Air Kisses (19 page)

‘Everything what? I just want to know what Kyle’s new job is? Is he the new face of Calvin Klein? What? You can tell me, I won’t say anything.’

She kept looking at me. Then she let out a big sigh and put her phone down. She took a large sip of wine and started clasping her hands together in a fidgety way. The way she did when she was really nervous.

‘Iz, what’s going on?’

She was mute.

‘Okay, now you’re being weird. I’m scared. Speak soon or I will physically extract the words from you.’

Another sigh, then, ‘Okay, well, Kyle went for this job a while back, to be on this TV show. It’s kind of a model reality TV show, I guess, but with not as many hot tubs and no Tyra Banks. Anyway, it follows him and four other models – three girls, two guys – around the world for a year as they go for castings and do jobs and stuff. They wanted someone really loose and fun and young in the show, and they couldn’t find anyone suitable in America or Europe so they did one mass casting here about a month back.’

‘And he got the gig?’

‘Yep. They just called him.’

‘That’s
incredible
news! Wow! So what’s wrong with that?’

‘That’s the thing. They’re basing them all in New York – they each get an apartment right in the meatpacking district—’

‘Ooh, how cool! He can buy you lots of things!’

‘Well, yeah, I guess, except that…’ She was visibly squirming in her seat, shifting from side to side.

‘What aren’t you telling me?’ I stared at Iz as she looked anywhere but at me. My conversational composure betrayed the suggestion of panic in my stomach.

‘Oh Han… I’d really rather talk to you later…’ She reached across the table and grabbed my hands. I pulled them away and folded them firmly against my chest.

‘Iz, just tell me. Are you knocked up? Getting married? What?’ What the hell was so bad that she couldn’t tell me? And why was everything happening at once? Jesus, I left the country for a week, one week, and everything went insane.

‘Okay, okay.’ She took another deep breath and looked into my eyes with her head lowered. ‘It’s just that Kyle and I, we kind of said that if he got the job, we would go together. I would go with him to New York. Because you know I’ve always wanted to go there and try my luck, and my friend Veronica said she could get me a job at this really amazing new French restaurant, and it’s just a really good opportunity, and…’

She kept talking, but I wasn’t hearing her any more. She was just a silent, moving mouth. Everything around me faded into a kind of white mist, and I felt like I might be sick. She couldn’t be moving to the other side of the world. Leaving me behind. Leaving me here all alone. We had a plan to go together. She couldn’t be going with him. I must have misheard her. I’d simply misheard her. Kyle was going, not her. She wouldn’t move overseas with some guy she’d only been with for a few months and leave me here. What about Project Mansion?

‘You’re moving to New York. Is that what you said? Did you say you were moving, with Kyle, to New York?’ I needed to hear it again.

‘Yes… I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to tell you now.’

Before I could register it happening, tears began silently rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t look at Iz, but her sniffling told me she was also crying.

‘Please don’t cry. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, because I know you wanted to be closer to Dan, and it could all work out perfectly, don’t you see?’

The same sense of overwhelming nausea I had felt the night Jesse broke up with me invaded every artery, limb and cell of my body.

‘When do you go?’ I wiped my nose with my sleeve, not caring how revolting it was.

‘Kyle has to pretty much leave immediately, because they start filming in two weeks, and I told him I would be there for that. For his first day.’

‘Two weeks? You’re leaving in two fucking weeks?’

‘Han, don’t be mad—’

‘Don’t be mad? I’m not mad; why would I be mad? You’ve known this guy for five minutes and now you’re going to live overseas with him, even though we’ve been planning it all our lives? Yeah, you know what? You’re right: I am pretty fuckin’ mad.’ I was overtired and being emotionally psychotic, but I didn’t care. I was feeling monstrous. And, knowing that, I knew Iz should leave before I said something spectacularly hurtful that I didn’t mean. I stood up and took the empty wine bottle to the sink as a hint.

‘Han, what are you doing? Can’t we talk about this?’

‘Iz, I’m sorry to be so dramatic, but no, no we can’t. You
were right. Now was not a good time to tell me.’ I wiped my eyes and cleared my throat. ‘I think I’m going to go to bed.’ I stood with my arms folded near the bathroom, waiting for her to go.

She took one long, sad look at me before standing up and putting her bag on her shoulder. She reached the door with her back to me, but as she turned the handle she spun slowly around to look at me. ‘Han, I’m so sorry…’

I walked into the bathroom and closed the door. I waited to hear the front door close behind her before allowing the tears to stream down my face, going over the conversation in my head, getting angrier and sadder and more worked up by the minute. My head and the ferocity of my emotions were spinning so quickly. I felt completely, utterly out of control.

Fully aware of, but revelling in, my irrational, melodramatic mindset, I asked an invisible audience if my life could possibly get any more heinous at this point.

Chapter Twenty-Five

At work the next morning Jay was very happy to see me, which was nice. Kind of.

‘Honey, how WAS it?! Jesus! You look like shit! You didn’t sleep the entire seven days, did you? You stay here; I’ll find you something in the goo room to make you pretty again. Surely it exists – the celebs can’t look that good in airport pap-snaps without something cosmetic.’

She walked into the cupboard and started tinkering around in the skincare section. ‘Hydrating? Mmmm… Neck cream?
Gross
, who uses this stuff?… Anti-ageing? No… Oh! Radiance-boosting éclat… That’s what you need! Here, slap this on…’ She came back to my desk and held it out proudly.
‘Here we go, this will fix you. Hannah, have you been crying? Oh, darling, it’s okay…of course you miss him.’

‘No, no. It’s not that… I’m okay, Jay, really I am, but can we talk about it later?’

