You're Not the One (9781101558959) (26 page)

“Hello, Kate.” He nods in her direction.

“Nathaniel.” She gives him one of her scary looks.

For a moment there's a standoff and I can see Nate's business contact glancing uncertainly between us, like someone who just stumbled into a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

“Well, this is a coincidence,” says Nate evenly, for his benefit.

“Well, that's one way of putting it,” quips Kate drily.

“Come on, let's move,” I say, turning back to Kate. “There must be a free table.” Just then I glance around and realize with dismay that the whole place has now filled up. There's even a queue of people waiting outside. “Damn. Maybe we should leave,” I suggest.

Kate looks at me as if I've gone mad. “I'm not leaving. I've just ordered seventy dollars' worth of sushi.”

“We could get takeout,” I whisper.

She shoots me a look. “It's crucial that you do not give the other party any cause to believe they have the position of power.”

“Kate, we're not talking about law now,” I say desperately. “We're talking about my ex-boyfriend.”

She frowns and spears another edamame. “If anyone's leaving, it's him, not us.”

“He won't—he's too stubborn,” I say pleadingly.

But she won't budge. “Well, in that case, just ignore him.”

So I try. I try my very hardest. I talk about the gym, about the gallery, about anything to try to stop myself from thinking about him, but it's not easy. I mean, he's
right there next to me
. Sipping my miso soup, I can hear him asking the waiter to run through all the wines and then insisting on tasting every one. Before, it had impressed me, but now it annoys me. At one point I am about to turn round and yell, “Just choose a bloody wine,” but thankfully my crispy salmon roll arrives and distracts me.

In fact, it's really bizarre, but through the course of my meal I discover that all the things I used to find cute and endearing now bug the hell out of me. Like the way he gels his hair into that little peak at the front, or makes that funny hissing noise between his teeth when he laughs, or mentions his game show
Big Bucks
about twenty million times.

“I mean, did he really go on about
Big Bucks
that much before and I never noticed?” I whisper to Kate.

Pausing from eating her tuna sashimi, she frowns. “I thought you were ignoring him.”

“I am, I am,” I protest quickly. “Except it's not that simple.”

“Well, don't worry, he's leaving now,” she says, gesturing behind me with a chopstick.

“He is?” Feeling a rush of relief, I turn round to see the seat next to me is now empty and he's walking toward the exit. “Oh, thank goodness,” I sigh, my whole body relaxing. “Bumping into him once was bad enough, but twice? In one day?”

“Unlucky,” says Kate simply.

I nod and turn back to my food, but something niggles. Is that all it is? Just an unlucky coincidence?

“Of course, there's always another reason,” says Kate.

“What?” I ask, snapping back.

“He's trying to find a way of getting you back.”

“What? By following me?” I frown.

“Bumping into you ‘accidentally,' ” corrects Kate. “Remember, like you did with Paul, who used to deliver our papers?”

I'd forgotten all about that (well, more like blanked it out), but now I'm reminded and cringe at the memory. At twelve years old I had a crush on the paperboy and would find any excuse to bump into him: walking the dog along his route, accidentally on purpose being by our gate as he arrived, even resorting to following him around as he delivered the papers on his BMX. Oh, the shame.

“Nate wouldn't do that,” I say dismissively. “He wanted to break up as much as I did.”

“Are you sure that wasn't just his pride talking?” Kate raises her eyebrows. “Dump-before-you're-dumped kind of thing?”

I crinkle up my forehead, doubts forming. I think back to our argument in the taxi. “No, trust me.” I shake my head decisively.

“Well, just a thought.” She shrugs. “More sake?”

I'm reading too much into this. Bumping into Nate is a pain, but there's no big reason. It's just coincidence.

“Um, yes, please.” I hold out my cup.

Like Kate said, it's just unlucky.

“
S
till, the next morning when I go to work, I'm on the look out, and when I leave the office to get lunch, I make sure I carry my coffee ultra carefully, just in case. But nope, there's no Nate on his iPhone bashing into me. No sightings of Nate in restaurants. In fact, it's very much a Nate-free zone.

Admittedly a couple of times I spot a gray-suited man in the crowd and my chest tightens, but thankfully it's mistaken identity. Just me being jumpy and twitchy.

By the end of the day I'm feeling much calmer, and rather silly. OK, so what happened yesterday was a bit freaky, and very annoying—despite drowning it in OxiClean, I'll never get those coffee stains out of my top, and I couldn't enjoy my sushi with him sitting next to me—but let's be rational, it was just a coincidence. Murphy's Law. Bad luck.

Call it what you want, it's hardly reason to think it's something more than that.

“I know it sounds crazy, but for a moment there I was getting a bit paranoid,” I pant breathlessly, looking across at Robyn, who's puffing away on the exercise machine next to me.

It's the next evening after work and Robyn and I have made the most of my sister's free passes to her private gym and are working out on the machines. I use the term “working out” loosely. “Nearing collapse” is probably a more fitting description.

Despite my sister's offer of free passes, she was taken aback by my eagerness. “What? You're going
tonight
?” she said in astonishment, to which I rather curtly told her that I was keen to get fit and no time like the present.

What I didn't mention was Nate's comment about my cellulite, which had been scorching a hole in my brain like a burning cigarette. “How dare he say I've got cellulite?” I harrumphed to Robyn approximately every ten minutes, and like the loyal friend she is, she harrumphed right back, “How dare he! There is nothing wrong with your thighs!” I'm a real woman, not some gym-honed stick insect. Besides, every woman has cellulite. Even Kate Moss—I'm sure I saw some in a photo in a magazine once. OK, so it
could
have been a trick of the light, but still, I'm sure it was there.

