There was a silence, a tension, incongruously overlaid by Michael Jackson singing, You Are Not Alone.
“You hear anything from Patrick these days?” asked Elyssa.
“Oh, I wondered how long it would take for him to come up. What was that? Eight seconds?” Jay checked his watch, and Elyssa wasn’t sure whether or not to laugh. Something told her that Jay might not be joking. “No. Not really. Not since…you know. God, how pathetic was that? Seven years of friendship. We should have had our fucking heads knocked together.”
“I would have done it.”
“It was you we were locking horns over.”
“Well, yo
u shouldn’t have. It was a shame.”
“Yeah.” Jay looked her up and down, his eyes glinting behind the lenses of his glasses. “A shame neither of us won the battle as well.”
“I’m not a prize.”
“You certainly looked like one. Sorry, shouldn’t use past tense there.”
Elyssa could not shake the awkwardness she felt. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to take him into the middle of the floor and dance, to get tipsy with him and laugh all night about the stupid behaviour of their schooldays, but something prevented her from making any kind of spontaneous gesture. Something she couldn’t quite fathom.
“Are you…with anyone?” he asked.
Oh! That was it! She needed, really needed very much, to know Jay’s status.
“No, no, not right now.” She paused, hoping her question would come out in the casual tone she intended. “You?”
“Tonight?” Jay lowered his spectacles, peering over the rim at her.
“No…just…you know. Generally.”
“I go to bed each night with the best lover in town.”
“Jay! So you’re single.”
“Well, if you really are interested, I’m between dalliances.”
Elyssa snorted. Jay had always been a romantic butterfly, sucking the sweet nectar from one flower then moving on to the next. He had cut a dashing swathe through most of the more sensitive Sixth Form girls until…until…that thing.
“You’ve never had a serious relationship?”
“I hate that word. Relationship. It’s so official. You have to get yourself properly documented and stamped. You can’t be a lover anymore, you have to be a partner. The first girl who introduced me as her partner never saw me again.”
“You’re nobody’s partner, then?”
“No. Not since you and Pat, anyway. We were proper partners. Pardners. Like in the old west. Hip young gunslingers.”
“Who were always trying to get one over on each other.”
“You’re saying that as if you think it’s a bad thing. Competition breeds excellence. Ambition leads to success. A stranger is a networking tool you haven’t yet met.”
“Jay!” Elyssa was not as scandalised as she sounded. She remembered, quite fondly, all the outrageous aphorisms he used to come out with in the Sixth Form Common Room, showering them upon his adoring audience from the least-wrecked armchair.
“What about you, Bradshaw?” he asked, his voice lowering to that broken, dark chocolate tone that used to drive all the girls into his arms. “You haven’t signed yourself over to some undeserving wretch, have you?”
“I’m single,” she smiled, then she gasped at a tap on her shoulder and another voice from the past in her ear.
“You broke my heart,” it said.