Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
W alking into the Bakers Arms, Anna swept her gaze over the festive decorations while Michael Buble’s rendition of White Christmas hit her ears. She pulled her hat off and looked at the booth in the back corner – their preferred table. Hayden raised a hand to wave and stood when she walked over.
“Hi,” she said curtly as he kissed her cheek.
“It’s good to see you.”
She slid onto the bench seat. “How are you?” she asked, unwinding her scarf and shrugging her coat off.
“Good.” He sank back onto his seat opposite her. “Busy with work as usual.”
“How’s that going?” After university, he and a friend had set up their own software development company and, from what she’d gathered, it was going well.
“It’s great. I work crazy hours, but it pays off.”
“I’m glad.”
“How about you? It seems you’re never short of work either?”
“No. I’m pretty busy most of the time, but I love it, so it doesn’t feel like work. ”
“My mum said she saw you at a Christmas market recently.”
“Yeah.” Anna brightened. “It was nice to see her. She bought a wreath and some Christmas cards.”
“The wreath has pride of place on her front door.”
They paused as the waitress came to take their order – they both opted for fish and chips like they’d done on their previous visits.
Hayden asked about her parents and Carla and Lewis, the neutral conversation feeling easy and safe.
“Do you really think you might open your own flower shop?” he asked once the food arrived. “At the Christmas party, I got the impression you were thinking about it seriously.”
“I don’t know. It’s something I think about from time to time. But more like a pipe dream, I suppose.” She took a bite of fish – tasty, but the batter wasn’t as good as Warren’s. “I’ve been thinking about it a bit more seriously, but I still don’t know. It feels like a risk.”
“What would you do, take a loan from Lewis?”
“If I were serious, I’d make a business plan and see if I could get a bank loan.”
Hayden took a swig of his Coke. “I guess it might feel weird to borrow from your brother,” he said with a questioning lilt.
“Lewis would give me the money regardless of whether he thought it was a good business idea or not. That would feel weird. And if it turned out not to be a good financial decision and I couldn’t pay him back, I’d feel terrible.”
Hayden nodded. “I suppose that could be uncomfortable.”
“Anyway, I’m fine as I am for now. It can stay a pipe dream until I get fed up with working for someone else.”
They finished their food in silence, and Hayden waited for the waitress to clear their plates before he gave her that look that Anna knew too well. The look he had when he wanted to say something serious. He’d had the same look when he’d told her he didn’t want to be with her any more .
“It’s good to catch up with you,” he said, then exhaled a sigh. “I really missed this.”
Anna fixed him with her gaze, and any apprehension she’d had about having this conversation completely left her. “Why did you want to meet up? It wasn’t just to catch up on each other’s lives, was it?”
“No.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “What I said to you at the party the other week…” As he trailed off, Anna found herself amused that he was the uncomfortable one for a change.
“When you said you wished we’d never split up?”
“Yeah. I know this is unfair of me, but you said things weren’t serious yet with Warren… so I thought I should say something before it got serious.”
“Say something about what?” Anna’s emotions were all over the place as she waited for him to say the thing she’d wanted him to say for the last two years.
That he missed her, and he loved her, and that he wanted them to get back together.
“I miss you,” he said, reaching to take her hand.
“Do you?” she asked, anger seeping through her.
“I missed you almost as soon as I broke things off.” With his free hand, he wiped at his brow. “I thought I wanted something else, but I was such an idiot.”
Anna nodded, agreeing with him on that.
“But you didn’t want something else,” she said, not bothering to remove her hand from his, partly because she was intrigued that the contact meant nothing to her. “You wanted some one else.”
“I didn’t cheat on you,” he said quickly. “I know it probably seemed as though I started dating other people really quickly, but I swear there was no one else when we were together.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She pulled her hand away and clasped it in her lap. “I meant you didn’t want to be with me. ”
He tugged at his earlobe. “I don’t understand?”
“You said you didn’t want to be with me because I was too shy and quiet, and that when we were out together, you had to look after me, and it annoyed you.”
He had the decency to look remorseful as he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It was true, though,” she said through a lump in her throat.
“I thought it was true. But I was wrong. I don’t care that you’re not as sociable as I am. It doesn’t matter. We always made it work somehow.”
“We made it work because one of us always compromised,” she pointed out. “I forced myself to go to parties that I had no interest in, and you forced yourself to have more quiet nights at home than you really wanted to.”
“I liked it when we just hung out at home, too.”
“I haven’t changed. I’m still not outgoing, and I think it’s safe to say I’ll never be the life of the party.”
“I don’t care,” he said, a brittleness to his voice. “I really don’t.”
“You didn’t want to be with me because of my personality,” she said, unable to hide her bitterness. “And to make that point even clearer, you then dated a bunch of women who were everything I’m not…”
“Anna,” he pleaded, but she didn’t let him speak.
“And you paraded them in front of me as though hurting me once wasn’t enough. You had to keep twisting the knife.” Tears filled her eyes, and she hated them.
“None of them could even come close to comparing to you.” He reached across the table, but she didn’t want his comfort.
Not now. “Maybe to start with, I brought a date to annoy you. I thought if you got jealous, maybe we could figure things out. Which I realise is pathetic. But it was even more pathetic because it seemed as though you didn’t care.
After that, I felt I had to bring someone so no one would notice what a mess I was without you. ”
“Apparently they all noticed, anyway. Everyone but me, who genuinely thought you were having the time of your life.”
“You always seemed fine with it.”
“I wasn’t,” she admitted sadly.
“I’m sorry.”
She wiped a tear that slipped from the corner of her eye. “It doesn’t matter any more.”
“It does,” he said. “I hate that I hurt you.”
She huffed out a humourless laugh. “So what are you thinking – that we’ll call it water under the bridge and get back together?”
“I’m not saying it would be as easy as that.”
“But you want to get back together?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to fix things with us.”
The desire to laugh was almost overwhelming. It was only the earnestness of Hayden’s gaze that prevented her.
“You broke things off because of my personality,” she said again.
“That’s not…” He closed his eyes briefly, apparently searching for an answer when they both knew there wasn’t one.
“How could we make that work?” she asked, reaching for his hand and covering it with her own as all her anger disappeared. “I’d just be waiting for you to get bored with me again.”
He shook his head, but clearly thought better of arguing.
“If it’s an option, I think we could be friends.” She squeezed his knuckles. “Properly friends, not just because we have mutual friends.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. Not now, at least. Not when you’re seeing someone.” He paused. “You are still seeing Warren?”
“Yeah,” she said hesitantly .
He raised an eyebrow, and she realised it would be cruel to leave him with a spark of hope.
“Things are a little complicated…”
“Complicated like you might ditch him and sort things out with your ex?”
The joke only narrowly covered his vulnerability.
“No. Things are complicated, but…” Her stomach fluttered wildly. “I’m excited to see where it goes.”
It took Hayden a moment to speak. “It would have been better if you’d chosen someone easier for me to hate.”
Her lips pulled into a small smile. “Sorry I fell for a nice guy.”