17
I wake up the following morning and sit bolt upright in bed, listening for signs of Jack. But the hotel room is empty. I breathe a deep sigh of relief, glad that I can defer seeing him for a bit longer. It was difficult enough to avoid him last night, without having to repeat the experience this morning. I ended up staying in the bar until 1 a.m. to be sure he was asleep when I returned to the room. I’m completely exhausted.
I roll over, pick my phone up off the bedside table and see about fifteen notifications lighting up the screen: all from my mum. I sit upright, my chest constricting, braced despite my more rational instincts for some horrible news – she’s in hospital, she’s had an accident, something is terribly wrong. Since my dad’s death, something as small as a few missed calls in a row can set off this dread – bone-deep and always only a moment away – that I’ll lose her, too.
There are three missed calls and, after them, some texts, small excerpts appearing as notifications on my home screen. As I start to digest their tone, my heartbeat slows slightly. ‘So sorry, love – I realise I forgot to ask you about the date,’; ‘Hope it’s OK with you’; ‘The e-vite had to go out today – can you get time off?’. An e-vite? Strange. But relief starts to move through me, even as my confusion deepens. At least she’s OK. It strikes me momentarily that maybe I misunderstood her earlier calls – perhaps she and Nigel are throwing a summer garden party?
But then I tap into my inbox and find the email, and suddenly it all falls into place – I have misunderstood my mum’s calls, much more seriously than I thought. Oh God. A very different kind of dread twists in my gut. The subject line stares me in the face, the bold text startling: ‘Join us to celebrate our union.’ I scroll through the body – a date, a time, a location. And at the bottom: Nigel and Deborah.
Suddenly, the events of last night seem trivial, a million miles away. I thought I’d have time – to meet Nigel properly. To have a relationship with him, perhaps. To become the supportive daughter my mum deserves. But this: a wedding, a new life. Not just someone she’s spending time with, but someone who is going to be around forever. It’s so sudden, so permanent, and it’s caught me completely off guard. The broken part of me that surfaced on the Heath, that I’ve being doing my best to repress ever since, breaks free in this second of all restraints, overwhelming everything else with a thought that sends dread rippling through me: my mum will no longer be married to my dad. I will still be his daughter, but she will no longer be his wife. The last solid ground I had been standing on – that even despite Nigel’s presence, we were somehow still tied to my dad, still a family – has been suddenly ripped out from under me. My dad, my wonderful dad – his face comes into my mind now, sending hot tears trickling down my face, a force squeezing my throat until it feels like I can’t breathe. I’d been holding that space for him, still – and I realise now that some small part of me had naively assumed that my mum would always do the same.
I sit for a few moments in silence, staring at my phone, trying desperately to slow my breathing, to suppress deep, raw ache that’s pulsing in my chest. I miss you , I think. I love you . And then: I’m sorry . But I can’t dwell on this further. It will tear me apart.
I take a deep breath and force myself to look up, at my surroundings, away from the news that’s suddenly tilted my world on its axis. My gaze passes across the room: the light coming through the curtains, Jack’s bed, the sheets still strewn across it. It lands on my suitcase, tucked in the corner by the door, my clothes for today carefully folded inside it. As I focus in on the gentle floral pattern of my shirt, the corduroy skirt I picked out with Sara just before the trip, the ache in my chest dulls slightly, the panic growing less immediate. The outfit is something solid, a tether. The day stretches before me, suddenly comforting in its scheduled certainty: there is still this trip, still Jack, whatever might or might not have happened between us last night. For now, I can be professional Andie. I will get up and I will take Jack to his panel this morning. And I will deal with this later.
When I arrive at breakfast, Jack is sitting at a table in the corner, reading a book. I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, and make my way across the room. I say a silent prayer that he will make this easy for me, that he will pretend nothing happened between us last night and we can just get on with the day as planned – I’m not sure I can deal with much more turbulence today. I reach his table and he looks up from his book. For a second, his expression is so open that it startles me. But then he puts the book down, and gestures for me to sit, and his usual charming and ever-so-slightly distant demeanour returns.
‘So,’ he begins, taking a breath. I brace myself, but he just picks up the cafetière in front of him and looks at me questioningly. ‘Coffee?’
I nod and he pours a cup, slowly, then passes it across the table. I thank him, and take a sip. It’s lukewarm, bitter on my tongue. There is a short pause.
