Chapter Fourteen #2
“So I was thinking maybe he could also coordinate with Jude,” Leon says, “be like a go-between.”
I look into my coffee cup for a moment. It’s tempting to be a coward and walk in the opposite direction whenever I see Jude. But I refuse to think our friendship’s over.
“Dane is a great idea,” I say, “and I’d definitely be interested in him moving to PAWS if you and he are up for it.
But I hope I won’t need a go-between. I will talk to Jude and try to patch things up.
We’ve known each other a long time, and I hope that once he accepts that he and Beth are over, we’ll be able to move on. ”
“Cool,” Leon says. “Hopefully you’re right.”
He glances at Noah and Stefan then, though, and I know what he’s thinking. That it would be understandable if Jude refused to forgive me.
I hope that’s not the case. I don’t want to cause any bad feeling between PAWS and the Ark. That’s completely the opposite to what I was hoping for.
“I bumped into Tyr Donovan the other night,” I say, hoping to distract them from my predicament. “You know him, right?”
“Of course,” Noah says, helping himself to some sushi. Tyr comes from Sunrise Bay, and his family is well known in the area.
“He’s left the Navy.”
“Shit.” Leon’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Yeah, and it sounds as if he’s finding it difficult to get a job up here. I thought I’d nab him before he decides to head to Auckland.”
“Great idea.” Leon pours another cup of coffee for himself. “Doing what?”
“Maybe working with Cullen, training the dogs.”
“Sounds as if it’s coming together down there for you,” Noah says. “How’s the building coming along?”
I tell them about Isaac and the plans he’s drawn up for the revamped farmhouse, and then we talk through the rest of the staff list. Leon also goes through a couple of contracts, and we discuss how it’s going to work for any staff who choose to continue to help from time to time at the Ark.
PAWS is going to be a separate company, but it’s clear there’ll be a lot of collaboration between us.
We polish off the food and empty the coffee jug, and then around two p.m. decide it’s time to get on with our days. I say goodbye to the others and head to Reception.
This is split into two halves, with a waiting room near the clinic side on the left, and the desk and a large area of items for purchase on the right.
“Hey, Frieda,” I say to the woman behind the desk.
“Hey, Archer. Can I help?”
“I’m picking up a rescue dog tomorrow. I need to make sure I have everything she needs.”
“Oh, how lovely! What breed?”
“A Spoodle.”
“Oh, the strawberry-blonde one?”
I laugh. “That’s right.”
“They make great therapy dogs apparently. Come on then, what do you need?”
We gather together a soft bed, water and food bowls, a leash and a harness, a few toys, and a couple packets of treats.
“Hmm, she’ll want some food, too,” I say.
“You need to check with the Forever Home as to what they’re feeding her.” She hesitates. “Would you like me to go and ask them?”
I realize she saw what happened in the Quad with Jude, and she’s wondering whether I’m wary of talking to him. I need to fix this, now. I can’t have everyone walking on eggshells around us.
“No, it’s okay, I’ll go.” I give her a bright smile. “Hold these things for me?”
“Sure, I’ll put them in a box.”
I nod and go out into the Quad.
My stomach flips as I cross to the door to the Forever Home.
I have no idea how he’s going to be. I think back to when we were kids, meeting in the first year of high school, at eleven years old.
He was a skinny little thing, with a shock of dark hair, already attracting girls’ glances, mean and moody even before he entered his teenage years.
But we were put together for a science project, and when I invited him to my house on a Sunday afternoon to finish it, we discovered a joint love of dogs, Call of Duty, and Doritos, and a firm friendship was formed.
We were inseparable at school, but drifted apart a little when I studied psychology, and he went to veterinary college, specializing in shelter medicine.
He loves his job at the Ark working with the rescue animals.
I’ve fucked this up. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant. I need to put it right.
I push open the door and go into the office. Jude is sitting at his desk, alone, working on some paperwork. He looks tired and grumpy. The red mark on his jaw where I hit him is starting to darken to a bruise.
He looks up as I go in, leans back in his chair, and studies me, not smiling.
I look at the box of sandwiches in front of him. “Late lunch?”
“Yeah.” He gestures to it. “Feel free to help yourself, because what’s mine is yours, obviously.”
We stare at each other for a moment. Then, very slowly, his lips curve up, just a fraction.
I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans and perch on the edge of the table next to his. “You want to talk about it?”
He shrugs. Then he sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me you had feelings for her?”
I study my Converses. “It’s not the sort of thing you tend to admit to your best mate about his girlfriend.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Has what been going on?” I frown at him. “We haven’t been seeing each other behind your back, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I wonder whether he’s going to say he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t.
“I’d never have made a move on her while she was with you,” I say. “When I spoke to you, you said you’d broken up, and she said the same.”
“Yeah, but it was the same night, dude. The same night! You’ve got to see how that stings.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Really?”
“I do, Jude, of course I do, and on the surface of it, I’m ashamed that it happened the way it did.
But the thing is… what happened between me and Beth, it doesn’t have anything to do with you and her.
I wasn’t waiting for her to break up with you or anything.
But on Saturday night, I was worried about her, and I found her in the Driftwood, and we just got talking.
She didn’t want to go back to your place because she wasn’t ready to talk to you, and she asked if she could stay at mine.
Neither of us intended for anything to happen. ”
“But it did.”
“Yeah.”
