Unbridled Read online

  “No, well not exactly. Jesus, Hales,” she admonished, “will you please let me finish my story.”

  “I’m sorry but I’m only here for a month, Jen, and I’d hate to miss the ending.”

  My sister stuck out her tongue and continued. “Anyway, every time we bumped into each other we would talk… and then flirt… and then talk some more. By the end of the first night we’d shared our first kiss. God, Hales, it was...”

  “Yes I get the picture.” This didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Jen was an incorrigible flirt and at times utterly reckless. Impulsive should have been her middle name, whilst mine was cautious.

  “It was the fate test, you know? I decided after he walked me back to my room on Friday night that if I saw him the next morning at breakfast, and he was still as hot, we’d swap phone numbers.”

  I looked at her in confusion. “Why wouldn’t he be as hot?”

  “I’d had a fair bit to drink Friday,” she said in explanation and I did the ‘ah right’ head nod of understanding.

  “So?”

  “So he was, and we did.” She sounded like a lark singing a welcome to the rising sun. Seriously. It was like she was a Disney princess, animated and bubbly. I half expected forest animals to leap out from under benches and carry my hand luggage for me. “Then an hour later I received a text message asking if I wanted to meet him. I felt bad ditching the girls but I did mention how hot he was, didn’t I?”

  “Dear Lord, Jen, hurry the fuck up. I can feel my life slowly slipping away.”

  “Keep your knickers on, Impatient Hannah. We spent the day together and it was wonderful and then we spent the night together and it was… we… erm…” she blushed leaving me in little doubt what the erm meant.

  “Whoa right there, missy,” I said chuckling, “I don’t want to hear about your degenerate straight sexual escapades!”

  “ImarriedhimonSunday.”

  I burst out laughing. “Jen, you might need to take more breaths, either that or wait until tomorrow and I’ve had more sleep and less alcohol.” I shook my head. “In my jet lagged inert state I thought that you said, ‘I married him on Sunday.’”

  I chuckled.

  She didn’t.

  “Jen?” I stopped dead in my tracks and pulled on her arm so she would turn to face me. “Let me get this right. You met this man on Friday, slept with him on Saturday, married him on Sunday and came home on Monday. Is he Solomon Grundy and are you penning the follow up to Craig David’s Seven Days?”

  “No, I told you, his name is Jack.”

  Unlike myself, my sister evidently wasn’t on speaking terms with irony. “Have you… what …” This was so far out of left field it came from Mars. Via Neptune.

  “I think this might be the first time you’ve ever been speechless.” Jen tried for levity which went down like a lead balloon. My foot tapped on the ground as Jen unlocked the car and we heaved my suitcase and hand luggage into the boot, me with such force it nearly went through the windscreen. I couldn’t speak but I think my body language was doing a pretty good job of showing how I felt about her recent nuptials.

  Nuptials? What the hell is she thinking?

  I finally found my actual voice rather than just listening to my inner monologue ranting. “Oh no, there’s been more than one occasion you’ve left me speechless, Jen,” I snapped. I tried processing what I’d heard, but it wouldn’t compute. “So where does this leave me? I guess the whole bonding and bitching about our love lives is off and as for the hanging out together, I bet new hubby can’t wait to have the sad sister in tow.” I slammed the car door as I climbed inside and pulled sharply on the seatbelt five times, each one a click as frustrated as me, before I eventually tugged it free enough to fasten it. My attitude was accomplishing nothing other than putting my sister’s back up.

  But, hey, I was on a roll.

  “And where did this auspicious event take place?” I continued angrily. “In one of those seedy chapels on the strip where everyone is either drunk, high or a few sandwiches short of a picnic? And that’s only the staff!” I could see Jen getting redder by the second, but I wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. “Was Elvis there? Do you know this guy’s last name? Is it even legal?” At last I ran out of steam, but I was sure I had managed to get every last sarcastic thought out there. This wasn’t the first time Jen had done something incredibly stupid, it felt like I’d spent my entire life getting her out of one scrape or another (like when her and her friends were caught on CCTV setting off the fire alarm in school and I took the hit because she was one incident away from suspension and Cambridge University did not accept students with that type of school record) and it probably wouldn’t be the last. But this went way beyond stupid.