‘Look, Andie—’
‘Jack—’
We speak at the same time, our words tumbling over each other and dissipating into an awkward silence. He ventures into it first.
‘I think we need to talk about last night,’ he says, his voice mostly smooth but with a nervous undertone. I flinch internally. Fuck. I stall, avoiding his gaze, and retrieve the milk from the other side of the table, slowly stirring some into my cup. He watches, undeterred, waiting for my response.
‘I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about,’ I say, finally. I catch a flash of hurt in his eyes, but it disappears almost immediately, giving way – to my surprise – to frustration.
‘Come on, Andie. You know that’s bullshit.’
I’m momentarily silenced by this – it’s the sharpest tone he’s used since, well, since I’ve known him.
‘Please,’ I say once I’ve recovered myself, some of my emotional exhaustion seeping into my tone. ‘I just – I had some … some news, this morning.’
He takes in my tone, my expression, the tears threatening to pool in my eyes.
‘What news?’ he asks, softening slightly. ‘Is everything OK?’
I shake my head. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I just – I don’t want to talk about last night. I want us to get on with things, like normal.’
‘I don’t think there’s such thing as “normal” with us,’ he says. He lets go of the spoon he’s been using to stir his tea and sighs, exasperated. ‘Aren’t you tired of pretending everything is fine all the time?’
‘It’s better this way—’ I start, but he interrupts me.
‘Please don’t give me that, Andie. It’s not. You know it isn’t. I’ve done everything I can to respect your terms, to make this trip OK for you. But—’ he hesitates, then breathes out, slumping backwards into his chair ‘— I felt something last night, and I think you did, too.’
I’d known it wouldn’t be easy, but I hadn’t expected this. I lean forward and press my palms into my face, shutting out this room, this conversation, everything. Frustration builds inside me, then melts suddenly into a deep overwhelming exhaustion. And then, without realising it, I’m crying – everything bubbling up and coming to the surface at once, releasing in great sobs that rattle through my whole body. I had it in me to hold it together this morning, to keep pretending everything was fine – with Jack, with my mum. But Jack has pulled down those defences, and I don’t have the energy to put them back up. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ve had enough of pretending. I can’t deny that in this moment it feels good, to let some of this out.
I hear movement across the table – a chair being pulled across the carpet, and then he’s there, sitting next to me. After a few seconds, his palm settles gently and tentatively on my arm, as if he’s ready for me to flinch away. I don’t, and it rests there, its warmth seeping into my skin, until I’ve cried myself out. As the overwhelm begins to fade, replaced with a tentative calm, I remove my hands from my face, turning to him. And for a moment, he’s looking right at me – Andie with her defences down, vulnerable Andie, who I never let anyone but Sara see. I hold his gaze for a moment but it suddenly feels overwhelming, being so vulnerable in front of him. I look away, reaching across the table for a napkin to wipe my face with.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, shame flooding through me. He shakes his head.
‘ I’m sorry, Andie,’ he says. ‘You said you’d had bad news. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just – I just wanted us to be honest with each other for once.’
I close my eyes, the email from my mum flashing into my mind, again. Perhaps I can be honest about something, at least.
‘My mum’s getting married,’ I say, the lump in my throat suddenly reappearing.
His brow furrows, confusion spreading across his face. ‘Isn’t that good news?’ he asks, and my heart drops.
I shake my head, and swallow, the lump huge now. ‘My dad—’ I take a breath, my chest tight. ‘— he died, five years ago. The news – it’s brought up some, um,’ the tears start flowing again, and I wipe them away, sniffing, ‘some feelings.’ I laugh then, self-deprecating, because ‘feelings’ seems like an understatement.
Jack doesn’t laugh, his expression fixed – I can see him doing the mental maths and my stomach drops at the memory. Five years ago, Jack broke my trust and set off a chain of events that completely unbalanced the world I’d built for myself at university. Then my dad passed away two months later, after a short and brutal battle with cancer, and what was left of my world was wiped out by a nuclear explosion. After everything that happened with Jack, I barely had time to collect myself before I got that awful phone call from my mum, and then I moved back home, my days spent in and out of hospital, my thoughts on nothing but spending all the time he had left at his side. I was like a zombie. You still are , a voice says, and I flinch internally, but I know on some level it’s true. I put all my feelings in a box far at the back of my mind, determined not to show my dad anything other than my smiling face when I visited him, determined that the last memories I had of him, that he had of me, would be happy ones. I never really figured out how to reopen that box without causing destruction, and now it’s too late. Sara was right. I have been running away. But I don’t know how to stop.
