Chapter Thirty-Five
Jess
Jess has decided it’s fine. She hasn’t heard back from Nathan, and she hasn’t heard from Alex since the WhatsApp she ignored, so she’s just going to assume that it’s fine.
Her work is done; she’s off the hook. She can go back to her previous life of interviewing bookshop owners, reviewing books, taking nice pictures, and revelling in the endorphin rush of social media likes and free novels landing with a thud on her doormat on a regular basis.
And it feels good! She’s missed it. It’s work, but it’s not like traipsing through treacle, not the way that writing sometimes feels.
She puts on her feel-good playlist, tears open the latest packages, and organises the books on her shelf of proofs, in publication-date order, as always.
It feels good to be back to her routine, back to what she knows, her muscle memory remembering what to do.
She’s just opened her spreadsheet to log them – publisher, genre, date forthcoming – when her buzzer goes.
She feels a crease in her own forehead form as she tries to think who could be at the door.
Normally, she’d assume the postman, but he’s already been today – her newly reorganised shelf is evidence of that.
As far as she remembers, she hasn’t ordered anything from Vinted in at least six days, so it can’t be that, either.
Reluctantly, she stands up from her chair and makes her way to the door. When she opens it, her stomach sinks. But part of her has to admit that she already knew who it was going to be.
‘Hello,’ says a person camouflaged behind the prettiest bouquet of flowers she has ever seen. A voice she recognises all too well.
It’s physically impossible for her to slam the door in Alex’s face.
Firstly, because his foot is partly on the threshold, and while it might give her satisfaction to stub his toe, she might also break it that way, and she doesn’t fancy being sued.
Plus, as annoyed as she is with Alex, it seems like a broken foot might not be a proportionate response to some ill-advised words.
But also, these are some beautiful flowers, and it would be churlish to refuse them. If nothing else, they’ll make for a pretty background for the bookstagram photos she’s about to take.
‘These are lovely,’ she says.
‘Glad you like them.’
Alex hands them over. She can’t resist burying her face in them and smelling them.
‘I suppose you better come in,’ she says. A smile on her face to soften the words. She wants him to know, though, that it’s going to take more than a multi-coloured bunch of daisies and gerberas to make up for what he said and how he behaved.
‘You’re too kind.’ A smile on his face, too. Not the dimpled kind. The barely-there kind.
‘I know.’ Jess pushes her glasses up her nose while she considers what to do next. ‘And let me extend that kindness by making you a drink. Tea?’
‘That would be great.’
This may be a mistake, she realises. Tea can take up to half an hour to drink.
An hour, if you really want to drag it out and don’t mind the lukewarmness of it.
Does she really want him here for half an hour?
Or longer? On the other hand, if he does annoy her, then kicking him out when his tea is only half-drunk would be a punishment that fits the crime.
Less harsh than breaking his foot. Also, less suable.
‘You sure you don’t want sugar?’
‘Very funny,’ he says.
‘Thank you.’
In the kitchen, she takes a moment to compose herself – to breathe in slowly, hold it, breathe out.
That little trick she learned during the pandemic.
She’s been caught off guard by seeing him with no warning.
She hasn’t planned what to say. But maybe that’s why he showed up unannounced – so she wouldn’t be forearmed.
On the other hand, it might also be because if he had tried to warn her, she would have told him to get lost.
She roots around for a vase. The flowers need water, but mostly, she wants to extend this suspended pause, this moment before she has to decide how to respond to whatever Alex has to say. She already knows that she can’t trust her body not to respond to him. Can she trust her mind?
When she can no longer justify faffing around and killing time, she sets his tea down in front of him.
And one for herself, too. There is, after all, nothing better to steady her nerves.
Tea is even better than taking deep breaths and holding them.
She picks her mug up and holds it with both hands, the way she does in winter to warm them up.
She feels like at this moment she needs the comfort of warmth. It steadies her.
She forces herself to look at Alex, and waits.
