Page 72 of The Moon Also Rises
The appropriately named Clapham Manor House Hotel is one of the company’s signature properties and it’s where one of the country’s most famous footballers wants to marry his equally famous supermodel fiancée in August. Considering their budget and the fact it’s all being organised very last minute, I’m not surprised Bill and Simeon asked both Jake and me to be at this meeting with the happy couple and the hotel’s manager, and because I am so keen to talk to Jake, I’m not mad about it either.
Reaching to check my phone to see if Jake has texted – not that there’s a reason he would – I see a new email notification. Once in the app, my stomach sinks when I read who the email is from.
It’s not Michelle. It’s not Gee. It’s the one other person whose name stops me in my tracks. It’s Cassie, my former manager and I suppose, former friend too. My instinct is to jump out of the email app and pocket my phone, but a quick glance at the time shows me I still have another ten minutes before Jake is likely to show up and I really don’t want to spend that time wondering why she’s got in touch. There’s also the subject title of the email, the crafty witch of a woman that she is.
Don’t Open This Unless You Want Your Life to Change… For the Better.
I sigh, take a quick sip of my coffee, then open the email.
Rami,
Long time, blah, blah, blah.
I hear you’re back in the UK. Is the weather still as abysmal as it was when I last visited in 2002? Never again.
Anyway. I’ve waited long enough to send this email and I won’t put it off anymore.
I’ve been fielding calls and demands for you since you decided to go AWOL and they’ve officially started to slow down in number and offer size.
What does this mean? Well, it means your time is officially running out. The longer you leave it now to come back, the harder it will be.
I’m telling you this as the best manager you ever had and as an average friend.
Get in touch if you want to talk about it. My number is still the same (but my rates have gone up!).
Nix sends their love, by the way. They miss you a lot more than I do, just FYI.
Cassie x
I can’t help but smile. Even if what she’s telling me is not what I want to read or think about, I have missed Cassie and her partner Nixon. They were good people to work and socialise with, and we had countless fun nights in LA together. Her, them, me and… Michelle. It feels so strange to think about her as my partner. I can’t imagine sitting down to dinner with her and another couple, like we used to, like I did so naturally, so easily last week with… Jake.
I see him approaching me over the top of my phone. He’s in a navy suit with a pastel blue shirt that captures something in his colouring that makes me think about what he would look like with a suntan, smiling against a deep blue sky on holiday. Thinking about this has me grinning to myself.
“Who’s got you smiling like that?” Jake asks as he comes to stand opposite me.
“Nobody, nothing,” I say in a rush.
Jake blinks at me. “I was just implying you may have had a text from someone you’re enamoured with. No need to bite my head off.” He holds his hands up but then spots the coffee. “Ooh, is that for me?”
“It is,” I say, and I know now that I can’t bring up last week. That little comment, delivered so easily, without hesitation, tells me that whatever happened last week, Jake has clearly moved on from it and so must I. Telling myself this only adds more weight to that sinking feeling in my stomach. How am I going to be able to even salvage a friendship with Jake from whatever it is we had going on between us after he’s sucked my cock and I watched him get himself off so intently I can recall many minutes of it in my mind’s eye. And I have – multiple times.
“Shall we go in?” Jake asks interrupting my thoughts.
“Sure,” I say.
Walking up the steps, a smartly dressed butler in a top hat opens one of the double doors for us and we step into the vast, high-ceilinged lobby of the hotel. On the floor are alternating black-and-white square tiles and the space is furnished with warm-coloured leather sofas and chairs. A row of reception desks line the wall to our left and that’s the direction we move in when we are intercepted.
“Looney Tunes!” A voice from my past bellows.
I freeze.
“Is it really you?” I hear all the hard edges and piqued vowels of the cockney accent, all the depth of the baritone it belongs to. “No fucking way!”
“Jamison.” I turn around to face the music, which on this occasion is my old friend and one-time colleague Lyle Jamison, a one-time member of an early Nineties boy band turned songwriter for other pop stars. In other words, he fell from a great height into obscurity but probably earns a lot more money and has a lot more sanity for it.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” the stocky man asks me as he approaches us both, arms open wide. I step into them, but don’t get very far because of his sizeable stomach, but he truly looks all the happier and healthier for the weight gain.
“I thought you was out in the middle of nowhere in California, you know doing that—”