Jack breathes out slowly. ‘Oh, Andie, I’m so sorry,’ he says, and I know that sorry contains more than an apology for my loss. I flinch at the reminder – that’s the last thing I need to be thinking about right now – but whether it’s because I’m vulnerable right now, or because he’s caught me off guard, the apology unexpectedly reaches some small, hurt part inside me, soothing me momentarily. We are silent for a few moments.
‘So, today,’ he says, clearing his throat. I breathe out, relieved that he’s changed the subject, but also strangely disappointed. ‘If you don’t want to do the event, that’s fine – I can go ahead and tell them you’re sick.’
But I shake my head – I don’t want to go back up to my hotel room, to desperately read and re-read my mum’s email and spiral further into a hole I might not emerge from. I need distraction. And though just two hours ago Jack was the last person I wanted to see, I now find myself strangely calm in his presence, my brain mercifully quiet. It’s paradoxical, that the one person capable of disturbing my mental peace more than anyone else also seems to be capable of restoring it. The thought arrives unexpectedly, but I reflect on it for a moment and realise it’s true. It was true in London, where my anger at him was a rope out of the ocean, pulling me away from thoughts of my dad. Or Berlin, where him just buying me a sandwich for the plane helped lift me out of the devastation I felt after leaving my mum on the Heath. Paris and the unexpected evening we spent together. At every turn, whenever the past has begun to drag me into its depths, Jack has arrived just when I’ve needed him. I’m not sure what to make of this sudden and startling epiphany, so I put it momentarily out of my mind.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, reaching for a napkin and using it to blow my nose.
He looks at his watch and makes a face. ‘Well, then we’d better go. We’re already cutting it fine.’
I follow him out to the car, rooting around in my handbag for a make-up wipe to clean myself up. I don’t find one, so I end up using the non-snot-covered side of the napkin in my hand to wipe mascara off my face while Jonathon drives us into Dublin. By the time we arrive at the event I’m almost looking presentable.
I’ve been so wrapped up in the events of this morning that I’ve completely forgotten this event’s location, so I’m pleasantly surprised when we pull up at Trinity College. The campus is gorgeous: all sandstone and symmetrical architecture, grass and trees, with a beautiful bell tower at its centre. The surroundings calm me, comforting in their beauty, their suggestion of my own impermanence.
Jack and I arrive a few minutes before the event is due to start, to the immense relief of the academic in a scuffed tweed jacket who greets us. As he rushes us through imposing corridors, his steps soft on the old stone floors, he tells us that he’s had quite a few last-minute cancellations to this literature festival, resulting in university staff having to fill in for bestselling authors. We’re told this all came much to the dismay of the event attendees of the day before, who had arrived expecting to hear about the process of writing a crime novel and instead ended up receiving a lecture on the ethics of murder from a moral philosophy professor. I introduce myself and apologise for the delay, which he waves off as he leads me to a seat to the right of the stage. Jack takes his place at the main table, and it’s a moment before I realise that the person he’s sitting next to is Aoife, the beautiful author from last night. My throat dries up as I remember: the wine, the shots, my ill-advised blurted question. That for a moment, before Jonathon arrived and brought me to my senses, all I had wanted to do was press Jack against the wall of that pub and – but I can’t think about that right now.
I sit for a few moments, trying to restore my mental balance, but thoughts of Jack and the events of last night keep rushing through my mind, confusing me beyond belief. My emotions towards him are changeable by the minute: I find myself seeking him out, even as I want to pull away. I don’t trust him at all, but he’s the only person I want to be around. It’s a tangle, a mess. One I can’t figure out.
I miss the next few panel questions and resurface when the chair is in the middle of asking Jack a question about how he stays grounded and creatively focused.
‘I have a policy – while I’m writing, I try not to care what anyone thinks about my book except myself.’ I inhale sharply. ‘And my editor, obviously,’ he adds, to laughter from the audience. My heart is hammering against my chest as he delivers the next line, almost as if speaking to himself. ‘But the policy isn’t foolproof.’
His eyes find mine, and for a moment all I hear is my pulse pounding in my ears. Then the panel chair moves on to Aoife and Jack looks away, politely turning to listen to her answer.
