Chapter 13
James
Sadie’s questions last night made me finally drop the hand I’d been holding up and arrange to talk to Jane about the fact that I’ve moved out permanently. As I head out of the office at lunchtime, a message drops into my phone:
Where are you?
Five minutes away.
She catches my eye when I step into the Conwell Coffee Hall, brown hair pulled up in her familiar ponytail, and a clawing hopelessness I haven’t felt in over a week comes rushing back with a vengeance.
I’d hardly noticed it had disappeared, but as soon as it fills my stomach, I remember it like an old friend I was hoping I’d never run into again.
Thank God for Des and his apartment; if I was still living with Jane, I’d have no respite from this.
As I weave between the tables, she rises out of her seat, and I lean forward and kiss her cheek. The familiar scent of her lemony shampoo hits my nostrils. Or was it her body lotion? I can’t remember.
She pulls back. “Finally! How are you, Jim-bug?”
I can’t hold back my wince at the nickname.
And we never had to ask each other questions like this: Living together meant we absorbed moods like osmosis.
I could tell how her day had gone by the way she closed the front door.
Though clearly that understanding was all on my side because she told me when we split up that she felt we were like brother and sister.
“I’m fine. Let me go order a coffee.”
She touches the stitches on my face, and I almost jerk back in surprise. Jesus.
“Is this from the accident?” she says. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you since …”
“Let me get a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”
As I stand waiting for the barista, I try to organize the details of that night in my mind.
They’re fucking hazy. The sign on the door that said “NO ACCESS”; looking down at the myriad of lights and cars so far below; Des leaning over me and examining my face.
Christ, I was so drunk. Why did I think I’d be brave enough to jump off a building?
I snort. I injured myself dropping a bottle of booze on my face, and I have no recollection of where it came from or the leg injury.
Suddenly, I’m gripped with a fierce desire to tell Sadie about this whole thing.
I’m sure she’d give me an amused lip twist and some comment about the mess I’d make on the sidewalk.
I take my cup of coffee and slide into the seat opposite Jane.
“Yeah, I’m sorry I disappeared on you and ...” I am not saying that asshole’s name. “… that night.” I shake my head. “I ended up falling over a curb. I gashed my calf and cut my face. I just needed a few stitches. It was no big deal, really.”
“No big deal!” She gazes off to the side, jaw tight. “You should have called us! We would have taken you to the ER.”
Us. We. Christ.
“There was no need for Des to move you into his place,” she sniffs.
Says who? “Yeah, Des phoned me when I didn’t make it into the office.” Well, he called Pat the janitor, but close enough.
She frowns. “You weren’t in the apartment when I woke up. I just assumed you’d gone to work. Where were you?”
And the lies keep piling up. “The hospital.”
Her eyebrows rise. “All night?”
“It took a while to fix me up. They wanted a plastic surgeon to stitch my face.”
“It should have been me looking after you,” she says tightly. “You should have called me.”
I want to say that she scorched that when she left me for someone else, but something holds me back. We were together so long; berating her doesn’t feel right just now. My throat tightens.
“When are you coming home?” she says.
Home. I don’t think of our old apartment like that anymore. I run my hands through my hair. What the fuck do I say here? “Actually, I promised Des I’d look after his place while he’s away.”
Her jaw drops. “What? Why?”
“He was worried about it.” Not quite the truth, but … moving on.
She huffs. “So, you’re abandoning me because Des asked you for a favor, just like that?”
What, like she didn’t abandon me first?
“God, you’re always so kind to other people. I always came second,” she pouts as she turns her head toward the window again.
It’s like a dagger to the heart. I don’t think I treated her like an afterthought—did I? “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
I could lay into her here, but where would it get me apart from some short-term satisfaction? I’ve been trying to save this relationship, not scupper it—salvage something from this mess and repair the damage.
Big, sad eyes swing back to fix on my face. “I worry about you, James.” She reaches out and squeezes my forearm. “You’re my best friend. I want to help.”
Her best friend? How can you be best friends with someone who kicks you in the teeth? “Help with what?”
“You haven’t been yourself lately.”
I want to laugh and laugh. Of course I’m not my fucking self! She’s the one who caused all this, and this conversation is making it worse. Who says something like that?