Then after my vitriolic speech—Down with Nate, up with cellulite!—in which I marched around the living room in my knickers, waving the remote like a banner, I went into the bathroom, looked at my bottom in the full-length mirror under the overhead lighting, and made a startling discovery.

Someone had stolen my bottom! Not only that, but they'd replaced it with porridge in a string bag! I didn't know when, or how it happened, but I did know one thing:
I wanted my bottom back
.

Which is why I'm at Equilibrium, a super-trendy gym uptown complete with exposed red brick and plasma TVs, nearly having a heart attack. And not just from the exercise. I feel as if I've been thrown into a parallel universe where everyone is wearing designer Lycra, exposing gym-honed bodies and more six-packs than a 7-Eleven. Strutting around wearing iPods, hand towels casually thrown over their shoulders, swingy ponytails swinging, they positively glow with health and vitality. It's like landing on Planet Beautiful.

Meanwhile I'm in my old tank and shorts, puffing like a steam train, with a face like a giant tomato.

“What?” yells Robyn, in the way people do when they're wearing earphones and think they're talking normally but they sound like the drunks who spill out of nightclubs in town centers on a Saturday night.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

Screwing up her face in confusion, she tugs out one of her earphones. She's listening to a portable CD player. I don't think I've seen one of those since the last century. She's also wearing tie-dye. Next to her, I feel positively trendy, which is saying something.

“Sorry, I was miles away,” she tuts, yanking her ponytail tighter. Her hair is tied up on the top of her head and the curly brown strands are spilling outward like one of those fiber-optic lights.

“What are you listening to?” I grunt. I'm on something called a cross-trainer, which has this huge control panel with flashing lights and dials. It's a bit like being in a cockpit. Not that I've ever
been
in a cockpit, but I'm sure it looks like this. Probably less complicated too, I muse, glancing at it now with trepidation.

After several false starts I've managed to set it to something called “interval,” as I liked the look of the little diagram at the side: high bits with lots of flat bits in between. It was the flat bits that swung it for me. It looked quite easy. After all, isn't “interval” just another word for “rest”?

Er, no, Lucy, I think as I grimace ten minutes in. It's apparently another word for “torture.”

“It's this amazing CD,” gushes Robyn, looking invigorated.

“Oh, is it the new Black Eyed Peas?”

“Black Eyed Peas?” Robyn looks slightly baffled. “No, it's all about miracles and how they can teach you the road to inner peace and enlightenment. It's totally fascinating. Do you want to listen? We can have an earphone each. I think they'll stretch.” She starts trying to untangle them.

“Um, no, it's OK,” I say hastily.

“Are you sure? There's this really cool part about how you have to alter your perception of the world by imagining you're a tree and your arms are the branches.” To illustrate her point, she waves her long, skinny arms, resplendent with silver bangles, over her head. “And you're stretching your branches out into the sky and then up through the clouds and into the universe—”

“So how was the date with Daniel last night?” I cut her off before she narrates the entire CD. And she would, trust me. “You weren't back when I got in.”

Her arms flop back to her sides. “It wasn't a date,” she corrects, wrinkling up her nose.

“OK, how was your non-date?”

She shrugs nonchalantly. “Oh, you know, pretty good.”

I suddenly feel like a cop on one of those shows in which the perfectly innocent-looking granny does something suspicious. There's something wrong here. “Pretty good” is not a phrase Robyn uses. “Awesome,” “amazing,” and “wonderful” are Robyn adjectives.

Something's up. She's lying.

“Just pretty good?” I say, equally nonchalantly. Well, that's what they do in those cop shows, isn't it? Act all casual to try to catch the suspect out?

“Yeah.” She nods, but her mouth is twitching and I can tell she's dying to say more. “He took me to dinner at this little vegan restaurant that's one of my favorites. The grilled tofu was amazing.”

“He did? Wow.”

“I know, isn't it incredible?” she gushes, flashing one of her megawatt smiles before quickly catching herself. “Well, not that incredible, more just a coincidence.”

That's another thing Robyn doesn't do: use the word “coincidence.” She doesn't believe in them. She believes in serendipity. Kismet.
Fate
.

I swear if I were a cop, I'd be ready to make an arrest.

“Then we went to watch an African drumming band.”

“That's amazing!” I exclaim. Robyn's entire music collection consists of panpipes, African drumming bands, and CDs with names like
Sounds of the Indigenous Peoples
and soft-focus pictures of rainforests and rainbows on the front.

“Trust me, they were,” she gushes, unable to help herself. “The rhythms, the music—Daniel and I were mesmerized. . . .” She trails off, her eyes shining, and comes to a dead halt, unlike the machine, which keeps moving. She quickly starts again.

“You like him, don't you?”

“I do not!” she protests indignantly. “I mean, yes,
as a friend
I like him, but that's it.”

Of course, she's completely lying. I should be handcuffing her right now and leading her to a cell.

“When are you seeing him again?”

“I dunno. He invited me to see a play this evening. It's called
Celestial Awakenings
and it's all about angels.”

“
And you're not going?
” I look at her incredulously. One of Robyn's most beloved possessions is her deck of Angel Cards, as she believes in angels. Along with fairies, ghosts, and Santa Claus. Actually, no, that's a fib—she doesn't really believe in Santa Claus, but sometimes I do wonder.