Page 24 of Filter This
10
Waking up late the morning after the Glossies launch, Ali momentarily forgot what an insane time she’d had the night before. She fumbled for her phone, groggy and confused. And queasy. It was 9.20. Work in two hours. Ugh. They were starting late to shoot late. At least it was Friday –Durty Aul’ Townrarely shot on weekends and she and Ruairí, the other PA, took turns doing any bits required. He was up this week, TG. Ali flopped back and tried to sort out the blur of the previous night.
Queasy was her normal morning sensation but it wasn’t the usual anxiety queasiness – usually inspired by garage wine, late-night Insta-scrolling and ill-judged Mystery Bags (her local chipper’s take on the ubiquitous Spice Bag). Instead this was an excited queasy, Ali realised. It was surprisingly pleasant.
The launch party came rushing back to her in a series of thrilling flashes. The fug of so much fake tan and hair product combined with body heat incubating in a poorly ventilated room. Ring-lights, selfie sticks, Proseccos, her name being called and then scanning the sea of bitter-looking Instagrammers as she stood onstage while Blake Jordan,theBlake Jordan, interviewed her. Shite. The excited queasy was rapidly being supplanted by the more familiar anxious queasy.
Something … not brilliant had happened that was tempering the excitement.
Suddenly the memory of Blake Jordan miming a pregnant belly veered into her head. She’d had a bit to drink but she hadn’t been drunk drunk. Surely not drunk enough to tell everyone she was …
‘Oh my god,’ she whimpered as the worst Fear of her life hit her like a battering ram.
She launched herself under the covers, clawing through the sheets until she felt the comforting shape of her phone. She heaved herself up and crouched over the screen. She opened Instagram and gasped when she saw the sheer volume of notifications. Three and a half thousand new followers overnight.
Three thousand five hundred and thirty-fucking-six.
She attempted to steady herself as she refreshed her feed, unable to believe what she was seeing. The DMs were rammed. Too many messages to read. Ali started feeling shaky. At last she’d get to do one of those Stories she’d watched influencers do countless times. The ones where they said they’d had so many amazing messages and were trying to work through their inbox and hoped to reply to everyone soon.
Ali could feel a bubble of pure, unbridled glee filling inside her. She bounded off the bed and landed smack on some crunching object hidden beneath last night’s dress. ‘Fuck,’ she yelped in pain and then a giggle escaped her lips. ‘Oh my fucking god!’ She giggled uncontrollably. This is what they meant when people said they were beside themselves. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling like if she didn’t restrain herself physically she might take off from sheer delight.
‘Fuck, fuck fucking fuck!’ She felt like dancing or singing or screaming. Shit, this was bad but also, fuck, this was amazing. She checked her phone again – ten more followers in the last couple of seconds. ‘Oh my god,’ she squeaked.
She looked at her last post. Ooops – looked like she’d already made it official. The pic (posted at 1.15 a.m.) was a positive pregnancy test with a very poorly spelled caption thanking everyone for their kind wishes. At least she’d put every pregnancy-related hashtag known to man on it and tagged more than fifty key accounts.
Drunk Ali’s pretty on it, she thought admiringly. But how did she get so drunk? She paused in her gleeful self-hug and waded back through the night’s memories. She’d left the Glossies before 11 p.m., unable to drink any more Piss-ecco due to her fake pregnancy.
Of course, the pink champagne. She was given a huge hamper of goodies as she’d left, including a bottle of pink champagne, and she’d celebrated the main way she knew how these days – slugging the bubbles from the bottle in what she figured was a kind of rakish and decadent vibe and scrolling on Instagram with one eye squeezed shut the better to focus.
She had a couple of flashes of meandering around the kitchen trying to make toast. Had Liv come in and shouted at her? Eek, yes, that sounded familiar.
Then it hit her. Liv. Quite possibly the biggest spanner in the pregnancy plan – if she could call it a plan. Shite.
The euphoria of becoming an overnight social media phenomenon was beginning to subside and the well-earned and clearly unavoidable hangover was making its way towards her. It was an onslaught as inevitable and unrelenting as an approaching high-speed train.
Ali crawled back on to the bed and eased herself into a semi-recline, pulling a heavy book over to rest on her face – this (along with a shneaky can of G&T) was Ali’s tried and tested hangover cure. Something about the weight pressing down, pushing back on the pounding in her skull, was a relief.
‘Or you could just not drink, ya know,’ muttered Rational Brain. ‘Mnam nanh manah mana.’ Ali aped the voice then felt momentarily sheepish. Is it a good idea to be mimicking the voice inside your head that’s trying to be sensible? Well, Rational Brain just didn’t get that sometimes wallowing in a pure, delicious hangover was just what you needed. Besides, she’d earned this – she’d won the wild card, after all, she deserved to celebrate.
Rational Brain tried to point out that she always ‘deserved’ wine, whether she was celebrating some minor Insta win or comforting herself after a bad day sitting with Miles, but Ali drowned out those uncomfortable truths with some immensely satisfying scenes from last night.
Just then her reverie was interrupted by her phone buzzing in her hand. She nudged the fourth Harry Potter up slightly to peer at the screen. A message.
I just saw your post, we need to talk. Call me ASAP.
She squinted at the contact name. Tinder Sam.
Ali sprang up in a move that was far too athletic for her current banjaxed head. The book fell to the floor straight into the tray of curry chips still languishing there from two days ago. As she contemplated the grim sight of the book partially submerged in curry sauce, her right hand began to buzz again.
Ali froze.
‘Tinder Sam calling …’ The screen heralded the incoming call in a way that, to Ali in her sensitive state, felt distinctly gleeful – though perhaps sensing judgement from an inanimate device was edging dangerously close to paranoia.
Ali held the phone at arm’s length lest Tinder Sam detect her presence. She didn’t want to end the call in case he could tell that she’d rejected it. Though in fairness she’d already rejected him pretty brutally IRL. Ali felt her cheeks burning at the memory. Poor Tinder Sam.
They’d hooked up about six weeks ago, at the start of December, and from his message, it seemed he’d MacGyvered his way into thinking her pregnancy post had something to do with him. While Tinder Sam seemed adept at basic arithmetic, he clearly wasn’t thinking this through – they’d used a condom, for god’s sake. Ali didn’t allow rogue mickeys near her unsheathed. The date had been a memorable one for several terrible reasons. It had started on a good note, in that Tinder Sam appeared to tick all the boxes in terms of what Ali required from a Tinder date.
‘Beautiful but dim,’ she’d texted Liv just ten minutes in. ‘In short, perfect!’
