Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Joshua
It was a normal Sunday night get-together with my five closest friends.
As I looked around, I was reminded how these guys had been here for me.
When I’d first started my business, these nights in the pub had been invaluable for brainstorming ideas or discussing problems. And before that, when my engagement ended, these guys kept me sane.
Stopped me drinking and helped me channel my hurt, anger, and frustration into my business—and the tennis court, of course.
These men were the reason I’d gotten through.
Since my conversation with Hartford through the bathroom door, my brain hadn’t switched off, and I couldn’t quite figure out why. I needed to talk it out.
“Who’s this Hartley I keep hearing about?
” Andrew said as we sat at the round oak table and watched Dexter and Beck argue at the bar over who was putting their card down for the tab.
“She important?” He never minced his words.
Never gave into platitudes or overstatement.
And he had an uncanny ability to zone-in on the crux of an issue.
“It’s Hartford,” I said, nodding. Hartford Kent.
“She’s fine. Moving out in a month.” Her time next door had gone quickly, at least for me.
I’d thought I’d hate having her as a neighbor, but it had been better than expected.
Much better. “She’s become a good friend.
” A friend that I shared things with I’d never told anyone.
“What are we talking about?” Gabriel asked as he took a seat.
“Nothing really. I was just saying that Hartford is moving out soon. She’s become a good friend. Last night she was in the bath and we were talking—”
“Talking in the bath?” Gabriel asked.
“Who are you taking baths with?” Tristan asked as he sat down, quickly followed by Beck and Dexter.
“Joshua was talking to Hartford while she was in the bath,” Andrew replied, and I didn’t need to look at Tristan to know that his eyes were popping out on sticks.
“I was on the other side of the bathroom door. We weren’t in the bath together.
We’re friends. I was encouraging her to relax and take care of herself.
” I wasn’t clueless—I knew I wanted her to be happy and I knew that meant I liked her a lot.
As much as Kelly was a great girl, I wasn’t encouraging her into the bath after we’d had sex. Hartford was different.
Around the table, all my friends were exchanging pointed glances. I got it. It was the same kind of confusion I’d felt internally for a while now.
“Right,” Beck replied. “You like her, and she’s a great girl. Attractive, seems to know how to handle you. Clever, obviously.”
“Yes of course she’s a great girl. And I don’t need to be handled, thank you.” It made me sound like cattle. But he was right, I did like her.
“It’s good that you like someone, finally. We know Diana did a number on you, but she was twenty-two when all that went down. Who’s not an idiot at twenty-two?” Tristan said.
Mentioning Diana in our group discussions was akin to talking about Macbeth in a theatre.
You just didn’t. No one needed reminding of what had happened.
It was embedded in our existence. Like foundations of a house that had been dug in a hundred years ago and no one had seen or thought about again.
So why had my so-called friends decided tonight was the night to take down the off-limits sign on my ex?
Maybe I’d given them some kind of subconscious permission slip.
“You’re still an idiot,” I snapped at Tristan.
“From what I hear from Dexter and Beck, you and this Hartford woman have been spending a lot of time together,” Andrew said, thankfully changing the subject. I wasn’t here to talk about Diana. “Everyone is cheering you on.”
“Will your heads explode if I tell you I kissed her?” I wasn’t about to confess anything more had happened between us.
“Good work,” Tristan said, holding his hand up for a high five he wasn’t going to get.
“Well, that’s progress.” Gabriel put his hand on my shoulder. “I can tell you from experience that running from pain will only get you so far. Diana left you a long time ago. You were a different man. History won’t repeat itself.”
Now Gabriel was talking about Diana? It felt like they were in my back garden, digging up my patio. There were no dead bodies there. I wasn’t in pain. Or running from it. At the time it had been difficult but we’d all had difficulties in our past. I enjoyed my life now. I was happy.
“You need to move on from Diana, mate,” Andrew said. “The probability of Hartford also leaving you at the altar is statistically insignificant.”
They were all piling on now. Is this what they all thought?
That I was still hung up on Diana? From anyone else, I would have ignored them, but I trusted these men.
If I ever needed to bury a dead body, these men would help me do it.