‘Andie?’ Jack says after the panel ends, waving a hand in front of my face – by his expression I deduce he’s been standing next to my chair for a moment, and this probably isn’t the first time he’s called my name.
I blink. ‘Yes?’ I say, coming back to the present.
‘Fancy a walk? I’d like some fresh air,’ he asks.
Before I can overthink it, I nod. ‘I know just the place.’
Phoenix Park is busy enough for a Thursday afternoon in summer, but still sprawling and beautiful. The air is peaceful, still – a haven in the city, only broken by the occasional sound of a child laughing or a dog barking in the distance. People say about this park that it’s where Dublin goes to breathe. I can see what they mean.
‘This place is beautiful,’ he says, breaking the silence.
I nod. ‘It’s my favourite spot in Dublin,’ I say. And then, without really thinking, ‘I came here with my dad, once.’
The last part sort of slips out without me realising – a memory spoken aloud. I panic briefly, worried I’ve shared too much. But when I look at Jack for his response, his expression is unchanged.
‘What was he like?’ he asks, eventually.
I hesitate, waiting for the emotions to overwhelm me, for the warning signs to emerge. But I can’t find them: the overwhelming sensation is peace. Calm, even. The grass is soft under my feet as we keep walking, and I can almost see my dad walking ahead of me, like he did all those years ago.
‘He was a real park person,’ I say after a few seconds. ‘Anywhere we were in the world, any city, he’d seek out the local parks. It was our thing, sort of.’ The information spills out suddenly, as if it has been straining against the dam I’ve placed against it. Waiting for someone to ask. Waiting for me to answer. ‘He used to bring me here as a kid, and we’d spend hours just walking around. Talking. Even when I was really small, and most of what I talked about was trees and birds and grass. He never seemed to mind.’
‘That sounds really wonderful, Andie,’ Jack says, his tone gentle and encouraging. My heart is beating fast, the first sign that I should pull back. Usually, at this point, I’d change the subject, move on to something else. But even as a small flicker of fear moves through me, a slow warmth overtakes it, an overwhelming sense that I should keep going, keep talking. More memories pressing against the dam, begging to be let out. And so, as we continue along the path towards the tree line, I do. I tell him about how my dad would not only find a park, but find multiple friends within the park, striking up conversations with strangers. I tell him about his love for dogs – how he’d always say ‘I met a lovely dog today’ rather than ‘saw’, as if the dog were a person. I tell him about the yoga, about how he’d sometimes run impromptu outdoor classes on Hampstead Heath and get told off for not having a permit, but never fined because he gave free classes to the community enforcement officers. How people would sometimes roll down the hill, because they could never find a flat patch big enough. Jack laughs at this, and at the sound a crack in my heart bursts wide open – I hadn’t realised how long it’s been since I’ve spoken about my dad properly. It hits me in a rush: before I realise what’s happening, tears fill my eyes. Jack catches sight of them before I can wipe them away, and slows to a halt, putting his hand tentatively on my arm.
‘I’m really sorry for your loss, Andie,’ he says. It’s different to earlier, in the hotel – there I felt tight, claustrophobic. There his apology was laden with other things. This, despite the subject, feels light.
‘Thank you,’ I say, exhaling a breath that moves some of the weight off my chest. I miss you , I think, directing it to my dad. And for the first time in a very long time, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to rip me in half.
As silence settles between us, Jack’s hand drops to his side and he looks away at the park, giving me a moment to compose myself. I find myself searching for something more to say, to thank him. He has no idea what he’s just given me, and I’m still making sense of it, too, but it feels momentous, somehow. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to speak about my dad without falling apart.
‘I really liked your book,’ I say, looking down at my feet. He doesn’t reply, and for a moment I’m worried I’ve said something I shouldn’t.
When I slowly raise my gaze to meet his, after a few seconds of silence, there’s an expression on his face that I can’t quite read.
‘Really?’ he says, eventually, as if the breath has been knocked out of him. His eyes are fixed on mine, his gaze deep and warm. My breath catches in my throat as I nod.
‘I thought it was wonderful,’ I say, not taking my eyes from his.
Then, slowly, he takes a step towards me. I stand stock still, as if the world has suddenly come to a halt. A warmth moves up my spine, and I have the thought that I should step back, that I should move away, like I did last night. But, this time, I don’t.
He reaches up, slowly, and gently tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. I find myself moving towards him, blind to all feeling except the sensation of his thumb grazing my cheek as he lowers his hand.