  This was padded room territory.

  “I’m sure it’ll be easy to get an annul-”

  Jen interrupted me before I could even finish the word. “I love him, Hales. Why the hell would I get an annulment?” she fired back angrily.

  “You’re in love with someone you met three days ago? You’ve been watching too many shitty movies on that Hallmark channel.”

  Jen’s bottom lip begin to quiver as she concentrated on the traffic but she’d clearly had enough of my attitude and called me on it. “I know this is a shock but there’s no need to be nasty about it.”

  “What do you know about this bloke? Apart from he’s good in the sack!” I raised my voice.

  “Fuck, Hales, just because I didn’t spend five years getting to know him doesn’t mean we’re doomed from the start. Speaking of which, how’d that work out for you?”

  Ouch. That hurt.

  Jen shook her head “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But it was the fate test, Hales.”

  “Damn it, Jen, we used that to decide if we wanted a new pair of shoes or a saddle or who we were going to the Fresher’s Ball with. Not a bloody husband!”

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re in this mood! Why can’t you be happy for me?”

  I sighed and concentrated on the passing scenery. It was breath taking and I’d missed most of it. Did I really want the first time I’d seen my sister in the flesh for over a year to turn into a slanging match? I may not have agreed with what she’d done, and I definitely wish she hadn’t done it the day before I was due to arrive, but it was her life.

  “Hang on, Jen. I can be happy for you. I also can worry about you, okay? That’s my prerogative as the older sister.”

  “By all of eleven minutes,” she said with a slight upturn in her lips. She was incredibly gracious and forgiving, unlike me. I tended to hold grudges as if my life depended on it.

  “Does your husband live in San Francisco?” And that didn’t sound weird in the slightest.

  “No, he’s from Cody.”

  “Cody? Is that a suburb?”

  “You know Cody, Hales. Come on, Dad made us watch Annie Get your Gun often enough.” I must have been asleep with my eyes open because nothing she said was making any sense. “Cody is named after William Cody aka Buffalo Bill. He helped found the town, it’s in Wyoming.”

  Ahh finally something I understood. It still didn’t make much sense, but I understood.

  “Wyoming,” I said disparagingly. “How’s that that going to work? I’ve been in a long distance relationship, Jen, it doesn’t work. And Brighton is a hell of a lot closer to Newmarket than San Francisco is to bloody Cody.” If I had my American geography correct.

  My sister’s breath hitched then she hissed, “It won’t be long distance, I’m moving there to be with him.”

  Now I’m not one who can easily roll with the punches, especially the quick left and right combination jabs Jen was hitting me with, so I countered with an uppercut of my own. “And again, voice of experience here. You’ve spent your life building an amazing career, why on God’s green earth would you throw all that away on a whim? The odds of this ‘marriage’,” I did the air quotes merely to piss Jen off because I knew it was one of her pet hates,
“lasting aren’t good.”

  “I’m sorry if I don’t bow down to your superior knowledge, sis, it’s just your track record doesn’t exactly give you a lot of credibility right fucking now!”

  Wow. Jen never swore. I deserved that, I guess. My full frontal barrage was getting me nowhere except thrown out on the side of the road, and so I decided it was time for a change of tack. “What does this Jack do in Cody?” I turned the antagonism down a few notches.

  “He and his cousin inherited some land. They’re going to open a dude ranch, you know, like City Slickers. Jack says there’s plenty of work to be done, both on the ranch and with financial matters, which I think we can both agree I have some grounding in. I wouldn’t be sitting at home twiddling my thumbs!”

  Hmm maybe she’s thought this through more than I gave her credit for. Not. “When do I meet this paragon then?” Jen gave me a look. Correction, she gave me the look. “Sorry,” I said with a modicum of chagrin. “So when do I meet Jack?”

