London, Early August
And then, in that wonderful way of hers, his ex-wife messaged at just the right moment.
Hey Berty. I just want you to know that I’ve quit drinking. I’m seven days sober. I’m so sorry for everything I put you through. I love you, always. C x
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the bus window as emotion flooded through him. This time even Jones could not mistake it: it was relief, and love, overwhelming in its intensity.
Only now could he admit how deeply he had longed for this moment.
Seeing Hey Berty beneath her name again seemed almost too good to be true.
Jones had ditched his first name at sixth-form college, when he’d gotten tall and good at sports, but he would always be Berty to Charlie.
She had known him since secondary school, back when he’d been an awkward scrawny kid and she’d been the beautiful but odd girl who followed Fearne around.
She’d loved him even then, and she still loved him now. I love you, always.
He opened the message and scrolled up and down, though he’d long ago deleted their message history in an attempt to stop reading through the beautiful minutiae of their marriage, so the screen barely moved with his thumb.
He wanted to keep the message lit there, as bold and bright as his wonderful wife.
She had been the pride of his life, with her tumble of unruly dark waves and her little vintage dresses, her endless new projects and her scrappy, wounded, ever-hopeful heart.
He had known from the age of fifteen that he would love her forever.
Until the drinking. He closed his eyes again.
She was sober. He could hardly let himself believe it.
The end of his marriage had been truly excruciating—he had left because he had tried everything he could think of and did not know what else he could do for her, but even so, it had felt like such a betrayal, and more than that, it had felt wrong.
He didn’t want to separate. He wanted her, the love of his life, but she was buried inside a new wine-drunk woman who wouldn’t acknowledge that she had a problem, and he didn’t know how to get her back.
Their mood board had hung in the kitchen, dotted with photos of that magical island she had introduced him to a few years ago, of plans for winters spent chasing the sun around the world and summers back on the Isle of Ormer.
Walking away from her had meant rewriting his whole life plan, and he hadn’t known how to do it.
As the bus pulled up at the stop by Aspen’s flat, Jones clicked the screen off, taking a deep, steadying breath.
Charlie always knew what Jones was feeling, and what he needed, and it seemed that still held after almost a year and a half apart.
He felt dizzy with the urgent desire to see her, aware all of a sudden of the aching hollow inside himself that had remained empty ever since he’d walked away from her.
But he had to face Aspen first.
—
When Aspen answered the door, he blinked in surprise.
She looked gorgeous, as always, but also entirely different: her trademark ginger hair was gone, dyed dark brown, and she’d cut in a fringe.
It made her look like a very sexy librarian.
Aspen’s ability to transform herself was part of the reason that it had taken them a while, when they’d met at Stuart’s birthday party, to realize they’d known each other at school.
Back then she’d just been the silent, watchful younger sister of Charlie’s friend Brianna, with carrot-orange hair and limbs that seemed too long for her, like a crane fly.
As he looked at her now, he noticed with vague wonder that even though he could see how stunning she was, one short text from his ex-wife had effectively killed all attraction he felt for her.
“Hello,” she said, with a guarded smile.
“Hi. New hair.”
“I needed a change,” she said, already walking through to the living room. “Can I get you a drink?”
The formality of it all felt incredibly strange; he’d had sex with Aspen on that sofa, held her while she cried in his lap on that armchair, fixed the baseboard by the TV himself.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
They sat. Jones felt almost painfully uncomfortable. He stared at the carpet.
“You were right,” he said eventually. “I did waste your time. I’m very sorry. I think…I did know you were serious about me in a way I just…couldn’t be, about you. I wanted to—but I couldn’t.”
For a moment she just regarded him from the bay window, her tea cupped in her palms. Poised as ever. For all her warmth and charm, there was something unreachable about Aspen. An unimpeachable, flawless outer shell that she’d worn even in grief.
“I so hoped you were different,” she said. “You had your shit together. You’d been married, you knew how to commit.” She sighed, looking out of the window.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me how much you wanted a baby?” he asked, after a long moment.
“I knew you were just out of a very serious relationship with a woman who didn’t want children.
I didn’t want to scare you off, I suppose.
I thought that once you were settled in a new serious relationship, you might start to think about having a family, if your partner wanted one.
And you made that comment, about not wanting to be a dad right now… ”
“I don’t even—”
“Yes, I know,” she said, voice sharp. “It was a throwaway remark.”
“I’m sorry. It was thoughtless. But you never seemed…I just got the impression you were fun and easy about stuff. I honestly didn’t think about the whole kids thing until the day with the Uber.”
She looked down at her tea for so long, he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say something else.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said at last. “The ticking clock. Wanting a child so much you feel like you’re living the wrong life, because all you want is to be a mother, but you date men, and you date men, and men are just shit, you know?
They all fall short. But I kept hoping, and I told myself every time that the next one would be better.
And, yes, I maybe…wasn’t up-front about what I wanted right away with you.
But in my vast experience of the dating scene, men spook easily, and sometimes they don’t know what they want until a woman has shown them. ”
Jones raised his eyebrows before he could help himself.
“What?” she said. “Tell me—did you know you wanted to get married when you met your ex?”
“I mean…I was a child when I first met Charlie.”
“What gave you the idea of proposing when you did?”
He thought about it, and then stopped thinking about it, because that was proving Aspen’s point.
“This has nothing to do with Charlie, anyway,” he said, but he knew instantly it was a lie.
If he’d not received that text on the way here, what conversation would he be having?
There was a horrible truth in what Aspen had told him at St. James’s Park: he did hate being alone.
If he couldn’t have Charlie…He shifted in his seat.
Aspen had been a great second choice, and he couldn’t say with certainty that he’d have given her up for anything but the possibility of his Charlie coming back to him.
Aspen was watching him shrewdly.
“You never did love me the way you loved her, did you?”
“I…I was with her for most of my life, Aspen, it’s hard to explain that sort of relationship to…”
“Someone like me? Someone who can’t make them stick?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The tension was rising. Jones was beginning to sweat.
He had never told Aspen why he’d left Charlie—he’d never told anybody.
The drinking had been her secret, and it would have been disloyal to share it.
But without it, it was hard to explain the nature of their breakup—how he really had thought there was no hope left for them, but how now that there was…
“Well, anyway, you can close off this chapter now,” she said. “Your fun year with fun Aspen. A year that doesn’t matter to you. A year I’ll never get back. You’ll go back to her, presumably? Yes, I can see in your face you’re already half there.”
“I’m not! I’m not. And it’s not that I didn’t love you, Aspen,” Jones said, readjusting his cap.
He didn’t want things to end like this—he didn’t want to leave her with the impression he’d treated her badly, particularly as he was just starting to think with horror that he might have done. “It’s more that you’re…”
“Mm. I get it, don’t you worry.” Aspen’s smile was cold and brittle as she said, “I’m just not Charlie Jones, am I?”