Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
WILL
Day Fifteen
The only contact I’ve had from Ollie is a text asking me if I’m still going to marry him and Alec. I haven’t replied. He hasn’t pestered. Hasn’t asked me if I’m okay after that disgusting evening. I’ve considered deleting him off my social media channels. Instead, I deleted the apps from my phone.
Locking myself away in my hotel room, heading out only when it was quieter, I’ve had time to think, to journal the way my therapist told me to.
The root of my insecurities comes down to one dominant theme: comparing myself to others. I hated myself, and my internal dialogue called me everything from failure to worthless. When you speak to yourself that way, you believe it.
When others treat you that way, you accept it.
Now, something is changing within me.
The days in my hotel room confirm I don’t need lots of friends. Especially when those friends are surface level. I don’t need thousands of Instagram or Twitter followers. I don’t need the perfect job, the perfect apartment, the perfect curated feeds.
I need to accept myself, love myself, and go from there.
I finally answered one of Sam’s many calls last night.
‘Can’t talk right now,’ I said. ‘I just need some time to think. It’s nothing you’ve done. Let me wallow for a week.’
‘I’m here and waiting. Whenever you’re ready.’
Right now I feel everything.
And I need to feel those things alone.
The only person I let in is Alice.
As I lie on my bed, my phone perched on the lamp next to me, I stare into nothingness as I speak.
‘He said he never loved me,’ I say, for what is the hundredth time. Alice doesn’t mind. It’s as if she is hearing the words leave my mouth for the first time. ‘He tried to say it was all one-sided, like we were never a thing.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
It’s a question she’s already asked, and the answer remains the same.
‘Just a text,’ I say. ‘Didn’t ask how I was.’
The only other calls I’ve had were from Clive and an unknown number. I ignored them all.
‘Why don’t you come home?’ Alice asks.
I thought about it. The wedding is getting ever so closer, and before deleting my Facebook account, I saw Ollie posting about the ‘love of his life’, Alec.
It read like a grovelling letter, but also reminded me he’s been on his phone, he’s been online, and he hasn’t texted me again.
Maybe they’ve found someone else to marry them.
Maybe they haven’t. Is that my problem anymore?
Did I deserve to marry them when my first intention was to win Ollie back?
What a horrible thought. What a horrible man I am.
Horrible.
Another word for myself.
I’ve browsed flights, even getting so far as to choose my seats for a one-way ticket out of here. But every time, I’ve closed the app and thrown my phone across the room, on to the softest surface, though, of course. I may be rotting in this room but I still desired that connection.
I can’t leave.
Not yet.
The thought of returning to Cardiff, to my life in a cupboard with Willow the spider, makes me sad. I want to stay here, where the sun shines, where life is so carefree, and where there’s Sam.
Sam.
I have to see him. I couldn’t just leave.
I wouldn’t freeze him out.
‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I have to speak to Sam.’
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Okay.’
What else am I supposed to say?
Don’t be?
It’s fine?
I’m absolutely fucking fantastic?
None of that is true.
‘You know where I am, don’t you?’ Alice asks.
‘I do.’
I let her go, because she would stay all day if she could. Alice, the worrier, no doubt wants to monitor me. She doesn’t need to. I won’t do anything life altering.
I just need time to wallow.
To think.
It had all been going so well, this solace thing.
My room is dark, no social media and no distractions.
My mind taking me to places that I boxed up and never wanted to look at again.
It’s almost cathartic. Therapy couldn’t have taken me here.
I bring to mind everything I’ve ever been told about myself, and break it down, realising that I wasn’t foolish, or horrible, or an idiot.
I’m halfway through pepping myself up, listening to a podcast on self-development, when the door knocks.
I haven’t ordered room service.
Maybe it’s the maid.
I look around my room, most of my clothes tidied away, because I’ve been lying in the nude this whole week. The only mess is a couple of mugs and glasses of finished and half-finished drinks.
They will go away.
The knock on the door comes again.
‘Will, open up right now,’ Lydia’s warning tone orders.
I close my eyes. ‘Go away.’
‘Will? Please.’
I stare at the ceiling.
Sam.
Warmth spreads through me, and I look at the door wistfully.
‘Two seconds,’ I finally say, pulling on a dressing gown.
Sam stands next to Lydia, both of them holding a pizza box and a bottle of wine.
‘What is this darkness?’ Lydia pushes past me, striding into the room without being invited. ‘You are in a beautiful city and one of the most romantic in Greece. At least see it.’
I don’t know what time it is, let alone the day, but as Lydia pulls back the curtains, sunlight streams in, and I flinch as if I might burn up in its rays.
‘We were worried,’ Sam says, closing the door behind him. ‘I couldn’t wait any longer to see you.’
Before he can put down the pizza box and the wine, I hug him.
He hugs me back, albeit awkwardly, and at some point, Lydia must have taken the things from his hands, because his hands are on me.
When he pulls back, my robe parts ever so slightly, and he takes in my naked body, before he ties the robe back together to preserve whatever shreds of dignity I have left.