‘All right… But I’m watching you.’ She leant down and hugged me, and then walked back to her desk. She turned to blow me a kiss. ‘It makes me happy that you’re home.’

I laughed through my sniffs.

I took a sip of my tea and went back to my emails – all 456 of them – and tried to forget about Iz. I checked my phone again. She still hadn’t texted. What was
with
her? Why should I text first? She was the one ruining Project Mansion and abandoning me. I still couldn’t believe what the last twenty-four hours had thrown my way.

I checked my phone again. Nothing. Not from Dan and not from Iz. The cocktail of incredulousness, hurt and rage under my skin simmered with a little more heat.

My mood lifted a little as I started going through all the packages that had arrived during my tropical absence. There were so many enticing new goodies I wanted to play with that my take-home-to-try box was overflowing. I couldn’t wait to test the new three-step at-home facial for hydration and radiance. I needed it, as Jay had kindly pointed out. At least one nice thing had happened while I was away. That it was the introduction of liquorice into a masque was a little bit sad.

From behind me a voice made a very deliberate ‘ahem’ sound.

When I turned around, Eliza was there, with her trademark mane and signature tight jeans, hand placed deliberately on one delicate hip.

‘Do we need to talk?’

Great. She was in Slytherin mode.

‘Um…no? Do we?’

‘You look like shit. What’s with you?’

I took a breath. I didn’t actually think I looked that bad, but apparently I was delusional. ‘I’m sorry, Eliza. I’ve just had some bad news this morning, that’s all.’

‘Are you okay? More importantly, will you be okay? You know we’re presenting to Silk Effect this afternoon, right? And you need to look good.’

Oh God. Oh God, not today. A presentation would tip me over.

‘I’ll be fine, I just… I’ll get a blow-dry at lunch and redo my make-up,’ I said perkily.

‘Good idea. We need you to be fine; this is a big account. Oh, and can you clean out your inbox – it’s pissing everyone off that your emails bounce.’

With that, she turned around and walked back to her office.

At that moment, Kate came over with a stack of finals that needed approval. It was all of the pages I’d done prior to Hawaii. Superb.

My inbox dinged.

I looked at my phone again: still nothing from Iz. Or Dan. Silly me for thinking so. Silly me for thinking he maybe,
possibly,
might
have found twenty-five seconds to text and see if I got home okay. But no, he was so terribly busy that he simply couldn’t. Maybe the phone wasn’t working. I turned if off and back on again. Nothing.
Bastard
.

At four o’clock Eliza came around and raised her eyebrows. ‘Ready?’

I took a deep breath and delivered the first line in my false-bravado script. ‘Ready squared. Let’s rock this boat.’

‘Whatever. Come on.’ As she stalked off shaking her head, I scrambled to follow her, clutching notes and trying to remember my new plan for presentations: three points, no more. Who the
Gloss
reader is; why she reads my pages; what I give her. Easy. Easy. Easy. I know this stuff.
I know this stuff.

There was little time for pleasantries with these guys. They were seated, smiling, and, after six hours of magazine people all saying roughly the same thing just with a different colour-scheme on PowerPoint, bored as hell.

Marley wore an amazing nude-coloured, high-neck frilled blouse and a tight, high-waisted black pencil skirt. Add perfect hair, make-up and new-season Marc Jacobs heels and you could have mistaken her for Jessica Alba on a press junket. She passed out our brand presentation folders and the special
Gloss
pens and leather notebooks she’d had made. She was frighteningly good.

‘So, as you know,
Gloss
has been through a redesign, and we’re really happy with it. We’ve had such an incredible response…’

Marley and Eliza carried the suck-up flame for a few minutes, before passing the torch to me.

I cleared my throat and launched. I was having such a
revolting day that nothing these people could throw at me could possibly make a dent, so bring it on. I was going in fighting.

‘The
Gloss
reader operates on a dual platform of necessity and luxury. Necessity because she’ll always have blackheads and the occasional spot and hairy legs’ – they laughed – ‘and luxury because, while she doesn’t have a Dior bag, or Chanel heels, what she
does
have is the ability to buy into each of these luxury brands with some lipstick or perfume. In that respect, beauty provides her with access to a world she otherwise wouldn’t be granted, a world where spending two-hundred-and-fifty dollars on highlights and fifty dollars on lip gloss is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged. And that’s where
Gloss
is happy to help out.’

I took a breath. I caught Marley looking at me, smiling.

‘My job is simple. I am her beauty border patrol. I scan all of the products coming in to make sure she is only privy to the best, newest and hottest. Because she likes to know first. She likes to be the one at the dinner party talking about the new mascara or fragrance – it gives her status; it makes her feel powerful.’

It must have been a solid eight minutes before I was done, but Eliza and Marley didn’t seem to mind. They finished off the rest of the presentation, chatting about our circulation and what was coming up for the next few months. The clients shook hands and asked for further information about the
Gloss
pyjama party (they had a range called Bedhead; Marley knew this and made it crystal clear what a perfect fit the event would be for them to sponsor…for the bargain price of $450 000), and then we were out, walking back to the office.

‘What the fuck did you take before you went in there, and where do I get some?’

I smiled. ‘I’ve no idea where that came from. I just think I was so sick of saying what I thought they wanted to hear that I just spoke about what I felt was true, as dicky as that sounds.’

‘Well, you did good, honey.’ Marley patted my shoulder. ‘You deserve a drink tonight, that’s for sure.’

She walked on. I allowed myself a moment to loll about in my victory, small and insignificant as it was in the scheme of my job, beauty and even magazines in general. It felt good to know that, for once, I was not only competent but impressive. Thank God for that. It was tiring always feeling like a fraud.