Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“So, I think it’s best for the both of us if we cut our arrangement off now,” Max carried on heartlessly, and Bo chewed on her lip hard. “We don’t want to drag anything out unnecessarily, do we?”
Bo made no response, still stunned to her core.
“And no post-mortem of our . . .” Max paused, “. . . our relationship will be necessary. I don’t think it would be of help to either of us.”
Finally, Bo found her voice. “Is that all you’ve got to say?” she asked him, and she couldn’t help the indignation from creeping into her words.
Max gave an ugly laugh. “I think I’ve said enough, don’t you? Unlike you, who hasn’t said anything at all.”
“Max—” she went to protest again, but he hadn’t finished talking. Not yet.
“Not that you needed to say anything,” Max carried on. “Not when your silence says everything. You’re so obvious. So obvious, and I’m an idiot for ever thinking—” he stopped, shaking his head abruptly. “It doesn’t matter.”
“So, that’s it then?” Bo asked, and she wrapped her arms around her stomach, mirroring his stance.
“Yes. That’s it then.”
Once again, Bo was too stunned, too heartsick and sore, to reply.
So, she simply stared up at him again, still bewildered and hurt, trying to process what he was telling her.
She was obvious, he’d said. Well, yes, she was, and she knew she was too.
Her love for him had been in her eyes, and it was probably still written all over her face now.
Not that it mattered. He didn’t want her love, did he?
He didn’t want her love, and he didn’t want her, and now he was finished with both of them.
Max cleared his throat. “By the way, I’ve told my guests that the hedge is the border of my garden, and they need to stay off your property. If anyone does drift towards you let me know. I’ll clear them.”
It was so innocuous a comment to make after the devastation he’d just levied on her heart that Bo gaped at him. As she did, something Ida had said the other day came bubbling to the forefront of her mind, and she couldn’t help herself from spitting it out.
“By the way? By the way?” she stuttered in disbelief. “Well, by the way, I would like to say, with a great deal of feeling, fuck you, Max Fitzroy.”
Max stared at her.
“And if any of your guests come anywhere near my garden, I’ll push them into the pond,” she added angrily, before she spun on her heels and retreated to the safety of her summer house.
She slammed the door shut behind her, her breath coming hard and heart beating fast, and she flicked at the light switch before remembering her lack of power and cursing Max again.
Not that she needed lights, she told herself.
You didn’t need lights when your only plan was lying on your bed and crying your eyes out.
* * *
She lay on her bed and cried for an hour before there was a plaintive knock on her door.
“Fuck off, Max,” she spat, though her angry words were muffled by her embarrassingly tear-soaked pillow.
“It’s not Max,” Willa returned gently. “It’s me.”
“I just want to be alone right now,” Bo said. “You didn’t need to come over.”
“I really think I did,” Willa said. “You sent me a WhatsApp that was basically a stream of unidentifiable letters and numbers. After that I got a voicemail which sounded a lot like you crying. Sobbing, actually. Can I come in?”
“But I don’t have any power,” Bo replied feebly. “Foxes chewed through the cable and then Max plugged in some party lights.”
“Okay,” Willa said slowly. “Well, I brought wine, and we don’t need power for that.”
Bo stood, wiping her eyes off and opening the door. Willa leaned against the doorway, looking at her with sympathetic eyes.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You look like shit, Bo. Even in this flattering muted light.”
“I feel like it too,” Bo said, sniffling. She could feel how swollen her eyes were, and knew her face was puffy and red. “You brought wine?”
“Your messages gave me the impression you needed it.”
“Won’t Scarrow miss you?”
“Not tonight.” Willa shrugged. “He’s in LA.”
Bo nodded, and Willa stepped into her house, pulling Bo towards her for a hug.
“Wills,” Bo sniffed again. “I’m sad.”
“Oh, Bo.” Willa squeezed her tightly. “Fuck him, right? Let’s open the wine. We can sit in the dark, and you can tell me what happened.”
“Nothing good happened.”
“You mean you told him you loved him?”
“I didn’t need to,” Bo said miserably. “He told me he’d already figured it out. I’m obvious, that’s what he said. He then ended it. But don’t worry,” she felt her eyes fill with tears once more. “He’s going to keep his guests away from my garden and get an electrician in tomorrow, so there’s that.”
Willa stared at her for a moment. “No wonder you look like you do. Where is he? Mr Two out of Ten? Want me to kill him?”
Bo shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? We could, I don’t know, jam his hand into electrical cabling and blame the foxes or something.”