I’m not sure who makes the first move – whether it’s me, taking a step towards him, or him pulling me in, but it doesn’t matter. Before I can really register what’s happening, we’re kissing, entwined, our hands in each other’s hair, the awareness of my surroundings slowly falling away. Alarm bells are going off somewhere in the back of in my brain, telling me to stop, to think about this, to consider what I’m doing. But I ignore them, erasing all feeling until my awareness sharpens into only his lips on mine, his hand cupping the back of my neck, his other hand gripping my waist, my body pressed up against his. The wind in my hair, his fingers brushing my skin, sending shivers up my spine. It’s intoxicating, terrifying. Wonderful. And then it’s over, and Jack is catching his breath, still looking at me, and my head is spinning.
‘Wow,’ I say, breathing out slowly. ‘That was—’
‘Probably a violation of the truce?’ he jokes, catching me off guard. I laugh, ignoring the twinge in my stomach at the reminder of our professional relationship – another reason on the list of a hundred reasons why we should absolutely not have done that. But right now, I don’t want to think about any of them. I’m all fire, all desire for him.
‘You know,’ I say, the words spilling out of my mouth before I can think too much about them, ‘I think I left something important in the hotel room.’
His eyebrows lift almost unnoticeably, and he keeps his gaze fixed on mine.
‘Shall I book an Uber to the hotel and we can go back and, uh, look for it?’ he asks, his eyes tracing the outlines of my face. I nod, not trusting myself to speak. He reaches for his phone and takes his gaze off me momentarily to look at the screen. I wait for reality to crash in, for the spell to break. But it doesn’t.
Not in the car, buckled in for the most excruciating journey of my life, our fingers lightly brushing together on the middle seat as we both keep our gazes fixed on the road. Not on the stairs of the hotel, where it takes everything I have not to grab his coat and push him against the banister. Not when he fumbles with the key and I take it out of his hand, unlocking the door and stumbling into the hotel room. Or when we’re inside, and he pushes me against the wall and runs his hand down the side of my face, his gaze tracing the shape of my body and burning through my clothes.
Every part of me knows that what I’m doing is stupid and self-destructive. That this is someone I’m supposed to hate, supposed to never want to see again. But that’s not how I feel about him in this moment. Right now it feels too good, too right, to stop – everything I’ve been avoiding for the last few weeks is fading into the background, replaced by pure sensation, pure desire. A tension builds between us, only increasing as the distance closes again and again. I kiss him again, fiercely, undoing the buttons of his shirt as I do so.
‘Look at you, suddenly an expert at men’s buttons,’ he says, as his shirt falls to the floor and he pulls mine over my head, unhooking my bra. A thrill runs through my body as I remember how he looked at me yesterday at the launch party, in my bra – how he’s looking at me now, not with possession like other men have, raking their eyes over me like I’m something they’ve won, but with pure wonder, pure desire – as if I’m the only person he’s ever wanted. His hands are on my waist now and his thumbs dig into my hips as I arch towards him, pulling him in so I can kiss him again.
I move backwards until I hit the bed, drawing him towards me. Every cell in my body wants him, comes alive as he kisses my shoulder, the edge of my hip. His hands move over my body like he’s seeing everything for the first time – gently cupping my breasts, dragging the elastic of my underwear until it slides down my legs. I barely have time to catch my breath before his mouth is on me, and he’s kissing me in places I haven’t been kissed in a while, and it feels so good I never want it to stop. But I’m desperate for more, for him, and there’s only two days left of the tour, and we’re here right now and it feels perfect. So I pull him towards me, kissing him again, feeling how much he wants me. I guide him towards me and we crash into each other, his hand grasping the back of my neck as he plunges into me. When he’s inside me I let out a breath of equal parts relief and pleasure. I am all feeling, completely in the moment. His hands move across my skin, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. I close my eyes, tracing my hand down his arm, his abs. I move with him as if my body remembers exactly the last time we did this, the thrill I felt that he wanted me , the thrill that now pulses through me even stronger than before. He moves his hand down, caressing me, increasing his pace as he does so, his thumb moving in circles, touching me in exactly the right place to send shivers up my spine. It feels amazing, unbelievably so – I close my eyes and lose all awareness of my surroundings as I start to come apart at the seams, losing myself in him, in this moment that I hope will never end. He thrusts into me harder and my hand grips the sheets tighter, a cry escaping my mouth as the tension that’s been building between us finally finds an outlet. I close my eyes as it comes to a head, his hipbones grazing mine, his mouth pressed to my neck. Waves of pleasure wash over me as he comes apart, too, sinking into me, moaning ‘fuck’ softly and shivering with pleasure as he buries his face in the pillow behind me.