He’s the one who’s turned up, after all – the one who started this whole thing.
Besides, she doesn’t feel like making this easy for him by asking leading questions or apologising first, in an effort to clear the air and make things feel less awkward.
Let him feel the awkwardness. It was his doing, after all.
Despite all of these very rational thoughts, Jess is tempted to fill the silence, when it starts to stretch interminably. But Alex clears his throat and starts to speak.
‘I feel I owe you an explanation, as well as an apology.’
‘Okay,’ she says uncertainly. Forces herself, again, to wait.
‘Well, on the apology front, I hope the flowers speak for themselves. But just in case they don’t – I want you to know how sorry I am for saying what I did.
You’ve been vulnerable with me and spoken about how you wish things were different with your mum, and I used that to hurt you, which is pretty much unforgivable. ’
There’s a lump in Jess’s throat, and she is determined not to cry. She nods, and swallows hard.
‘I know you were also being kind, and trying to help me have a healthier relationship with my family. And I know that came from a good place. But the thing is, I’ve been working on things from my past with my therapist, and I’ve been really angry at my family, as different things have come up.
So, that anger … Well, I misdirected it, and you bore the brunt of it.
The anger was just there, waiting to be triggered, and you inadvertently tripped a switch. ’
A week ago, she might have probed further.
She might have asked what exactly he was angry about, helped him work through it.
But she has her own anger issues now. The flowers have softened her, and the tea is warming her through – or maybe that’s just the effect of his dark eyes on hers.
But still, she doesn’t quite feel like engaging in conversation that might bring up difficult emotions.
It feels like a cost he has not quite earned.
And anyway, she doesn’t want to risk poking the beast again.
‘Okay,’ she says again, instead.
Alex runs a hand through his hair and takes a sip of his tea.
Uncertain, perhaps. Or waiting for a more thorough response.
He looks down into his cup, then back at her.
She forces herself to look at him. Part of her wants to stay angry, but she is having to really fight for that.
It would be so easy to just let his chocolate-brown eyes melt her.
‘I can’t do this without you,’ he says.
‘This?’ She wants to probe a little. If he just needs her for her editing skills, he can jog on. She’s done more than enough to make this next book a success. She owes him nothing beyond that. ‘Writing, or—’
‘Writing, yes. But also, maybe, life.’
This would admittedly be a lot more romantic without the maybe. But despite herself, her heart softens a little bit. Despite herself, she puts her mug down and reaches for his hand, interlaces her fingers with his.
‘You’re a smooth talker,’ she says.
‘It’s true, though.’
‘Okay,’ she says again. And then, curiosity having got the better of her, despite the risks, she adds, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course. Anything.’
‘You said you were angry with your family. What is it that you’re angry about?’
‘I thought you were going to ask about something more romantic than that.’
‘All in good time.’ Jess doesn’t know what she even means by that, but it feels like the thing to say, to reassure him, as if her hands threaded through his weren’t enough.
‘Well, I realised that I was always so busy looking after them that I never let anyone look after me. I never asked them for help. And I was a really anxious little boy, but there was so much going on in the family that nobody really noticed. And I know kids’ mental health was talked about less then, and all that.
But I can’t help thinking that if my anxiety had been treated properly back then, I’d have been a better adjusted kid and better adjusted adult.
I’d have learned how to manage my anxiety and not let it rule and run so much of my life. ’
This explains a lot. ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ she says.
Her mind is already racing with all the things she wants to do: read a book on anxiety, find some novels with characters with anxiety, throw herself down some rabbit holes on Reddit.
She wants to understand Alex better, to be able to help him with this.
Even though she’d rather avoid thinking about hard things, if she makes it into a project, she can convince herself she’s having fun. ‘You’re forgiven.’
His shoulders visibly relax. ‘Thank you.’
She’s wondering whether to walk around to him, to lean down and kiss him, when her phone lights up on the table, interrupting her thoughts. Mum.
‘Take it,’ Alex says. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘Thanks.’