Chapter Thirty-Two
Alex
Alex isn’t sure where he’s going when he gets up and leaves, but the autopilot leads him there anyway. He’s now made a total fool of himself and hurt Jess, when he was desperately trying to avoid doing that, and there’s only one person who can help him make sense of it all.
‘Nathan’s on a call,’ his secretary tells Alex. ‘I’ll let him know you’re here.’
Alex sits, but that instantly feels wrong, and he stands again. He paces a little in the small hallway. Counts forty-one steps. Nathan’s secretary looks at him over the top of her glasses.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she asks. ‘Maybe a glass of Scotch?’
Despite himself, Alex smiles. ‘Sorry, sorry. I’ll sit.’
She smiles tightly back at him.
‘But maybe a tea.’
He doesn’t need a tea. But he does need something to do with his hands, and that seems like a good solution. Although the secretary doesn’t look thrilled when he takes longer than necessary stirring in the sugar he neither wants nor needs. Sweet enough – yeah, right.
‘I’m sure Mr Thomas will be ready for you soon,’ she says. Perhaps trying to convince herself that she only needs to be patient with Alex for a little while longer.
‘Sorry,’ he says again. He sips his tea; he bounces his leg. And at last, Nathan pokes his head out of the door to his office.
‘Alex,’ he says. ‘This is a nice surprise. I was just about to pop out for lunch. Want to join me?’
He sees his own gratitude reflected in Nathan’s secretary’s face. Walking to Pret feels like something his limbs need. Being cooped up in an office probably wouldn’t do him any good.
‘So,’ Nathan says, holding the door for Alex. ‘I’m guessing this isn’t just a friendly catch-up.’
Alex gets straight to the point. ‘I’ve messed up.’
‘Jess?’ Nathan does not sound surprised. Resigned is probably more like it. Ready for another round of this seemingly interminable drama.
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me.’
Outside in the sunshine, Alex feels unexpectedly exposed. ‘We were – you know. Getting close. Which, I assume, was part of your plan.’
He catches the hint of a smirk playing across Nathan’s lips. ‘I can neither confirm nor deny the accusation without the presence of a lawyer.’
‘I thought as much.’
But Nathan clearly has no interest in lingering on the part of the story where he might be to blame. ‘So what did you do?’
‘I said a mean thing. And then instead of apologising, or staying to talk it through, or even giving her a chance to walk away, I’m the one who walked away.’
‘Wow. Impressive.’
‘I know.’
Alex is saved from further judgement by their arrival at Pret and Nathan’s scanning of the shelves. ‘This Pret is always running out of hoisin duck wraps,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Alex says, with only a little sarcasm. He’s not a monster, after all. He understands the struggle of the out-of-stock favourite lunch just like anybody else.
‘Thank you. I appreciate your sympathy at this difficult time.’
Hoisin duck wrap notwithstanding, they eventually find a satisfactory set of lunch items, and, miracle of miracles, an empty table.
‘So what was the mean thing you said?’
Alex feels his shoulders slump as he recounts the story. ‘She said I shouldn’t let my family take advantage of me so much. That I should let them do things for me sometimes. And I said, yeah, well, at least I have a relationship with my family.’
‘Ah.’
‘And then I made a pathetic attempt at an apology and left before I could see her cry.’
‘So, basically, you took out your pain on her?’
‘My pain?’
Nathan bites into his Caesar salad wrap and lets the words hang in the air while he chews.
‘Yes,’ he says eventually. ‘Your pain.’
Alex looks at him, waits for him to elaborate.
‘Well,’ Nathan says, when it’s been long enough that it’s become clear Alex isn’t going to read between the lines himself.
‘It’s true, isn’t it? Your family do take advantage of you.
They do expect you to drop everything for them the minute you need them.
I seem to remember you moved to America to get away from that. ’
Deep in his gut, Alex recognises the same instinct, the same anger bubbling up, that caused him to lash out at Jess. He bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t say or do anything as destructive as he did with her.
‘Why do you think that is?’ Nathan asks him.
Alex shrugs, a little boy being lectured by a headmaster.
‘Do you think maybe you’ve trained them to do that? By always being so ready to drop everything, always being on call for them?’
‘That’s just being a responsible brother.’
‘Yes, but it’s also letting them take advantage of you. That’s what Jess was getting at. And it’s not the first time your loyalty to your family has clashed with your loyalty to a girl, is it? What about Elodie?’
Alex thinks back to that phone call from his sister, the one that interrupted him as he was about to say I love you for the first time. To what felt like a rip through his torso as he was faced with the need to choose between letting down his sister Louisa and disappointing his girlfriend.
Nathan waits for Alex to make eye contact. ‘You’ve seen Love Actually, haven’t you?’
‘All my girlfriends have forced me to.’
‘The scene with Laura Linney and that Karl guy. Did that ever resonate?’
Alex is hopeless with names, with pop culture. ‘Remind me?’
‘The woman with the brother who’s always calling.
And she’s got this huge crush on this colleague of hers, and something is finally about to happen, and then the brother calls.
And the colleague, Karl, is nice about it at first. But in the end, it breaks them up, because she doesn’t have the appropriate boundaries. ’
‘I see.’
It’s not subtle, what Nathan is getting at.
And he’s also not wrong. But Alex doesn’t quite see what can be done about it.
He’s been avoiding the subject of his family with his therapist. So much so that he has asked him: What exactly are you not telling me here?
Alex had shrugged, the small boy in front of the headmaster there, too.
Alex had expected a little more sympathy from Nathan.
A little more practical advice on how to reconcile with Jess.
But on the other hand, it’s not rocket science.
It’s pretty obvious that he needs to apologise.
He just isn’t sure what happens after that.
Or how to solve this seemingly intractable problem – too many people needing him at once.
But Nathan is looking at his watch now, and Alex knows what’s coming.
‘Sorry, Alex. I have a meeting in ten.’
‘No worries. Thanks for listening.’
Not that Nathan has listened, not that much. He’s done most of the talking, most of the interrogating. But he has cut through to the heart of the matter, and maybe that’s what Alex needed for now. He takes out his phone, opens WhatsApp, and types.
Jess, I’m so sorry. I should never have said what I said, and I should never have walked out rather than talk to you about it. I hope you can forgive me.
A little overly formal for a WhatsApp message, maybe, but GIFs and emoji don’t seem like they would really be up to the task.
He presses send and watches one grey tick appear, then another next to it.
They both turn to blue: she’s read the message.
But there are no appearing dots below. She isn’t typing back.
She probably needs a moment. Several moments.
Alex sincerely hopes it isn’t more than that.