His hands move neatly, with a gentle ease, and he focuses to tie the knot.
‘I’m sorry if I worried you.’
‘You have been very dramatic,’ Lydia says, sitting out on the balcony.
Sam sits in an armchair, and I perch on the bed, making sure my robe keeps me covered.
Lydia glares at me. ‘Will, I understand your predicament, but I will not have you wasting time over a man that deserves nothing.’
They say there are five stages of grieving and loss, and even though Ollie isn’t technically dead, what we had is over. Finished. Kaput. I realise I’m finally ready to accept this and let go.
But not before I hear all about how trash Ollie is from people around me.
That is essential to heal.
‘He’s the biggest narcissist I’ve ever met,’ Sam says. ‘Have you heard from him yet?’
‘No.’
‘See? He is a waste.’
Sam smirks at Lydia’s words.
‘I haven’t been here thinking solely about him,’ I say, and it’s the truth. ‘I’ve been rethinking everything. An awakening.’
‘You have plenty of time to awaken,’ Lydia says. ‘Awaken by enjoying Athens while you can.’
‘That’s just it,’ I say. ‘I realised I don’t want to go back home.’
Sam hears my words for what they are. A statement of intent.
Lydia misses the whole point.
‘You have to go home. You check out soon,’ she says.
‘Lydia, sorry. Do you mind if I speak to Sam?’
She looks between us, as if bored. ‘Of course.’
‘Um, in private?’
‘Oh,’ Lydia says. ‘So, I buy you wine and you throw me out?’
‘Just for a moment,’ I say.
Lydia stands, but she doesn’t leave. Instead, she grabs an empty glass, pours herself some wine, and locks herself out on the balcony, turning her back to us.
‘I suppose that’s something.’
‘She’s been worried about you.’
Lydia, a person I’ve only known a few weeks, cared more for my wellbeing than the man I thought once loved me.
‘Sam, I mean it,’ I say. ‘I want to stay.’
‘Stay where?’
‘With you,’ I say. ‘Here. Athens. I don’t know how I’ll do it. I don’t even know if I can, what with bloody Brexit, but I want to stay. You’re here. And you’re … you’re what I want.’
Sam comes to sit next to me then, our knees touching.
‘I want you, too.’
‘I’ve been stupid,’ I say. ‘Stupid to keep you out. I needed time.’
‘I know.’
‘I know it’s been three years without him.
I know he has moved on. But I hadn’t. Not until I came here and saw him again, and had all of that happen.
I had no idea what was going through my mind.
But seeing him again made me realise what a fool I’ve been.
Um, a justified fool, but a fool. Sam, he was always cruel to me.
Why did it take me so long to realise it? ’
‘There were great times. When you’re infatuated with someone, you don’t see the other side. Or you choose to ignore it. That doesn’t make you stupid or wrong.’
A month ago, I’d have argued the point. Hell, maybe even a week ago I would have argued the point.
‘I’m an excellent judge of character. And I know you’re a good guy, Will. You’re kind. You’re thoughtful. Sensitive. What you’re thinking and feeling right now about him, about yourself, it isn’t wrong.’
‘So am I horrible? Am I an idiot?’
Sam’s eyes widen. ‘No, you’re none of those things. Is that what you’ve been thinking?’
‘Sometimes.’
Sam takes my hands in his.
‘Look at me.’
I do. His blond hair is tied back. He is more tanned than the last time I saw him. Has he always had freckles across his nose?
‘You’re perfectly flawed, just like the rest of us,’ Sam says softly. ‘But you’re human, and you’re talented, and you’re the reason I’m happy.’
‘I make you happy?’
A frisson of something fizzes within me, and it makes me shiver. Feelings I don’t recognise bubble up to my cracked surface, threatening to spill out into the open. I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone happy before.
‘The happiest I’ve been in a long time,’ Sam says.
I sigh. ‘I’ve been thinking about who I am. I’ve been so consumed with my unhappiness, I haven’t given time to others. I’ve been so selfish, so obsessed with my own feelings, that I’ve never stopped to consider anyone else.’
My call with Alice made me realise that.
She told me about how excited she is to be getting married, and it made me realise that I haven’t thought about her and her life not once since I landed in Athens.
I haven’t even got her a present, something to mark the occasion. My grief and guilt have consumed me.
‘I don’t want this to just be a holiday fling,’ I say, looking at him. ‘Or all of this to be some holiday epiphany. I want to change. I need to change. Everything.’
Sam says nothing. I rest my head against his shoulder.
‘I’m proud of you,’ he whispers.
‘Why?’
‘Because you know who you are.’ He brushes his fingers along my cheek. ‘And I’m so fucking proud of you for that.’
I hold his hand against my face, kissing his fingers.
‘It took some time.’
‘Got there in the end,’ Sam says.
To have him here again, to feel him, is all I need. I kiss him with a passion that has a pang of sadness to it, and he senses it, because he pulls me closer, his one hand slipping under my robe to touch my bare chest.
‘If you want to stay, truly want to stay, you can stay,’ Sam says. ‘I’d be stupid to let you go.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘I mean it.’