand down to cup her breast.
‘Adam, I’m really drunk and tired. I’m not in the mood, okay,’ she said, and felt his body stiffen next to her. She’d never denied him sex before.
‘Sure. Okay,’ he said in a hurt tone, before turning away from her with a huff.
Daisy sighed. How had it come to this? Why could she not just be friendly with Zach without having a desperate need to either touch him or fight with him all the time – and he her, it would seem? He really was the bane of her life.
And the bloody arrogance of the guy, thinking she somehow belonged to him, just because he was her first lover.
She fumed silently for a while before eventually dropping off into a troubled sleep.
When she woke the next morning, to her relief, Zach and Lola had gone, leaving a scribbled note to say they’d had an urgent call from Lola’s agent and they’d had to go and meet him as soon as possible. They hadn’t wanted to wake them up to tell them this.
‘Ugh, who’d be an actor! Meetings on a Sunday, for God’s sake!’ said Adam groggily, when Daisy brought the note into the bedroom to read to him.
Daisy just felt numb.
7
It had been a year, almost to the day, that she’d last seen Zach, when Daisy came home from work to find Adam sitting at the kitchen table in a bemused state, his mobile in front of him.
‘Hello stranger. I wasn’t expecting you back till late again. Did the office burn down or something?’ she asked, dumping her bag on the table.
‘Ha. Funny. No. My last meeting was cancelled because Tim went home ill. I thought I’d see if you were around to have dinner with me.’
‘Ah, sorry, I’m meeting Claire at the pub. She’s having a dating nightmare and needs some moral support.’
‘Oh. Okay. No worries.’ He stared back down at his phone again, his brows pinched.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘You look concerned about something.’
‘I just heard from Zach.’
As usual, the sound of his name gave Daisy goosebumps. She worked hard to control her expression, so as not to make the sudden flash of anxiety obvious to Adam.
They hadn’t heard from him again after he and Lola had left that morning, but Adam had written it off as Zach being swamped by work and Daisy hadn’t tried to disabuse him of the idea. He’d been surprisingly blasé about it, actually, which had surprised her at the time – Zach and Adam had been best friends since childhood, after all – but they now lived very different lives and she guessed Adam had just come to accept this.
‘What did he have to say?’ she asked, her voice a little unsteady.
Could he really be coming back into her life? Just as she was starting to make peace with what had happened and get used to the idea of never seeing him again? He seemed to have a knack of knowing the moment she started to feel okay about losing him as a friend.
‘He apologised for not being in contact. He said the play fell through and he went back to the States almost immediately after visiting us. Apparently, he was offered a role in a film that he just couldn’t turn down there, so postponed his plan to move back to England. Oh, and he split up with Lola, didn’t say why. Sounds like he’s got the pick of a new partner since his show did so well though. I have to admit, I’m pretty jealous,’ he said with a slow wink, to show her he wasn’t serious.
Daisy slapped him playfully on the arm.
He grinned and pulled her towards him, onto his knee, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her till she shrieked.
‘Get off, Adam, you’re hurting me, you oaf!’ she gasped.
He released her and as soon as her arms were free, she squeezed his cheeks hard in retaliation, laughing at how absurd he looked.
‘What?’ he said through squished lips. ‘Come here and give me a kiss.’ And he moved towards her, making wet kissing sounds.