And they’d figure out a burial site more inventive than under my nonexistent patio.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “I was trying to be slightly softer but, yes. What Andrew said.”
I needed a button that would transport me back to the penthouse, so I could soak in the bath for ten minutes and think about what they were saying. And then afterward, I could zap myself back here and tell them my conclusions. I was going to have to have my Genius Time on the hoof.
“I don’t do relationships,” I said as if I were placing the first piece of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle down in the middle of the table.
“Right,” said Dexter. “After being kicked in the bollocks like you were, it’s normal not to want to commit again . . . right away.”
The second piece of the puzzle had been put down.
I could follow Dexter’s logic—I’d not had another serious relationship since Diana.
Part of that had been because all my focus was on my job, which, come to think of it, made Hartford’s commitment to medicine after her accident all the more understandable.
It struck me like a brick to the head, how we’d both reacted to our separate heartache by wholly throwing ourselves into work.
What did it say about Hartford that after over a decade, she was still doing it?
“But not forever,” Gabriel said. “At some point you have to let that pain go and move forward.”
“I don’t feel like I’ve been holding onto what happened,” I said.
That’s what had brought me here tonight.
I liked Hartford. A lot. I liked her complete lack of self-consciousness around me.
I liked her smile and her freckles and the way she was so bloody kind.
I liked her silence as much as her conversation.
But there was something stopping me moving things forward with her. I just wasn’t sure what.
Was it possible I had been holding onto what Diana had done for so long that the pain had become like white noise? I didn’t often think about Diana or what she’d done—or hadn’t done. I had a full and fulfilling life. It wasn’t like I was still heartbroken.
More like I still bore a faded scar.
“I’m not sure I know what my life looks like with a woman,” I said, laying down another piece of the jigsaw. If I was going to be honest anywhere, it was with the men who’d seen me through thick and thin.
“Maybe you haven’t tried very hard to picture it,” Gabriel said.
“The arrangements you have at the moment don’t involve the women you’re sleeping with being in your life outside the bedroom.
It’s like you will only entertain the opposite of marriage.
And maybe it helps, but each arrangement seems like a reaction to being hurt. ”
I didn’t feel hurt.
“Bethany’s the same way—for ages she wouldn’t sleep in her big bed because she fell out of it the first night she spent in there. In the end, she didn’t even remember falling. She just knew she didn’t like the bed.”
I took a deep breath, trying to let his words settle. “You being celibate for a thousand years was you not wanting to sleep in the big bed?” I asked.
He nodded. “I didn’t want to care for someone and have my heart ripped out again. A bit like you, I suppose. When Autumn came along, I knew I had to make a choice between opening myself up and losing her. Opening myself up was the lesser of the two evils.”
My invisible, internal scar burned red at his words. My wedding day had been the worst of my life. People talk about their worlds being shattered and most of the time they were exaggerating, but that day? That day, everything I thought I knew about the world went up in flames.
I’d woken up with a sense of certainty of how the day would go—who I was and who I was going to marry. Within hours, it had all gone up in smoke.
I’d replayed all our conversations in my head, searching for clues that she wasn’t happy or that she didn’t want to marry me, but I’d found nothing.
And I still didn’t know why she’d left. I’d never had any kind of explanation.
I had to start again from the foundations and build myself back up—my confidence, my self-belief, my trust in people around me.
Gabriel continued. “You have a lifetime of experience behind you in a way you didn’t last time you fell in love.”
In love? It was like Gabriel had just dumped a hundred puzzle pieces on a carefully emerging picture and obscured everything that had been coming into focus.
“I’m not in love. And I’m over Diana. It’s hardly like I’ve been celibate all these years.” I laughed, but Gabriel’s face was stony still.
“There’s nothing wrong with casual sex after a breakup,” Dexter said. “We’ve all been there. But unless the shagging turns into more, it’s going to start to feel empty. Surely you must get that.”
I considered how I’d been avoiding Kelly. Sex with her was never bad, but it had become . . . a little less than it had been at the start. Our routine was always the same:
A couple of sentences about work or the weather.
Kiss.
Undress.
Blowjob.
Sex.
