Chapter 24
MAGGIE
Jack is cricking his neck from side to side.
The feeling of inevitable nostalgia for this night, this time with him unburdened by the truth, shrinks the air around me.
The clear night presses down, the light from the moon heavy, the cold crisp air filling with dank, dark moisture.
I’m about to destroy this day. The perfectly imperfect Friday night.
I turn to him tentatively, tucking my legs up. I wrap my arms around my knees, and take a deep breath as I turn to him. He’s leaning back, head resting on the back of the ridge of concrete, eyes on the stars above.
‘Hmmm? Look!’ He points, mouth cracking open.
But I don’t look. There could be a thousand shooting stars, the northern lights could be strutting around in all their flamboyant colours and glory thrown across the sky like a feather boa and neither would be as spectacular as watching Jack’s face unfolding, relaxed yet excited at the same time.
I let my eyes rove along the curve of his jawline, the Roman nose, the Cupid’s bow of his upper lip.
I want to count every bristle of stubble along his skin, measure the exact width and length of the mole beneath his eye.
The wind lifts and drops his hair, the moisture unlocking the hint of repressed childhood curls.
‘Never mind,’ he says, the excitement falling from his face. ‘False alarm. It’s a satellite.’
The words I need to say cluster together, heavy in my throat. He turns to me, takes in my expression.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.
‘I—’ I pull my knees in tighter. ‘I need to tell you something.’ He sits up, shoulders pulled back, the concern in his eyes out of step with the wariness in his body language.
It’s natural that he should be on his guard.
‘This is going to sound—’ I close my eyes briefly, trying to think of how to release the words that I’m so terrified of unshackling.
But Jack deserves the truth. ‘I’ve been lying to you, Jack. ’
The laughter lines around his eyes fade, the skin between his eyebrows tightening.
‘Bruce isn’t a goldfish but a Danish prince?’ he asks hopefully. I can see he’s scared, that he’s trying to direct the conversation towards humour despite the crack in my voice.
‘No. He’s definitely a goldfish.’
‘So…?’
‘Before I tell you, can I ask that you listen to everything I have to say before you run?’
‘I’m not going to run.’ The words sound truthful, but he doesn’t know yet.
‘You might.’ I lift my head, pressing my lips together to stop the wrong words falling out in the wrong order.
‘I’m not afraid of germs. That… that isn’t why I can’t be around people.
’ Jack shifts backwards. Defensiveness flashes in his eyes, swiftly followed by confusion.
‘I can hear thoughts.’ I rush on. ‘When I touch someone. I can hear their thoughts. See them sometimes too.’
‘What?’ The word slams up a wall between us. He’s breathing heavily, arms folding then unfolding. The air around us is frozen, like I’ve hit pause.
‘Look, I know how this sounds, I know that what I’m telling you sounds like something out of a Marvel film, but I promise you, Jack…
I promise you, it’s the truth, it’s the way I was made.
And I’m sorry I lied to you, but I know how it normally goes when I try to explain the unexplainable.
’ I lean towards him slightly. ‘And that’s why we can’t have a relationship, not that you’ll want to see me again after I’ve told you this ridiculous truth.
’ I wait a beat, desperate for him to say something.
He doesn’t.
I climb out of our nest of blankets, standing, ready to walk away from him. From us.
‘Wait.’ I turn slowly, Jack is standing stationary, but it feels like his whole body is vibrating. ‘Is this a party trick?’ he says, hope and fear lacing his words as he looks up. ‘You ask me to think of a number and then give me some maths problems?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not a trick.’ I look back up at that heavy sky, the sparks of starlight blurring.
I blink, a solitary tear rolling down my cheek.
‘I don’t know why, I don’t know how. It’s always happened to me.
’ He gets up, stands beside me, my eyes searching his face, begging him to understand what I’m saying.
‘You think you can hear thoughts?’
‘I don’t think I can. I can.’
Jack shakes his head, looks away.
I rush on. ‘I’ve tried so many times to stop it, to think of other things, to meditate.
I told the doctor that I had too many thoughts buzzing around my head, and she prescribed anxiety medication that made me barely able to function, but all it did was numb my ability to process, to unstick their emotions and memories from my own.