“So there must have been something between you. She must have had feelings for you already.”
Something occurs to me then. I don’t think he’s actually mad at me, or at Beth. I think he understands. He just looks sad, and that feels like a punch to my gut.
“I don’t know,” I say, although I’m pretty sure she did. “All I know is that neither of us planned for it to happen. But in both our minds and hearts, she was single.”
He exhales a long, slow breath. Then he says, somewhat irritably, as he scratches at a mark on the desk, “It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s done now. Guess the only way is up, right?”
I study him, feeling the weight of his unhappiness. It’s been there for some time, and I know Beth could feel it, too.
“She thinks you’re still in love with Chrissie,” I tell him.
He looks up then, his eyes widening. “What?”
“You still wear her ring,” I point out. “And Beth’s not stupid. She asked me if I thought Chrissie was the love of your life. Because she was pretty convinced that she wasn’t.”
Jude gives a short laugh and covers his face with his hands, then lowers them and stares up at the ceiling. Then he looks back at me.
“What?” I say.
He plays with a pen on the desk. Eventually, he says, “I heard from her, a few months ago.”
My mouth opens, but no words come out.
“She wanted to see me,” he says. He looks down and doodles on a piece of paper.
“And did you?” I keep my voice even.
He frowns. “No. I was with Beth. I wouldn’t have done that.”
I watch him doodle little pawprints across the paper. “But you’ve kept in touch?”
He doesn’t reply.
I sigh. Somehow, deep down, Beth knew. She might not have known they were in touch, but she could obviously sense that his heart was no longer in their relationship.
I feel a lightening of my heart. It doesn’t make what I did excusable. Jude is still upset with both of us, and rightly so. But it means he had a part to play in their breakup that goes deeper than him saying he doesn’t want kids.
“Are you going to see her now you’re not with Beth?” I ask.
“She’s still in Australia.” It’s not an answer, it’s a side-step, but maybe he doesn’t know.
We sit quietly for a bit.
“So… are you two dating now?” he asks after a while.
I shake my head. “She wants some time alone. Noah’s offered her his cottage for a few weeks.”
He looks puzzled. “Why go through all this, turn everything upside down, and not date her?”
I hesitate. “Beth needs to close the door on her relationship with you before we start anything together.” I wait for him to make a sarcastic comment about us only waiting a few hours, but he doesn’t.
“Do you know when she’ll come and get her stuff?” he asks.
“No.”
“When she does, I’ll apologize to her,” he says. “For hurting her.”
“Will you tell her about Chrissie?”
“No.”
“It might make her feel better about the breakup.”
“No, and I don’t want you to tell her either.”
I frown. “I don’t like the thought of keeping it a secret from her.”
“Well, we’ll both have to live with your discomfort.” He glares at me.
A sense of wistful sadness settles over me. It’s possible that, over time, our friendship might improve. He might even forgive me. But things between us will never be the same. In his eyes, I’ll always be the friend who betrayed him, and I’ll have to live with that.
I get to my feet. “I know you’re upset with me, and that’s fair enough.
I’m not expecting that to disappear overnight.
I came here because I don’t want to make things awkward professionally.
It’s not fair on everyone else who works here.
So I’m hoping we can keep things civil, until the dust settles. ”
Jude just continues to doodle on the paper.
“One more thing,” I add, “you should know that I’ve offered Beth a position at PAWS.”
When I first had the idea of an animal-assisted therapy center a few years ago, I told Jude about it and asked him if he was interested in running it with me.
I thought we’d make a good team—me organizing the therapy side of things, and him looking after the animals.
But to my surprise he said no, that he’d prefer to stay in his role at the Ark.
Maybe he thought it unlikely the center would succeed, and he didn’t want to give up a secure job.
I understood if that was the case, although I was a little hurt, but I put it behind me.
He’s been supportive, and has offered to help with any manual work that needs doing, but he’s never mentioned moving from the Ark, and neither have I.
“I didn’t originally ask her,” I continue, “because I felt too awkward about us working in close proximity.”
“So you’ve liked her for a while,” he says.
There’s no point in lying. “I’ve always liked her.”
His eyebrows rise. I don’t think he expected that.
“Anyway,” I continue, “I’ve offered her the role of Senior Veterinary Nurse. I thought she could start soon as it might make things easier for you both if you’re not seeing each other every day.”
“How very altruistic of you,” he says.
Anger flares inside me. “Fuck you,” I tell him before I think better of it.
I put my hands on my hips. “You were hung up on your ex, and instead of coming straight out and telling Beth, you made her feel as if she wasn’t good enough.
But it’s okay, you did her a favor, because you just sent her into the arms of a guy who does love her. ”
He stares at me. “You love her?”
I glare back. “Yeah.”
He looks genuinely surprised again. “Have you told her that?”
I slide my hands back into my pockets. “I’ve told her I’m in love with her, not that I love her. I didn’t want to scare her off.”
I thought he might be angry at that, yell at me that I had no right to tell that to someone else’s girlfriend. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he says, “Right. Well, I wish you both the best of luck.” He doesn’t smile, though, and his eyes, while not exactly icy, are definitely a few degrees below body temperature.
“I need to ask what food you’re feeding Queenie,” I say flatly.
“Royal Canin.”
“Thanks.”
I hesitate, but he just looks back at his desk, so I turn and walk out, letting the door close behind me.