Chapter 6
6
The group was slightly too large for the booth. Ginny was wedged in at the back next to Tita, who was trying fruitlessly to engage the sullen photographer in conversation. He appeared to be a man of even fewer words than Andreas and he’d had no compunction about bursting Tita’s bubble in the earliest moments of their acquaintance with his insistence that he wasn’t a wedding photographer. He only photographed nature and never people, which Sophie couldn’t help thinking was an indication of his opinion of humanity in general.
The other guide, a sandy-haired giant of a man called Laurie, whose upper arms were as thick as Ginny’s thighs, had sensibly pilfered a chair and settled himself at the end of the table, rather than squashing those enormous shoulders in next to her. She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely intrigued by the idea of working at weddings or if he was mocking them. His banter with Kira suggested the latter.
Sophie’s first glass of wine went down a little too easily, even though she knew it wasn’t smart to dull the awkwardness with alcohol. Conversation had split into two separate tranches – climbing and weddings, with no natural crossover – and that was all before the main discomfiture of the evening was heralded by the arrival of Andreas.
She spent all her energy arranging her features to appear normal and forcing herself not to look at him. Of course she eventually did, summoning the frustration that had been simmering for six weeks. Even with a grim expression, he snared her gaze so completely until she found herself tracing the shape of his false smile and the lines at the corner of his eyes.
He looked very cosy with Kira, but she refused to feel anything about that – or at least, not to admit it. That Andreas Hinterdorfer had casual relationships with whoever was available wasn’t new information. She forced her eyes away again.
She was staring into her glass, wondering if it was sensible to order another, when Andreas suddenly loomed close. Giving her a nudge that was far too casual – and still sent the nerves in her skin into overdrive – he said, ‘Shuffle over?’
Blinking back surprise, she did as he rudely requested, tugging her wine glass with her as though it could protect her. He eyed her as he shrugged out of his quilted jacket. He was wearing a T-shirt underneath, despite the temperature hovering in single digits. When he leaned his forearms on the table, her eyes were drawn to the spiderweb of cords in the muscle, his large, rough hands and blunt fingertips, the nails worn down to stubs and pink sports tape wrapped around his forefinger.
Squashed as they were in the booth with the monosyllabic photographer, Andreas’s shoulder pressed into hers, every thought flew from her brain except memories of the times she’d sat tucked under his arm while his friends conversed boisterously around them.
A waiter appeared to take their next drinks order and Sophie’s throat was too thick to say anything, so she just clutched the stem of her glass as though she weren’t finished. Andreas ordered an unsurprising espresso. His answer to everything was espresso.
‘How’s it going?’ he murmured without looking at her, after the cup was placed in front of him, so tiny in his hands, it looked like a novelty item. She’d learned back then that climbers’ bodies actually changed in response to their training. Andreas’s prodigious forearms had developed over time to help keep him alive.
‘Not exactly a house on fire,’ she mumbled in response.
‘Give it some time,’ he said softly, bringing the cup to his lips and taking a sip.
Sophie couldn’t resist eyeing him expectantly as he moved the scalding liquid over his tongue. When he set the cup down again with an accompanying grimace, she snorted a laugh.
‘Still not used to coffee made in England?’
He eyed her. ‘I keep hoping they’ll make a decent one.’ He frowned into the cup before knocking back the rest of it.
‘Were you trying to reassure me that we’ll turn this ragtag band into a wedding dream team just with a little time?’ she prompted him sceptically.
‘We?’ was all he said in response.
She gritted her teeth. ‘I— Me, then.’ Of course there was no ‘we’. She scratched one neat nail over the base of her wine glass, hoping, praying that one day she would no longer be such a wreck simply because Andreas Hinterdorfer was sitting next to her.
He turned his head and sighed, deeply enough that she felt the air moving over her blouse. ‘I thought we needed to talk?—’
‘You thought? I need you to stop talking about it – the past.’
‘But I can see it in your eyes every time you’re thinking about… us.’
Her cheeks burned and she bit into her bottom lip while ferociously focusing on her wine glass to stem the urge to cry – or yell, or any of the emotional reactions that would undermine her much-needed professionalism.
‘I thought I’d explained myself back then, Sophie. But if it’s still difficult for you?—’
‘God, thank you so much for explaining my feelings to me!’ She snapped her mouth shut when she noticed that all conversation around the table had died and there were four pairs of eyes glued to where she and Andreas were sparking dangerously. The photographer just stared awkwardly into his beer.
Andreas stood so suddenly, she had to steady herself and her hand caught, wedged between the back of the bench and his jeans-clad bottom. She hadn’t needed to know that part of him was still rock-solid.
‘We’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, groping for her hand and peeling it away from his jeans. Sophie was surprised his stomping footsteps didn’t make the building shake. She might have resisted, especially since his hand was still curled around her wrist, except now she did want to talk – or she wanted to tell him where he could stuff his patronising bullshit. It was better that they weren’t overheard.
But when he propelled her through the door of the pub, the cold breeze whipped some sense into her and she tugged her hand back. ‘I left my jacket inside.’
He blinked at her as though he hadn’t noticed he was outdoors in a T-shirt in the rain at the beginning of April. With a muttered curse made entirely of consonants, he started moving again, tugging her around to a side entrance and ushering her in with a furtive glance at where the others were sitting. Drawing her into a corner, he took a deep breath through his nose, standing far too close.