It was harder to escape the thoughts and—’ He puts up a hand – a stop-talking motion. I clamp my mouth shut.
‘So you’re not afraid of germs?’
‘No. Just people. People are the worst,’ I add but he doesn’t smile.
I look to the lamplit path that led us here; the dense trees on either side of the park leaning away from each other, embarrassed to watch our relationship self-combust. I don’t speak, not wanting to say anything more that could bulldoze the crumbling space between us.
During all of my time with Jack, the distance separating us has only been physical. Not any more.
He walks slowly around the circular rim of the fountain.
I analyse his movements, the way his shoulders have tightened and lifted, the tension corrugating the muscles along his jaw.
He does two full circles of the fountain, finally stopping to look up at the woman on the horse.
He turns then, leaning back, hooking one leg behind the other, and fixing me with a stare I can’t read. ‘Let’s say what you’re saying is real—’
And there it is. This is always how it goes. I don’t know why I hoped this would go any other way.
‘It is real.’ He looks away. ‘I’m not a charlatan, Jack. Why would I lie? Why would I tell you this if it wasn’t true? Surely you must know how I feel about you?’
‘Maybe you’re trying to figure out the world’s most original way of dumping someone?’
‘That isn’t what this is. I didn’t want to lie to you.’
‘But you did.’
I nod, swallowing hard.
‘I did. Can you imagine how this would have gone if I’d told you when you found yourself locked in a cinema with me?’
‘You’ve had plenty of opportunity to try to explain that…’ The way he says that is enough to tell me that he doesn’t believe me. And I get it. Who would? ‘Before I—’ He looks away then back at me. ‘Before I let myself get close to you.’
‘I know. That’s why I’m telling you now, before this goes any further.
Do you have any idea how much I want to kiss you?
’ His dark eyes skirt over my mouth before they sear into my own.
I swallow the desperation in my throat. ‘How all I’ve been able to think about over the past week is that I needed to tell you the truth while at the same time wanting one more night with you?
’ He looks away, eyes off in the distance, his stance fixed, defensive, unbending.
‘I can never have a normal relationship, Jack. You’d never be able to have secrets, privacy,’ I say softly.
‘I can never have the happily ever after that I yearn for, or that you deserve.’ His eyes are fixed on the ground.
A flock of leaves gather around our feet before a gust of wind makes them take flight. ‘Say something.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ His voice is exasperated. ‘You tell me you can hear people’s thoughts, Maggie. Do you know how—’
‘Insane?’
Jack looks towards the way we came, to the road that leads him back home then comes back to me.
He lowers his voice, but it wavers. ‘You tell me you can hear thoughts? That you want to kiss me, but you can’t.
You tell me you can’t have a relationship when for the past few weeks all I could think about was you. What do you want me to say, Maggie?’
‘Tell me to leave, tell me this was a mistake, tell me you wish you’d never decided to go to Flicks that night. Something!’
‘I. Can’t.’ The words slice out of him. Jack is a man who lives his life through knowledge, through the need to be in control of his own destiny.
His stroke stole that from him and now I’ve taken the only piece of stability that has grown from our relationship and broken it.
He clutches at the thick hair at the nape of his neck, eyes back on the road home.
He doesn’t need to say anything. I don’t need to touch him to know he wants to leave, to go back to the warmth and safety of his shop, to Nell, to the people he surrounds himself with; a place I can’t be part of.
The colour has drained from his face and he steps back.
The truth is too much. I take off his jacket and fold it up then place it beside him.
‘I want you to know that I’ve never hated what I am…
more than when I’m with you.’ He nods, eyes fixed back on his boots.
‘I will always be glad you walked into my cinema.’
For a small moment, it looks like he’s about to say something, but those words are locked away under the weight of my truth.
He looks away.
Doesn’t respond.
And I know this is the end.
‘Goodbye, Jack.’
I turn my back on him. Hot tears are already falling from my eyes as I pick up the pace, but they can’t wash away the truth, and I can’t outrun the loss of the only relationship I’ve ever wanted.