“I’m sure, but thanks all the same.” Bo took a deep breath. “I love him, Wills. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”
“Even after what he did? Even after what he said?”
Bo nodded. “Yes. Even after that.”
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Willa remarked, and she squeezed Bo again.
“It doesn’t matter whether he deserves me or not.” Bo sighed. “It matters whether he wants me or not, and he’s decided he doesn’t. Case closed. Flower dead. Concerto finished.”
“Asshole.”
“That’s the thing,” Bo replied, looking at Willa with eyes that still stung from her earlier crying.
“I don’t think he is. He told me himself: it isn’t his fault that feelings got involved, and it isn’t mine either.
It just happened. We had an arrangement, and I broke it. He’s not an asshole for that.”
“He’s an asshole for how he dealt with it though. He could’ve been nicer about it, Bo.”
“He’s getting an electrician in. And keeping his guests away from my garden.”
“What? You mean like the two who just poured the remainder of their drinks into your pond?”
“What?!” Bo sat bolt upright, peering out of her window.
Sure enough, two young women were stood by her pond, talking and laughing, their empty glasses floating on top of the pondweed.
Fury immediately filled her. “That pond is a fragile eco-system. I have breeding great crested newts in there,” she said indignantly.
“How are my newts meant to have baby newts if they’re all too drunk to get laid? ”
Willa shrugged, but Bo was already on her feet.
“I’m going to talk to them, and then find Max,” she said to Willa. “You stay here and keep the wine cold.”
“What? No,” Willa protested, standing too. “There’s a party up there. I’m joining it.”
“We’re not invited, Wills.”
“So? They weren’t invited to your place.” Willa nodded to the women outside. “But they still came over anyway. Come on, I want to meet Mr Two out of Ten. I want to see the dick who broke your heart.”
“His name is Max.”
“Max then. I just want a peek. Look, when I find him, I’ll tell him to come and move his guests. Then you won’t have to.”
Bo hesitated. “You’re Willa Abbott. People will recognize you.”
“So? What if they do? I’ll just say I’m a lookalike.
Berg and I use that excuse all the—” Willa’s face shifted.
“Look, I’ll just take a look at Mr Two out of Ten, get him to move his guests on, and then I’ll sidle back down here, okay?
It means you don’t have to talk to him, and the breeding ground of your great breasted boots—”
“Great crested newts.”
“Whatever. Anyway, it means the pond will be okay.”
Bo exhaled deeply, before nodding. “Fine. Talk to Max. Get him to move his guests. But then come straight back, okay? I don’t want Max to have any more ammunition against me.”
“Ammunition?” Willa blinked.
Bo sighed. “I don’t have his love, Wills, but I still have his respect. Don’t do anything to mess with that, okay?”
“Bo . . .”
“It’s all I have,” Bo said sadly. “It’s all I have.”
* * *
They left the relative safety of Bo’s summer house, and Willa immediately marched up the garden, searching out Max.
Bo, at a loss of what to do without the safety net of both her home and Willa, decided to fish the abandoned glassware out of her pond.
Quietly, so she didn’t disturb the giggling women who’d trespassed onto her property — and how was that for irony?
— she unlocked her shed and stepped inside, looking for the net she used to clear pondweed and other unwanted items from the water.
It was then, while blindly searching in the dark for her torch, so she could find the net, that she heard it: a silky, luxurious-sounding voice. Though lightly accented, it was still undoubtedly European in origin, and Bo paused, suddenly struck with interest.
What were Max’s friends like? Were they like him, all smooth intellect hidden behind sharp edges, or were they different?
Would they be the kind of people who looked like they belonged on a catalogue cover, with a Georgian townhouse and designer dog, or would they be tortured, artistic types?
Max never spoke about them. He was too private, too guarded.
Bo chewed on her lip, intensely curious.
“Max is out of sorts this evening, don’t you think?” the voice asked, and Bo crouched down, trying to keep as still and quiet as possible.
“He seems like the same old Max to me. I never know how to read him.”
“No, he’s definitely out of sorts.”
“Well, you’d know. He’s your ex.”
Bo froze. Ex?
She blinked in the dark, pulse quickening, her torch all but forgotten. Her first instinct was to move, to retreat to the safety of her summer house, but something kept her rooted to the spot.
There was a laugh, high and bubbly, like champagne being poured over ice.
“Ex or not, I still know when something’s wrong. He’s gone all quiet and brooding. He’s doing that thing with his jaw too. You know what I mean. When he’s pretending not to be upset by something but absolutely is?”
“Is he?”