‘I know eight years ago, everything went wrong,’ he began, but Sophie had already had enough.
Leaning back against the wall, she looked away and grumbled, ‘I asked you to marry me and you said no. It was a little more than everything going wrong.’
‘The proposal came out of nowhere – the day before I was leaving for one of the biggest expeditions of my career! I don’t know what you want to blame me for. Besides, I’d told you marriage wasn’t for me – at least I thought I had.’
Sophie pressed her lips together, flinching at the reminder of how stupid she’d been. He was unfortunately right. He’d told her near the beginning of their relationship – quite baldly – that he didn’t picture himself getting married, ever, and she’d still foolishly believed he might change his mind for her, for the connection she’d thought they’d shared.
‘Perhaps the timing wasn’t great, but you were leaving and I wasn’t even sure if you’d come back to Weymouth!’
‘Then maybe you should have asked me to come back to Weymouth instead of to marry you!’
The truth was she’d feared he’d say no to that too. Hindsight was sometimes a wonderful thing, but not when it showed her how little trust she’d truly had in the relationship. He’d never felt the same and in response, she’d only held on tighter.
With a shrug she hoped was convincingly casual, she said, ‘Because you wouldn’t have said yes to that either – or at least, if I had to ask you, then there was more wrong with the relationship than your aversion to marriage. That much at least I learned that day.’
Her pride had completed a long descent when his callous response dashed every hope she’d had for the relationship. ‘ Look, Sophie. You’re a lovely girl and we’ve had a lot of fun, but that’s not what this is about. I’m not that kind of guy. Maybe we should take a break for a while. You’ve spent a lot of your time this year hanging around me .’
Like a crazed fan. Or a limpet. She’d never been so mortified.
‘Do you want me to apologise? I thought I did enough of that eight years ago.’
‘I don’t want you to apologise. I want you to understand!’ She crossed her arms, although not to protect herself from Andreas. He might harrumph and growl and speak in clipped, rasping sentences, but he was also ruthlessly in control of himself at all times. He had to be.
No, she was protecting herself from this conversation, from the truth that might spill out – truth about her own behaviour that she’d only begun to grasp with hindsight.
‘What do you want me to understand?’
That was it – he’d cut straight to the heart of the matter, to her heart, as he always had. ‘Me?’ she tried, snapping her eyes shut for a moment when that wasn’t quite the right answer. ‘Yourself?’
‘Shall we start with you?’ His brow was so low and his eyes so close. ‘I embarrass you – or your memories do. But I thought I told you then that you were right and I was wrong. If I was a better man, we’d be married right now.’
Oh, God. His words took the wind out of her.
‘I didn’t deserve you, Sophie.’
She forced air into her lungs, through her tingling nose. Ah, shit, on top of everything, now she wanted to cry. ‘This is where I need you to understand yourself, Andreas,’ she managed to say, although her voice wobbled.
‘What?’
‘You’re just shifting blame. You hurt me, you let me believe our relationship was deeper than it was, but you don’t want to admit it. It’s not about deserving . You didn’t want me.’
‘…Let you believe? What are you talking about? I explained why I couldn’t marry you. I won’t leave anyone behind. I was trying to spare you.’
He looked hurt at that – haunted, even. She shook her head to clear it, brushing back the lock of hair that fell into her face and ignoring the way his eyes followed the movement.
‘Spare me? You broke up with me.’
‘I didn’t! I said we should take a break.’
She gave a disdainful eye-roll. ‘You said no to marriage and then suggested we go on a break. Only an idiot would believe you meant just a break. You were trying to split up with me without taking any responsibility for my feelings – because you don’t want to take responsibility for anyone else’s feelings. Your “can’t” marry me was an excuse too. You wanted to climb mountains and not worry about who you were coming home to. I remember you said that.’
‘No, I mean, yes, you’re right about taking responsibility for other people’s feelings. I tried to explain, but perhaps you didn’t understand, because you’ve never been… up there.’
‘I did understand that you would only ever have your climbing and mountaineering relationships,’ she said, pulling her arms tighter. ‘That was clear.’
‘Sophie!’ he said sternly, her name this time a curse. ‘That’s not what I said then and it’s not what I’m saying now. My family… it’s bad enough with them, but with you…’
Her mind and heart pulled in two directions, but she had to keep her wits about her and ignore the consternation in his expression. ‘Perhaps if you could talk in full sentences,’ she said, proud of herself for remaining calm. ‘And I never met your family, as you know. How would I understand what you mean?’
He swiped his fingers over his mouth, staring at the ceiling for a moment, but when he gathered himself enough to speak, his voice was calm, low and full of conviction. ‘It wasn’t about you. I take risks. I have to. I don’t know how to be another way. And that’s not fair to… the people who mean something to me. I can’t take those risks for other people, only for myself. To me, the only logical course of action is to refuse commitment.’
The shadow over his features made her think of Miro, of how Andreas’s friend had died mere weeks after that disastrous conversation, leaving Toni to give birth and raise their child alone.
‘I do understand why you think that,’ she began. This time, the tightening of her arms around herself was to stop her reaching a hand out to him as she would have done in another time. ‘But we can’t choose. I couldn’t just switch off my feelings because you wanted to climb a mountain and you…’ She dropped her gaze. ‘You’ve made an exception for Cillian, but you wouldn’t for me. You just didn’t love me, and that is okay. It just hurts… I mean it used to hurt.’