  “I thought dinner tomorrow, that’ll give you a chance to settle in and get over-”

  “The shock?” I cut in only this time with a wry grin.

  “I was going to say your jet lag,” Jen smiled. She seemed relieved I was moving on from my current setting of constant harping mixed with a soupcon of griping.

  The dash of disbelief remained on the periphery.

  “Out of curiosity where am I sleeping? If I’m not meeting Jack until tomorrow that is. Have you booked me into a hotel?”

  “Oh, no you’re still staying at my place. Jack’s parents live just outside the city, so we’re going to stay there.”

  “This is fucking fantastic,” I leant my head back on the headrest and closed my eyes. “First night in San Francisco and I’ll be spending it on my own.” I may as well have stayed in England.

  “Kelly will be there.”

  “Your room mate who I’ve never met? Yes, that won’t be awkward at all.”

  “You’ll get on like a house on fire, she’s cute and single.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  “Kelly’s gay.”

  Could my sister be any more tawdry? She got married in Vegas to a bloke she knew for seventy two hours, what do you think, muppet? “Just because we’re both lesbians it doesn’t mean we’re going to jump into bed together.” Jen’s stereotyping disappointed me. The L Word had a lot to answer for!

  But that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate it, I thought with a grin. I’d forgive that show anything for introducing me to Alice Pieszecki.

  Jen sighed. “Everything I’m saying at the moment is coming out wrong. Kelly’s a blast. You’ll have fun is all I meant. It might do you some good to let go and not think so much.”

  “And it might do you some good to think a bit more but that ain’t gonna happen either.” When we were younger Jen and I enjoyed what some would suggest was a psychic link. As we grew, and drifted apart, physically (going to different universities, working in different areas, and ultimately living thousands of miles away from each other) the emotional bond was never sundered; in fact, sometimes it felt like the distance, if anything, made it stronger.

  But right now, my sister felt like a total stranger.

  ***

  It took forty minutes to get from the airport to Jen’s flat, twenty of which were spent arguing, ten were in complete and utter frustrated silence and the other ten involved sporadic intervals of small talk about passing landmarks or how our one shared friend Olivia was. I was feeling uncomfortable and if I’m completely honest, still a touch angry, so I went straight to have a shower in the vain hope it would both relax and help me cool off slightly.

  It did neither of those things but at least I came out feeling clean and a tad more refreshed.

  “Have you told Mum and Dad yet?” I asked.

  “Yes, I Skyped them this morning.”

  “After I left,” I said bitterly.

  “I didn’t want you to change your mind. I wanted to see you. Damn it, Haley, I’ve been worried about you,” she protested.

  Ah, okay, so it was my best interests she had at heart. Funny, I had it down to her being incredibly selfish. “Not that worried,” I said softly. “You arranged to meet your in laws the evening I arrived. Would one more day have made that much difference?” Jen was close to tears and maybe I was being overly harsh. I knew she probably wasn’t thinking and that she’d simply got caught up in everything, another habit of hers. This was supposed to be the happiest time of her life and I didn’t want to ruin it for her.

  “Jack suggested lunch tomorrow. He would like us both to meet his cousin who’s in town at the moment.” She almost whispered the proposal, like she was terrified of my reaction.

  Yeah, she should be.

  Being paraded like some sort of show pony in front of people I’ll probably never meet again was certainly not part of any plans I’d made. It wasn’t even in any contingency ones I’d drawn up. I mean, even the most thorough of risk assessments would have failed to predict this. Hell even Patricia Arquette would have failed to see it in a séance. But I was too upset to argue. “Look, Jen, I guess I’m still tired, it’s fine. You go and have a great time. I’ll get some sleep and we can catch up tomorrow it’s no big deal, honestly.”

  Jen put her arms around me and buried her head into my shoulder. “You really are the best big sister in the world, Hales.”

  Scrap that, I was the biggest pushover in the world and she knew how to shove.

  Chapter 3

  Haley

  Jen didn’t try to wake me before she left and I was pleased about that. No, wait. I was ecstatic about that. The minute I heard the front door slam shut, I pulled out my phone and began looking for a hotel room. And then for flights back to England. Despite what I said I couldn’t stay and watch love’s young dream, it was just too painful. I walked through to the living room to make a coffee, my eyes focussed blearily on booking.com, when from behind the breakfast bar a figure suddenly stood and, well, loomed.

  “Fuck,” I screamed. Holy shit, my heart muscles were being given a real workout on this trip. She must have been a basketball player because she was well over six foot tall. And built. Actually stacked would have been a better description. Eyes up, Haley.

  “Hey, Haley, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to wake you.” The other woman grinned. “Or frighten the life out of you either.”

  I choked out a nervous laugh. “It’s fine, I mean you didn’t. Trust me, on a scale of one to ten of the shocks I’ve suffered recently, yours registers about a two.” I held out my hand. “Hi, you must be Kelly?”

  “That’s me.” She shook my hand warmly. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Jen’s told me so much I feel like you’re my sister.” She took a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Drink?”

  “No, I’m good thanks.”

  “So how was your flight?”

  “It was amazing. Everyone should experience business class at least once in their lifetime. It was like putting wings on a five star hotel room.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m only a lowly admin assistant, so it’ll be a few years before I have enough banked. Jen not here?” She asked looking over my shoulder.

  “No. Dinner with the new husband and in laws.”

  Kelly must have seen, or heard, my scepticism. “Are you alright?”

  There was genuine concern in her eyes and voice when she asked me the question. The one Jen hadn’t once bothered to ask. Okay, that was catty, but I felt like I was wearing roller skates on an icy pond. Everything Jen said to me after ‘I’m married’ really hadn’t sunk in. Well, except for the whole leaving me alone on my first night. That sunk in like a wasp’s stinger. “I’m fine, thanks,” I answered with a polite smile.

  “I’ve lived with Jen for about eighteen months so I know she’s spontaneous. But this marriage took it to a whole new level. God only knows how you must be feeling.”

  “Hmm, let’s see… a swa
llow dive off of the Golden Gate Bridge is looking quite inviting right about now.” I raised my eyebrows to let her know I was joking and managed to temper my acerbity to citrusy acid rather than sulphuric.

  Kelly laughed. “Oh now come on, it’s not that bad. He’s a nice guy and they make the cutest couple. Look I’m meeting some friends later, why don’t you come?

  “Kelly that’s very kind-”

  “Haley, before you say no, it’s true we don’t really know each other, but we’re on the same team and I always look out for my teammates. Plus I don’t know any better cure for getting over a bitch than getting under another even hotter one, and trust me when I say this town is full of hot bitches looking for a bit of fun.” I looked at her. Did she know everything? “Jen might have mentioned you’ve had a bit a rough time of it lately,” she admitted with a rueful grin.

  I could have been annoyed with Jen, again, but this time chose to rise above it. It wasn’t Kelly’s fault and she was making an effort, so I tried to make one too. “Is that your professional opinion?” I asked, smothering a chuckle.

  “It is. I’ve lived in this town my whole life so I think I’m fairly qualified. So how about it? One night. San Francisco. What could go wrong?” She took a sip of water and watched me keenly.

  She was waiting for my acceptance whilst I was thinking of excuses..

  “Do you seriously want me to list them?” I said with a fatalistic sigh.

  Kelly laughed. “Jen warned me about your infamous lists. She also said you were more circumspect than she is and might need a bit of coaxing.”

  “A daredevil with a death wish would be considered circumspect compared to Jen.” I’ll give her coaxing. “What the hell, count me in.”

  ***

  Touching up my lip gloss in the mirror, I studied my reflection. Not bad I suppose, for someone who’d only slept for five hours in the last, I hummed to myself as I tried to do some mental maths… San Francisco is ten hours, no eleven hours, behind and I was up at four so then I slept for another couple when I got here… I gave it up as a bad job. I probably had more chance of calculating Pi. My eyes dimmed as I stared at myself. Yes I had lost weight but in all the wrong places. My ample curves still curved but my round face was drawn. Not gaunt, just… drawn.