25 Days in Athens

Chapter 1

Chapter One

WILL

People tell me I’m melodramatic. It’s something I always argue against.

But as my knees make contact with the supermarket aisle floor, phone clutched to my breathless chest, the truth is they might be right.

Well, isn’t that fantastic?

Ollie Pankhurst’s getting married. Married! We’ve only recently broken up … well, three years ago, but still. Who’s counting?

Married!

No, that can not be right.

Opening WhatsApp, I video call my best friend, Alice.

‘Will. Why are you on the floor of Tesco?’

‘Ollie Pankhurst is getting married.’

‘No.’ Alice, somewhere on the high street, falls to her knees, too. Her dark hair is out from under a yellow beanie hat, and her sleeves are rolled up despite the chill in the air. ‘Are you sure?’

‘He posted a photo on Insta. A photo of him and Alec showing off their engagement rings. He definitely didn’t skimp on the diamonds.’

‘How do you know he asked?’

‘Because Ollie is a romantic.’

Ollie was an ideal boyfriend. We’d met on an English Literature undergraduate course at Cardiff University, and it hadn’t been long before we’d gone official. Three years zoomed by in a sexy, romantic, wonderful blur, until Ollie got on one knee and asked me to marry him at our graduation.

I said no.

We were too young. We needed to figure ourselves out. Figure out who we were together when we were serious professionals and not hungover students. Ollie agreed, reluctantly, and we spent the next seven years together facing the world head-on. Stronger than yesterday, as Britney might say.

He went back to university, got his Masters, and at his graduation ceremony, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

He had a ‘proposing at graduation ceremonies’ fetish, apparently.

I said no.

Two weeks later, we’d broken up.

‘We want different things,’ Ollie said. ‘I’m letting you go.’

Why did I say no, when we’d been together so long and when I loved him dearly?

Truthfully, I wasn’t ready. We were already living like a married couple.

Why make it official? I’ve been trying to answer this question through countless therapy sessions.

Therapy sessions that brought to light fear.

Fear of what a wedding ring meant. Fear of laws and official registry and how much everything would cost when I was broke.

Fear that one day Ollie would wake up, tell me he didn’t love me anymore, and divorce me, just like what happened with my parents.

God, that was messy. Their dynamic still makes me uneasy today.

If all of that happened, it would have ruined me further.

It would become complicated and messy. At least without the ring a break-up would be cleaner. Was cleaner.

He didn’t understand it. Honestly, I don’t understand it. But despite people fighting for our rights to marry, I still couldn’t go through with it.

I haven’t even been able to watch Married at First Sight.

I grasp for a tub of delicious-looking ice cream in the freezers across from me and hug it with a sigh. ‘Can you get me a spoon?’

The woman standing near me blinks, before heading towards the canteen. I’m optimistic she will return, even though my life has been shredded in front of my eyes, my blood oozing out of me, my breath dying upon my lips.

Okay, so there’s a chance I am melodramatic.

‘How are you feeling?’ Alice asks.

‘Pretty good.’ The tears haven’t started yet. A good sign.

Alec Aniston, Ollie’s new fiancé, came on the scene when he met Ollie on a PhD course. Alec, who is probably related to Jennifer in some way, seemed perfect, because he wasn’t me. He fed the homeless, donated to charity, voted green, and campaigned for free higher education.

I had no reason to resent him. Even I want to vote green.

The woman who went on the quest for a spoon returns.

My saviour. I offer her the first bite of chocolate cookie dough ice cream, because you have to be friendly to people, don’t you?

She shakes her head at me as though I’ve lost my mind.

Sad, because she doesn’t know what she’s done for my life.

I might nominate her for a Pride of Cardiff award.

‘Am I being ridiculous?’

‘Not at all,’ Alice says, eyes wide. ‘He was your first genuine love. When did you last see him?’

‘About a year ago.’ We stayed friends, Ollie and I.

Unusual, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

You don’t spend years of your life with someone just to stop talking to them the day he moves out with all the gifts you bought him over the years.

But we drifted, inevitably so. I blamed Alec, pettily so.

Now, he’s a guy I observe through social media, wishing I’d never let him go.

‘And he didn’t tell you he was thinking about proposing to Alec?’

‘No.’

Ollie owes me no explanation, after all. But maybe he should have let me know? I would have had time to prep.

Beep, goes the checkout till. Rattle, goes passing trolleys.

‘That’s plain rude.’ Alice, still lying on Cardiff’s Queen Street, says, ‘we need wine and a takeaway tonight, don’t we?’

‘I’ve already got the ice cream.’

‘He can’t do this to you.’

He can. Because Ollie is normal and he’s moved on.

I’m the weird one for wishing, hoping, praying that Ollie would come back.

He let me go, but I still love him, still hold out hope that we might one day pick up where we left off, and all would be right in the world once more: we’d re-join the EU.

Labour wouldn’t be a wet blanket and would actually do something for the people.

Fifth Harmony would get back together, Camila included.

Because the world was only right when I was Ollie’s.

Since Ollie, it has been impossible to let anyone else in. His life has expanded, and mine has stayed frozen in time, worried that if I changed, he wouldn’t recognise me and come back to me. I’m right where he left me.

Waiting.

Eternally.

Because that’s what relationships are all about: bringing the best out of each other. When Ollie left me, the best of me left with him.

I peaked with Ollie Pankhurst.

Ollie was my world.

I was nothing without him.

I was so stupid to let fear win. I should have said yes, and ignored how I really felt.