“Of course I’m not myself, Jane. I lost the person I thought I was going to marry.”
Her eyes flutter away. “Will you come back home when Des comes back at least?”
And every time I say anything about that proposal, she ducks it. “He’s away for two years.”
“Two years!” She rolls her lips together. “What am I supposed to do about the apartment? I can’t pay for two bedrooms on my own.”
“I can cover the rent for a couple of months until you find someone else to pay for the room.” It’ll take most of my money, but I can do it.
The sad eyes are back. “But I want to live with you! I thought you’d want to stay and save money. I miss having you there. I liked our nights doing Sudoku and …” She trails off.
Welcome to your consequences, I don’t say.
And where’s Kevin in all this? He’s based in Philadelphia, but I expect they’ll move in together at some point.
God, I am not asking those questions. The less I hear about Kevin, the better.
Des said she wants to have her cake and eat it, too, that she’s totally oblivious, and he was spot on.
“Perhaps someone at your work could take care of Des’s apartment, and you could come back home?” she says.
Reality seeps into my skin. She scorched my home as well as me. She threw a flamethrower over everything until there was nothing left except the charred remains of this awkward conversation.
I shake my head. “I don’t think they’d be able to afford Des’s place.” Something about how she’s leaning on me like this, when Sadie gives me all the space in the world, makes something dark uncoil inside me.
I stare out of the window at the lunchtime crowds streaming past. “It was nice living together, but ultimately you found something better.” It almost kills me to say it, but I have to draw some line under this, to make her understand, to stop her asking me for something I can no longer give her.
My inclination is always to be accommodating, but I can’t do that here.
I turn back to her to find her eyes shimmering with tears.
“Hey, don’t sweat it, Jane. The first few meetings will be difficult, but then the awkwardness will pass, and we’ll be like old friends again.
” I squeeze her hand and glance at my watch.
“Oh, wow! I’ve got to dash. I’ve taken over Des’s role and I’ve got a staff meeting in about ten minutes. Let’s catch up again soon.”
There’s no meeting, but who cares at this point? I knock back my coffee in one, scalding the roof of my mouth.
“Sounds like you’re taking over his whole life,” she grumbles.
“Pretty much!” I give her a wan smile and then lean over the table and kiss her cheek and bolt out the door.
Once I’m out on the street, I gulp in a huge gust of air.
God, that was brutal. Never again. I am coming up with excuse after excuse to not put myself through that again.
I reel up the sidewalk. Cars whizz past me when I reach Broadway.
Why did I walk over here and meet Jane in the middle of a workday?
The thought of going back to the office …
My hand twitches against my leg as I turn left, and I’m about two blocks down when the red sign of a bar down one of the side streets catches my eye, like a mirage.
A whiskey. One shot would take the edge off all this.
I wheel in through the door, taking in the dark wood and stained glass as I hitch myself onto a barstool. Fuck, I promised Des I wouldn’t drink on my own again. Is drinking in a bar okay because you’re around other people, even if they’re not technically with you? I’m sure that’s not what he meant.
The bartender jerks his chin at me. “What can I get you?”
“Jack Daniels, thanks. Double.” That should do it.
He nods.
Who did Des think I was going to drink with, anyway?
I have very few friends outside of my relationship with Jane, and I’m the head of the team at work.
I have no one to call in New York, no one who’d understand.
Except perhaps Jo, and she’s heavily pregnant and my boss.
Not exactly a prime day-drinking candidate.
I can’t get drunk with someone from the office either.
Although … maybe …
Sadie.
I groan to myself. But something about living together and bonding over Mr. Karen …
she’s become a friend, even in such a short time.
The guy comes back with my whiskey, and I take a sip, heat burning down my throat.
Would Sadie be willing to sit with me for half an hour while I calm the fuck down?
She said she was good with secrets, after all.
No one needs to know I had a couple of drinks in the middle of the day.
It’s not exactly unheard of in Manhattan. I fire off a text.
Could you come and meet me?
Is everything okay?
Yeah. I just need you to come and meet me.
Like, where?
I peer down the bar to where the bartender is cleaning some glasses. “Hey, what’s the address here?”