Orgasm.
A couple more sentences about work or the weather while pulling on our clothes, followed by a goodbye.
Dexter was right. It felt empty. Even though I’d only slept with Hartford once, being with her made me feel full. And if I was full, I didn’t need Kelly. Or anyone else.
“I like the company of beautiful women,” I said. “I’m not going to apologize for that. Most men would give up a limb to spend a night with one of the women I . . . You get the point.”
“Who gives a fuck what other men think,” Andrew said.
“The only person who matters is you. And maybe your mum. Fuck the rest of them. You don’t sleep with women to make other men jealous.
Or because you’ve convinced yourself it’s the only way to avoid being hurt.
You make love to a woman because she makes you happy. ”
It was like he’d punched a hole clear through my chest and I could feel the wind whistling through.
Hartford made me happy.
Not she’s-fun-to-hang-out-with happy, but really miss-her-as-soon-as-she-leaves-the-room happy.
It made me want to pull her into my arms and spend the night swapping stories. And it made me want to lace up my trainers and run.
“God damn you, Andrew. You’re always fucking working. Why do you have to be available tonight?” He knew I didn’t mean it. It was why, along with the group message, I’d sent him a one-on-one follow-up saying I hoped it could make it. I’d needed him here.
He unleashed a smile. “You’re welcome.”
“Say in theory, you all are right and I like Hartford and I’m protecting myself.
How do I convince her to take a chance on me?
She . . . thinks I’m only capable of having casual relationships.
” I wasn’t sure she wasn’t wrong. I didn’t know where the bloody hell to start.
“I’m not going to push myself on someone who’s not interested—”
“You coward. You need to pursue her. Convince her,” Tristan said.
“What? You think I should be like you and stalk her into doing my bidding? How many women have taken out injunctions on you?”
“Persistence pays off,” he said, disappointingly not rising to the bait I was dangling. “And if she’s worth it, she’s worth a bit of effort. Stoke the fire of desire.”
“The what? You know—never mind. I can’t convince Hartford I’m the man for her when she probably thinks I’m exactly the opposite of the man she wants.”
“Why not?” asked Andrew. “Gabriel used to think he wanted to be a lawyer. Look at him now—covered in sawdust most of the time. People can change. You should at least give her a chance to see the man who is serious about her and let her make up her mind.”
I groaned. She probably saw herself with another doctor, a man who saved lives and did other worthy things. “Actually, I need to find her another date. The guy I had lined up went back to his girlfriend. I need someone good. The last guy was a disaster.”
“Instead of finding her another date, why don’t you take her out?” Tristan asked.
“Have you been talking to Hollie? Hartford would just laugh and say I was too lazy to find her someone else.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Dexter said. “I know a doctor. Good-looking guy. Sporty. Only issue is he’s a Chelsea supporter, but if we leave that aside, he’s a good catch. I think he actually did that doctors in warzones thing that Hartford did.”
It felt as if Dexter was slowly sinking a knife into my stomach. “How is this helpful?”
Dexter continued. “This guy isn’t ready to settle down. But you can show her who he is online. She’ll be excited to meet him, right?”
“Again, I’m not sure how this is helping,” I said.
“You tell her that maybe she should have a practice date with you,” Dexter explained. “To make sure things go well for that last date. You offer to give her feedback, tell her you’ll coach her so her date with my mate goes well.”
“I like it,” Tristan said. “Then you can make your move.”
“You should be on the date for real,” Dexter said. “Pick her up, give her flowers, compliment her, take her to dinner somewhere really romantic, hold her hand across the table. Maybe kiss her at the end of the date. By the time you’re done, she’ll have forgotten all about my mate.”
“Basically, you’re saying I should trick her into going out with me?
” What I liked most about my relationship with Hartford was there were no games or pretenses.
I could be exactly who I was with her because she was exactly who she was with me.
Except I’d gone and fucked that all up by catching feelings.
Dexter shrugged. “Not trick her exactly. She’ll just get the opportunity to see you at your best. What have you got to lose?”
Hartford. Hartford was what I had to lose. But if I didn’t do anything, I’d lose her anyway. It was worth a shot.