We clink glasses and drink.
‘To the good life,’ Cash says.
‘To the good life,’ I echo.
I open a transparent box of antipasto and nibble on a bit of cold meat while he takes a chunk out of a pork pie.
‘Good stuff,’ he says with relish.
‘Yeah, very tasty,’ I agree, swallowing a bit of potato salad.
He picks up a Muffeletta sandwich. It is made from the sturdy heel of a loaf of Italian bread and piled with cured meats, tangy olives and salad. ‘Do you like Italian food?’ he asks before stuffing his mouth with food.
‘Love it,’ I say.
‘Same here,’ he says. ‘So where in the States are you from?’
‘Georgia.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He wipes his hands on his napkin. ‘I had a tour stop a few years back in Atlanta.’
I clear my throat and try to look at him with an interested expression. The truth is I never took into consideration how difficult lying to him would be. Not admitting that I was in Atlanta for his concert feels horribly, horribly wrong, but to admit it means everything will fall apart.
‘How was it?’
‘Yeah, it was good,’ he says with a languorous look in his eyes.’ I distinctively remember that Georgia girls were gorgeous.’
Shocking, but I never had an inkling as to what a jealous person I am. I feel like slapping him across his smug face. I take a sip of champagne and smile tightly. ‘I’m glad you had fun.’
His eyes light up. ‘Are you jealous?’
‘Probably as jealous as you are of the guy I was with at that time,’ I say coolly.
He tears off a bit of bread and dips it into the olive and fig tapenade. ‘Now you’re just being a cloud over my sunshine,’ he grumbles.
I smile inwardly. ‘Want some potato salad?’
‘Yeah, pass it over,’ he says and chews thoughtfully. ‘So who was this guy then?’
‘No one you know.’
‘I know that. Were you in love with him or something?’
‘Yeah, I was in love with him. Look can we not talk about him anymore?’
I pick up a packet of biscuits from the basket. ‘What on earth is a garam marsala biscuit?’
‘They have Indian spices in them,’ he says.
I make a face. ‘A biscuit with Indian spices?’
‘Try it.’ he suggests.
I open the packet and take a small bite of a biscuit. ‘This is not bad,’ I say.
‘Let me have a taste,’ he says, and catches my hand. I watch him bring my hand to his lips. He bites into the biscuit while staring in my eyes. ‘Tell me more about Tori,’ he says softly.
‘There’s not really that much to tell. I come from a family of four, my parents and my brother and me. My father analyses numbers and data on computer spreadsheets, but none of us have figured out exactly what he does. My mom is a housewife. She’s funny and sweet and I miss her, and my brother is in college. I’ll be joining him this fall.’
‘What were you like as a child? I bet you had some mouth on you.’
‘Actually no. I was a very quiet and insular child. My mother said I refused to speak to anybody unless they gave me sweets first, and even then I was a bitch about it’
He laughs.
‘And you?’ I ask.
‘I was a messed up kid. I can’t explain it, but thoughts came really fast into my head. So damn quick it was like a tap left open on full. Water continuously rushing down a sink hole. It was like being bombarded. I couldn’t process them so I acted out.’
He shrugs and picks up one of the plastic dishes of prawn cocktail.
‘ADHD wasn’t an available condition then, so the doctors thought it might have been a mild form of autism. They wanted to put me on medication to calm me down, but my dad refused point blank. I was seven years old. He thought it was a passing phase.’
He takes a sip of champagne.
‘It was hard for me, but it was hell for all those around me since I was constantly lashing out. I think my father might have been about to cave in when we were passing a music shop one day and there was a shiny red electric guitar in the window. I was seven years old but knew straight away that I wanted to play it. He took me in and the salesman let me put the strap over my head and hooked it up to the amp. It totally dwarfed me.’
He shakes his head with the memory.
‘I couldn’t believe it. The moment the first notes hit my brain the unceasing river of thoughts stopped. I wouldn’t leave the shop without the guitar. It became my salvation. I didn’t want to take classes. I played it just to stop thinking. I’d lock myself in my room and play for hours. As the years passed, my brain calmed down, or fucking rewired itself, who knows, but by the time I was eleven I guess I was a pretty normal kid.’