Oh god, I think, as I come back to my senses. It is, without a doubt, some of the best sex I’ve ever had.
‘You have—’ he says, his eyes now locked on mine, still catching his breath, ‘— no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.’
I stare at the ceiling until my pulse starts to slow, trying to hold on to this feeling as long as I can before the thoughts I’ve been keeping at bay begin to press at the edges of my mind. Jack and I just had sex. And it was great. Shit. I take a breath and sit up.
‘That definitely wasn’t in the truce,’ I say, reaching for humour to stave off the inevitable.
He leans over and kisses me again, running his hand along the back of my neck.
‘Maybe we need a new truce,’ he says, and somewhere in the back of my mind it begins to occur to me how stupid this was. Thankfully, before the thought can fully form, he starts kissing me again, long and hard, and suddenly my mind is mercifully blank once more, and I don’t care about anything except being with him, right here, right now.
A while later, we emerge, breathless, sheets tangled around us. I am silent for a moment, suppressing the urge to roll over and kiss him again so I don’t have to process the weight of what just happened – a weight which is increasing with each moment we’re no longer entwined, threatening to fall on me like a ton of bricks.
‘I like you, Andie,’ he says, the words tumbling out of him as if he’s not quite in control of his own voice. Shit. This wasn’t what I expected. But he keeps going. ‘I know we have things we need to talk about, but I don’t want you to think I’m messing you around.’ Oh god. We’ve gone from kissing to sex to now – something else? I don’t know what to feel, how to respond – the blissful oblivion I felt moments ago, the deep sense that what we were doing was right, that all I wanted was him, is fading slowly into panic which grows with every second: the slow realisation that I have just done something very, very wrong.
‘I don’t know, Jack—’ I say, sitting up. ‘I—’ Fuck. What did we just do? ‘I need a minute.’
He nods, his expression indecipherable, and opens his mouth to respond, but before he can the sound of his phone ringing cuts through the silence. I let out a breath, glad that this conversation has been interrupted. But then mine starts ringing, too: we look at each other for a moment, confused, then move across the room to each of our devices.
‘Hello?’ I say, nodding as Jack motions to me, pulling on some trousers and a T-shirt, that he’s going to take his call in the corridor.
‘Andie!’ Jessica’s voice trills through the phone. I become suddenly, embarrassingly aware of my own nakedness, wrapping the sheets closer around me as if she can somehow tell from New York what I’ve just done.
‘Hi!’ I say, putting on my best I-definitely-did-not-just-sleep-with-your-star-author voice. Now Jack is out of the room, the reality I’ve been keeping at arm’s length since I kissed him in the park starts crashing down. Hard.
‘I have some excellent news,’ she says.
‘Oh?’ I say, doing my best to stay in the moment, despite the fire that’s just started in my mind.
‘You’re going to Edinburgh.’
What? Her words throw petrol over the fire, sending it into an inferno. My heart drops into my stomach. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not when I’ve just—
‘Um – sorry, could you repeat that please?’ I choke out, panic gripping my chest like a vice.
‘You’re going to Edinburgh!’ she says, again, more excited this time. As if her words have not just smashed my world into a million pieces. ‘I just got off the phone with the head of programming at Edinburgh Book Festival, and they’ve had a cancellation.’ I pull the sheets tighter around me, a shield against this. The panic rises in pitch, ringing in my ears. ‘Jack will be filling in for a major event, as a priority author. We’ve managed to rearrange some of the press and bookshop visits from tomorrow, so you can go: Jack will do the interviews over Zoom, instead, and visit the bookshops when he’s back in the UK doing some more press next month. Isn’t this great?’
