My Favourite Part

37: half in the moonlight

I asked Pip to help me get the price tag off my dress. Turns out there wasn't one. After that we sat in silence for a while.

Smelling the fresh night air and watching Pip's cigarette smoke wind and disappear into the night is oddly therapeutic. It makes me feel... sentient. Once I got used to it, I forgot how numbing the smell of alcohol could be.

Pip's cool as ever. He lent me his jacket to sit on so my dress wouldn't get dusty on the concrete, but even with his casual drags and toes tapping to the faint sound of jazz, I can tell that he's waiting for me. If only I knew where to start.

"They don't like me, do they?"

My question doesn't faze him. If it does, he doesn't show it. When he looks over at me, his stare is patient, probing.

"Say what you mean, Evangeline." Only slightly drunk, Pip grins when his voice lilts with the subtle rhyme.

I sigh, nibbling at my lip before I try again.

"I don't fit in here," I meet his clear eyes, "do I?"

He leans his head back against the wall, and I immediately feel stupid. He came to have a good time and I doubt counselling his brother's teary girlfriend was what he had in mind.

I bury my face in my hands. "I shouldn't have dragged you out here - into this."

"Evangeline, honestly," he says, eating his 't', "I was dying for a fag anyway, and the guy at the bar said no smoking indoors so..."

I glance at him through a gap in my fingers.

"As for dragging me into it, I think you'll find that my DNA puts me smack in the middle. So," he exhales, and somehow I feel better already, "you want to tell me what happened in there?"

"Your mum hates me."

"So? She hates everyone," he only adds the last bit when I look mildly horrified. "What did she say?"

"She didn't really say anything."

I bite at my nail, and I can taste the scratches of paint coming off, but I'm too tired to care. What even happened? When I try to replay it in my head, I remember Kitty's face, owl eyes and frosted lips, and the venom in Louisa's voice. I remember how tight Nelly's grip was around her wine glass was. I remember that Eric left Lea, and it wasn't the other way I around. That's all.

All I can recall with perfect clarity is how it made me feel. Whatever happened pulled me down from the make-believe pedestal I'd been stood on all night, and blew me over like a leaf in a gust of wind. I felt silly; small.

"I don't know." I admit. "I don't think I remember."

Pip shrugs one shoulder, as though he hadn't expected any other answer.

"Oh my God, I'm being, like, one of those stupid teenagers, aren't I? She probably wasn't even talking about me, and I read into it and got upset, and now I'm out here, bloody boohooing over nothing."

"You're not."

His words are abrupt, and the idle finger that had been tracing lines on the floor stops.

"Mum's a bitch, Evangeline. I love her to bits, and I'd die for her in a heartbeat, but God, she's a bitch."

My brows raise in surprise, although I don't know what's caught me more off guard. The fact that called her a bitch out loud, or that he'd die for her.

"There's a better chance of being struck by lightning than misinterpreting what my mum says." His look is intensely honest, and when Pip makes eye contact, it doesn't shift. All the Macklins seem pretty good at that.