Page 65 of Couple Goals

‘I really do have to go,’ Adriana says, feeling disappointed to have to cut this short.

‘Good luck,’ says Jacob. ‘Remember, even if it’s feeling a bit strange right now, she’s your oldest friend. I’m sure she absolutely adores you. It’s going to be okay.’

Adriana looks up at him. How could she ever have thought that face was anything other than kind?

‘So… Can I see you… soon? You can tell me how it goes?’

She nods up at him. She loves watching his poker face spread into a smile.

‘As soon as soon can be,’ she says. ‘I’ll text you right after dinner.’

Then Adriana gives him one last kiss before she leaves.

Chapter 22Maeve

Maeve wants to cook something special for Adriana tonight. Using food to show how sorry she is, her gratitude for her friend, and hopefully put them both in a good mood to talk. So Maeve has spent hours choosing and painstakingly making a new recipe from scratch – a galette with a handmade pistachio paste. She had made the pastry herself the night before, grateful for the distraction from her heartbreak. The photograph accompanying the recipe had a galette with intricate pastry flowers as decoration so, despite having never worked with pastry before, Maeve had tried to make those too, snapping at herself when she messed some up.

Now, she opens the oven to check in on the pastry and sees the flowers have all lost the shape she’d worked so hard to painstakingly create. She starts tearing up at the sight of the burnt blobs.

She knows it’s ridiculous to cry over pastry, but Maeve feels like she can’t do anything right at the moment. She had just wanted to do something nice for her friend, but this feels like a bad omen for the evening.

On the table is a little bowl of homemade hummus with a platter of vegetables and breadsticks to dip. Maeve’s stomach has been rumbling, but she has left it perfectly untouched for Adriana’s arrival. She checks her phone again. Adriana is fifteen minutes late, now, which isn’t that unusual because time-keeping isn’t one of her strengths, but she’d normally at least message.

She checks Adriana on Find My Friends. She seems to be… at a bar round the corner from their training grounds. And unless the dot hasn’t updated, it seems like she’s still there and hasn’t even left.

Maeve feels her face flush and the tears welling again. She removes the pastry blobs entirely, throwing them in the bin.

By the time the doorbell goes, Maeve has tried to waft away the smell of charred pastry blobs. Maeve tries not to be upset that her friend is thirty minutes late for the dinner she put a lot of effort into preparing for them, that she didn’t bring the pudding she promised, or that she smells of alcohol. But it certainly doesn’t make her feel any better.

Maeve tries her best to act like everything is normal, but the two of them hover awkwardly in Maeve’s doorway.

‘Let me take your jacket,’ she offers. She would never normally formally request her friend’s jacket, for heaven’s sake. Normally Adriana strides in and flops straight on the sofa, or helps herself to anything from Maeve’s fridge, or strips her bra off to be more comfortable. Now Maeve feels like a butler, or a stranger, meeting a version of her oldest friend she doesn’t recognise.

‘Did you go somewhere for drinks after training?’ Maeve asks.

Maeve intends the question to sound casual, but then Adriana looks shifty and, clearly lying, snaps, ‘No?’

‘Oh,’ Maeve pauses, trying to give her friend the benefit of the doubt. ‘So what did you get up to after training today?’

Adriana looks round the room. ‘I just… went for… a walk.’

‘Okay,’ Maeve nods.

She wonders if she should be worried about Adriana lying about drinking – for a second her mind flashes with worries of her friend having an alcohol dependency, thatthat’sthe big secret she hasn’t been telling her – knowing too that Adriana’s brother had struggled with drinking a few years ago, and Adriana had helped encourage him to attend his first AA meetings. But, she thinks, with a sinking feeling, perhaps it’s more likely at the moment that her friend is lying to her about going for drinks with other members of the team because she knows Maeve wasn’t invited and she doesn’t want to make things more awkward than they already are.

She turns to the oven to hide her face. She feels like she’s back at secondary school, the girls bullying her by avoiding her, pretending she didn’t exist and they couldn’t hear her, not inviting her to any social events. They would say loudly to each other in her earshot that they didn’t want a ‘dirty lesbian’ at their parties, even though now several of those girls are openly queer themselves.

She’s been carefully trying to keep the galette warm on a low heat in the oven. It’s now dried out, but she tries to zhuzh it a little with some more olive oil to make it edible. Maeve gestures to her to sit down and eat the hummus platter. Adriana sits but then, just gnaws at her thumb.

‘Did you want a drink?’ Maeve offers. ‘I have that rosé you like. Or white? Or–’

‘I’m actually all good, thanks,’ says Adriana. Well, at least it’s reassuring for Maeve’s ‘is Adriana a secret alcoholic’ theory, but it doesn’t help with the terrible atmosphere in the room, the strange silence between them hanging heavy in the air.

‘Music!’ Maeve suggests. ‘I’ll put some music on! Would you like to DJ?’

Adriana shakes her head. Maeve feels her disappointment start to overwhelm her. It’s bad enough to turn up late and lie about where she’s been but now can her friend not at least try to make some effort with her?

Maeve puts on a playlist Spotify suggests for her, ‘Dinner Party With Friends’, feeling silly when the jaunty pop starts playing. Maeve says their food will be warm again in a minute, and Adriana thanks her politely, like she’s just her waiter. They sit in silence, Adriana avoiding eye contact, drinking some water, checking her phone.

---