Chapter Ten #2
Jennifer felt tears begin to push through, and she blinked them away. ‘I’m not angry with you, Gabriel,’ she said thickly. ‘I’m angry with myself. Look…this isn’t a good time.’
‘I really want to talk to you. What happened between us…it’s…it’s been tearing me apart.’
Jennifer heard the driven sincerity in his voice, but she refused to be swayed by it.
If he had come to talk about the friendship they had lost, then what could she say?
Right now, friendship wasn’t what she wanted from him.
Maybe one day, when the rawness of rejection had faded and she’d regained some kind of perspective.
Maybe then they could have a conversation about piecing their friendship back together.
Yet as their eyes held, she could see the lines of exhaustion on his face, and the plea in them made her heart treacherously constrict.
She turned away abruptly and felt his hand on her arm, gentle but firm. Then she felt him move closer, felt his warm breath on her neck.
‘Tell your date that you’re leaving.’
‘I’ll do no such thing!’ She awkwardly stumbled around to face him and wished she hadn’t. He was so close, and his proximity made her dizzy as memories and hurt and pain crashed through into the present.
‘Hey, mate!’
Both of them looked at Colin, who was beginning to stand up, awkwardly glancing between them with an expression that conveyed a pressing desire to scarper.
‘He’s an old friend, Colin. We haven’t seen one another in a while.’ Jennifer forced a smile while her nervous system continued its frantic meltdown. She belatedly felt sorry for the poor guy standing there, looking bewildered and a little ridiculous. ‘It might be a good idea if you left.’
‘Are you sure, love?’
Jennifer could just feel Gabriel’s relief. If he thought that he had won round one, then he was in for a shock, because she wasn’t just going to limply cave in to whatever thin argument he brought out for them to resume their friendship and pretend it hadn’t been mortally wounded.
‘Sure,’ she said curtly, but as soon as her date had left, she looked at Gabriel coldly.
‘Satisfied?’
‘No.’
‘What are you doing here? I need a timeout from you, Gabriel, and I don’t really care how much that’s tearing you apart.’
‘I need a drink before I have this conversation.’ He paused, his dark eyes hesitant, testing the water. ‘I get why you don’t want to talk to me,’ he said roughly. ‘But I’m begging you to just hear me out.’
‘Ten minutes, Gabriel, and that’s it.’
‘What do you want to drink? And why are you on diet cola?’ He smiled, but the smile was as hesitant as his eyes had been. ‘Was your date a cheapskate?’
Jennifer was having none of his attempt to introduce back the lazy teasing that had been so much a part of their relationship. She was still hurting too much for that.
‘I’ll have a glass of white wine. Small.’
He nodded. As he headed off, she watched him, helplessly driven to stare as her heart twisted inside her.
There could be only one reason why he had shown up out of the blue.
To try and get their friendship back on an even footing.
To erase what had happened between them so that the clock could be turned back and they could somehow retrieve the innocent relationship they had once shared.
He’d tried to get in touch with her, but she’d ignored all his phone calls and text messages.
Her bruised heart hadn’t been ready to pick anything back up.
There were too many links between them, however, for them to remain on opposite sides of the fence forever.
Sooner or later, it would make sense for them to talk, which didn’t mean that talking to him now was going to further anything.
All that water under the bridge would have to do a lot more flowing before she would be able to look back and see what had been lost, with a view to finding a way to reach out and rescue some of it.
She watched him weave his way back to where she was sitting, drinks in hand.
‘How did you find me?’ was the first thing she asked when he’d sat down, her voice still icily unwelcoming.
‘My mother sent me your address. I went round and found your housemate there, and she told me where I could find you. You never let me know where you were moving. You never answered my texts. You never returned my calls. You disappeared on me.’
‘I know. What did you expect?’
‘You told my mother that you couldn’t see a future with a man who spent all his time working, that you had found a job in London because you needed a change…that you needed a complete break in routine to find yourself.’
‘I said what I had to say, and I did what I had to do.’
‘What about me?’
‘What about you?’
‘You said nothing to me, Jen.’
‘Oh, I said everything to you, Gabriel. I put my heart on the line for you, and don’t think you can sit here and tell me that you didn’t ask for that.
So where’s the problem resuming our friendship?
I took a risk, and do you know what I learnt?
’ She leaned towards him, her blue eyes as icy as the wintry Arctic Ocean.
‘I learnt that what you said to me then was spot-on. I deserve better than you.’
‘I know what I said. I remember every word. I know I’m sitting here and that I should expect nothing from you, but…’
‘But what?’
‘The past three months have been total agony for me, Jen. I’ve missed you.’
‘What have you missed, Gabriel?’ she said impatiently and with simmering hostility. ‘The friendship or the sex?’
‘Both, and everything in between.’
‘Well, too bad. I needed some space from you. That was why I didn’t tell you my plans or what I was doing or where I was going.
Can you get that? And now that you’re here, I still find that I need time away from you, so as soon as we’ve finished our drinks, I’d really appreciate it if you left. I’ll get in touch…sometime.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You don’t have a choice.’
‘You said you loved me…’
‘I don’t want to talk about this right now, Gabriel.’ She drained her glass and stood up, looking around for her bag and reaching for her coat.
He stood up to tower over her.
‘I need to.’
‘Life’s not all about you, believe it or not.’
‘Hear me out. Please, Jen. For the sake of…everything we shared.’
Their eyes collided. Gabriel felt dizzy, his emotions unregulated, everything inside him churning in chaos.
He swallowed and shifted uneasily, pushing his fingers through his hair while she continued to watch him in coolly polite silence.