I was, until I got his message. What did he see? Did he see the dancing video? If he did, I would never be able to face him again. A vision of myself throwing my hair and body around like an uncoordinated whirling dervish came to my mind, blinding me for a second:
MAYA: Yep, great thanks.
My answer was cold. I knew it was. But how was I supposed to react when he had been ignoring me for so long? He was lucky I was bothering to reply at all. I looked at the screen and watched as he started to type something and then stopped. I opened up Snapchat to see what the latest incriminating videos my stupid cousin had posted were and almost laughed when I saw a picture of the three business cards on the table with the caption, ‘Being propositioned everywhere we go’. Was that why Zak’s boxers were in a twist?
‘Preets,’ I interrupted the full-blown argument that was taking place between the sisters as they each went further and further back in time to provide examples of how the other had dramatised a situation.
‘Tell Pinky to shut up!’ she responded, her face scarlet. ‘Or I’m going back to the apartment!’
‘Pinks, drop it, will you?’ I implored. ‘This is our last night, don’t ruin it, please!’
‘Fine!’ Pinky huffed, crossing her arms.
Maybe being one half of a pair of twins wasn’t that great after all. When they had both calmed down, I tentatively posed the question that was burning my tongue to Pretty.
‘You know you said not many people had seen the video you posted of me dancing?’ I began, trying not to sound accusatory in case she threw a piece of hot coal at me.
Pretty gave me an ‘Are you serious?’ look.
‘I’m not trying to start a fight!’ I protested. ‘But I need to know if anyone I know saw it. I don’t want people chatting about us! You know how the gossip mill works!’
‘I can’t remember,’ she shrugged, blatantly lying to my face. ‘We did jump out of an aeroplane today to support you, you know. Sorry if my memory’s a bit shaky right now.’
I looked at Pinky then, who muttered, ‘See? Drama queen!’ under her breath.
‘OK,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you know if Zakariya saw it? Or anyone else who knows me?’ I quickly added so as not to give the game away.
Pretty’s expression turned from one of defiance to one of guilt. She looked away and took a long puff of shisha and I had the answer that I needed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sheila was definitely giving me the cold shoulder when I returned to work on Tuesday. Given that iciness was her standard setting, I hadn’t thought it was possible for her temperature to drop further. She barely grunted at me when I said hello, she ignored me during the team meeting and she refused the baklawa I had brought back to share. Surely all this wasn’t because I had taken three days off?
‘Ignore her,’ Lucy whispered as I stared at my screen, unable to focus with the weight of anxiety pressing down on me. ‘She’s annoyed because she flopped her meeting yesterday.’
‘Flopped it how?’ I asked as I tried to get through my emails.
‘Well, you weren’t there obviously and instead of asking one of us to set up the room like she should have, she thought she’d do it herself.’
‘Literally everything went wrong,’ Arjun sniggered, joining in. ‘The tech didn’t work, she forgot to put out the water bottles, her printouts were faded because the printer had run out of ink, she was late, like everything.’
‘Shit.’ Instead of rejoicing at karma paying Sheila back, I felt worse. No wonder she was screwing at me. She was going to make me pay for this.
Too scared to take a lunch break or even a tea break, I stayed glued to my seat for the entire day, only getting up when my bladder couldn’t take it anymore. The only non-work-related thing I dared to do was open Noah’s notebook, which made it look like I was still working. Turning over the page, I stared at number eighteen on the list, wondering how the hell a notebook knew what I needed. To be honest, it was something that I had considered in the past but never had the courage to do – or the inclination to spend money on.
But if the notebook said I had to do it, then I would. Besides, these days I was throwing around money like I was printing it all off myself at home, so what was another few hundred pounds if it meant I might finally have some peace in my life?
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly and by five, I had gone through all my emails, actioned what was urgent and put into motion what wasn’t. The tension in my neck had spread all the way to my temples, destroying my skull as it travelled. I managed to beg some Ibuprofen off Arjun and ploughed on, despite the burning in my eyes and the throbbing in my head. Shortly before I packed up to go, a text came through from Zakariya:
ZAKARIYA: Are you coming to Arabic on Thursday?
That was random. I didn’t have the energy to analyse it further, so stuffing my things into my bag, I sent a quick thumbs up and put my coat on:
MAYA: 
ZAKARIYA: What are you doing afterwards? Do you want to grab a meal?
Woah. Who knew that all I had to do to catch Zakariya’s attention was fly to Dubai with my cousins and then get one of them to post evidence of us getting hit on by men?
‘Shall I?’ I asked Lucy quietly as we walked out of the office and towards the lift.
‘Do it,’ she replied distractedly as she typed away on her phone. ‘It’s not like you guys were together or anything when he ghosted you. It’s not like going out with someone for over a year but they refuse to make things “official” and keep avoiding conversations about the future.’
‘Are we still talking about me?’ I asked as we stepped out into the warm evening towards the station. It was almost June and we finally had weather decent enough to ditch our jackets.