I close my eyes. I am about to be back in Edinburgh, the scene of the crime. The reason why I’ve hated Jack all this time, why I should still hate him. And he is going to be there with me. Of all the tricks the universe has played on me in the last few weeks of my life, this is by far the worst. I have no words for this feeling: it’s a black hole, consuming me completely. ‘So great!’ I manage to lie, nausea swirling inside me as the horror of my current situation is followed swiftly by a realisation of exactly how stupid I’ve been. Jessica’s words have just dumped a pail of ice cold water over my head, the haze that I’ve been living in for the last two weeks sharpening into a horrifying reality of my own creation. The hatred and anger that first took root in Edinburgh five years ago, that I’ve buried deeper and deeper as the tour has gone on, rises to the surface all at once, sharpening my senses and sending bile up my throat. What the fuck have I done? I just slept with Jack Carlson . Who shattered my trust, and shattered me in the process. I’ve spent the last five years piecing myself back into a semblance of the person I was before he betrayed me, before my dad. And now I am about to go to Edinburgh, where it all began – everything around me crumbling into dust, leaving me a shadow of the whole, big-hearted Andie who arrived at that university. The box I’ve been keeping carefully closed rips open, releasing a world of pain that breaks down all my defences and tears through me, stealing my breath, almost drowning out Jessica’s words as she talks about the changes to our travel arrangements. I manage to get through the rest of the call, somehow, grabbing a pen to write down the details and giving her as concise answers as I can until she eventually hangs up the phone and I am free from this nightmare of a conversation. Except I’m not free: tomorrow, I will be living it. Even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined this. I was so nearly home free: just two more days here, then back to New York and my normal life. Instead, there’s this. Whoever the hell is up there, weaving the tapestry of my life, can get absolutely fucked.
The door quietly opens, and Jack enters the room slowly and carefully. I deduce from his facial expression and his hair, wild and messy like he’s been running his hands through it, that he’s just had the same conversation with his agent. He’s looking at me with roughly the same expression that you’d give an untamed lion – half-cautious, half-waiting to see if I’ll pounce and tear him to pieces.
‘Andie—’ he starts, but I put up my hand and shake my head. Resolve has formed inside me, firm and cold, extinguishing any warmth towards him.
‘This—’ I gesture to the bed, ignoring the lump that’s forming in my throat. ‘—whatever this was, was a mistake.’ I watch my words hit him like I’ve stabbed him in the chest, but I ignore it and continue. ‘It can’t happen again, Jack. We can’t—’ My voice starts to crack, the pain and anger welling up all over again, but I shove it back down and fix a closed expression on my face. ‘We can’t do that again. It was stupid, unprofessional. We need to go back to the terms of the truce for the next week, do our jobs and then go our separate ways. That’s why we’re here, after all.’
To my surprise, Jack seems to recover his composure quickly. Resolve burns on his face.
‘No,’ he says, simply, his voice unwavering. The lump in my throat grows bigger. What does he mean no?
‘You can’t just say—’ I start, but he cuts me off, walking towards me. He stops a few paces from the bed, his gaze fixed on me. I suddenly realise how vulnerable I feel: me naked, him clothed, me with all the emotional baggage, him with none. It takes me right back to that first night in the bookshop in New York, and it hurts more than I could have imagined.
‘I don’t want to go back to the truce. Fuck the truce. Fuck pretending there aren’t a million unsaid things between us. I like you, Andie, and I think you feel the same way, but if you don’t want to admit that to yourself, that’s fine. Either way, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m going to Edinburgh, and I can’t stop you from joining me for the sake of your career, but I mean it when I say I want you to stay as far away from me as you possibly can. I’ll tell your boss that you were the best publicist ever. But I’m not doing this, not anymore. If you’re not willing to talk about what happened, after all this, to let me explain, then beyond the strictest limitations of our jobs, I’d like you to leave me alone.’ He pauses, hurt contorting his face as he runs his hand through his hair. ‘It’s too painful, being so close to you every day, pretending there isn’t this history between us, buried underneath everything we say or do. I’m done.’
Anger flares up inside me. ‘Do you think you’re the victim here? Have you forgotten—’
This time, Jack holds up his hand. His eyes are soft and sad, his voice deep and grounded. ‘I won’t ever forget what happened, Andie. I regret it with every inch of me. More than you’ll ever know, or apparently allow me to tell you. But I’m a person, too. And I have feelings. I can’t keep ignoring them for your sake. It’s not fair. Especially considering—’ He cuts himself off, shaking his head as if he’s changed his mind about what he’s about to say. I close my eyes for a moment, trying desperately to ignore the writhing pain in my chest and think of a response. But nothing comes, and I hear the sound of the door opening, then gently closing. When I open my eyes again, Jack is gone.