The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [101]
Slowly, the truth began to dawn. Julian’s eyes widened. “No! Really?”
Alice grinned. “Really!”
She sat back and took a sip of her wine, waiting for the barrage of questions and curiosity, but instead, Julian just looked at her, frowning.
“What?” Alice finally asked. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“You went temporarily insane?” Julian’s voice rose. “God, Alice, what the hell were you thinking?”
Alice tensed at his disapproving tone. “I don’t know, that I’d go on a weekend city break, like thousands of other people?”
“You got arrested!”
“Well, obviously I didn’t plan that part!” She stared at him, bemused. “But you’d know all of this if you checked your messages. Jules, I can’t believe you. What if they hadn’t let me make any more calls? I could still be locked up there, waiting for you to send someone from the embassy!”
“I didn’t get any messages,” Julian insisted, whipping out his phone as evidence. He tapped the screen a few times. “See, no new voicemails. You must have dialed the international code wrong.”
“I did not.” Alice folded her arms. She remembered Julian’s outgoing message quite clearly. “Maybe you deleted it by accident, or something.”
“I doubt it.” Tucking his phone away, he mustered a forgiving smile. “The message isn’t important, Aly, what matters is that you’re all right. I take it they didn’t press charges?”
“No…” Her gaze drifted past him, to the depths of the bar where Yasmin had disappeared so swiftly. If Julian was certain he hadn’t deleted it—she paused. But that was ridiculous. “You said you spent the weekend with Yasmin?” Alice found herself asking, nonetheless. “So you were with her Saturday night?”
Julian blinked, following her gaze. “Yes, we had her friends staying with us, I told you.” There was a beat. “Alice!”
“What?”
“Are you accusing—?”
“No, no,” Alice quickly backtracked, noticing the storm on his face. “I didn’t say a thing, did I?”
“But you implied…”
“Of course not!”
They paused, the space between them filled with a sudden tension.
“Yauatcha.” She changed the subject brightly. “I’ve heard so much about that place. Did you have the venison puffs?”
Julian shot her a look, but he didn’t press the issue either. “Uh, no. Yasmin did though.”
“Oh?” Alice carefully sipped her drink.
“I did what, sweetie?” Yasmin reappeared from the crowd, her lipstick immaculate once more.
“I was just telling Alice about our meal.” Julian smiled at her as she slid into her seat, but Alice noticed the harsh set of his jaw.
“Right.” Yasmin seemed equally unsettled. “It was lovely.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Alice stifled a sigh as another long pause dragged out. Next time, she would definitely take Nadia up on that offer.
***
Alice eventually made her escape with talk of early nights and buckling down to work again, but the strange tension from their evening lingered with her over the next few days. The foundation of their friendship was shifting, but Alice didn’t know quite how she felt about it—or should feel, even. For so many years, Julian’s presence had been part of the basic fabric of her life, unchanged by their slowly revolving set of relationships, but the opening of this slow rift was something new.
Part of Alice wondered if it was for the best. It occurred to her sometimes that perhaps the reason she found it so much an effort striking out to meet anybody new—and why Julian’s affairs never seemed to last more than the early halcyon days—was the comforting intimacy they had with each other. She had a male presence she could rely on, and while that didn’t provide the romance Alice quietly longed for, it had been love in one form, at least. But the more she thought about it, however, the less of a consolation Julian’s easy companionship now seemed. Perhaps her liaison with Rafael had reminded her what passion she was capable of, or maybe even the growing chemistry