Chapter 3
Aiden
Georgia’s already there when I pull up to our house.
Correction, my house. She had never officially moved in, and it’s my name on the deeds.
I’m the one who pays the mortgage and the council tax and the gas and electricity and water bills.
She doesn’t even contribute towards the Wi-Fi. So yeah, my house.
She’s sitting at the breakfast counter scrolling on her phone, obviously killing time until I arrived. It’s not an unusual spot to find her, but she’s without her standard cup of tea, or bowl of dry Frosties, or bag of Peanut M&M’s, and it just feels . . . awry.
It’s like missing the last step on the staircase, or realising you’ve walked into the wrong screen at the cinema, or waiting for your parents to come watch your year four rugby match, but knowing in your heart of hearts they’ll never show up.
On the dining table and the kitchen floor behind her sit five or six empty boxes.
Georgia doesn’t own any furniture, just a few bits and bobs here and there.
Toiletries, some food items, her special sloth mug, a few books, a couple of guitars, half a wardrobe full of clothes.
It shouldn’t take her too long to pack up, but I don’t want to hang around while she does it.
The minute I walk into the kitchen, Trekkie leaps up from his bed, barking and wagging his tail with the intention of demolishing everything at shin height.
“I said any time after eight,” I yell over my whippet’s cacophonous welcome. I wrap my arms around him, and he flops to the ground at my feet like someone aimed a hairdryer at a snowman.
Georgia’s eyes flit above my head, to the clock mounted on the wall behind me, then they rake over my still damp hair and the wet patches on the shoulders of my T-shirt.
“I came straight from training,” I say, but . . . why am I trying to excuse myself any more? I don’t owe her the truth, and it’s no longer any of Georgia’s business who I hang out with or even who I fuck.
She shakes her head, as though stopping herself from probing further. “I just thought we should talk.”
“I wanted to talk yesterday, but you explicitly told me you’d already said everything you needed to say.”
“Yesterday you were still drunk!” Georgia hops down from the bar stool.
“Okay, going to the wedding as your plus one was a mistake. I’m sorry, I never meant for it to go the way it did.
It’s just . . . seeing you with him. It .
. . was fucking triggering actually. I didn’t realise it was more than . . . I didn’t know the full truth.”
“What’s the full truth?” I ask, but Georgia simply shakes her head and looks away as though I’m being obtuse.
There’s nothing I can say to correct the problem.
That ship has long since sailed. I’ve been cheating on my girlfriend with one of my best friends—and her best friend’s boyfriend—for the entire time we’ve been dating, over a year, and not only did I ruin any prospect of a future, but I continued to shatter it at any given opportunity.
I just couldn’t give Eggo up. I tried, several times, and I was not successful.
I’m a natural born risk assessor, not the kind of guy who’ll overlook the stakes or dismiss the consequences. I’m not the kind of guy who ever expected to cheat and get away with it. Deep down, I’d made my decision.
Being with him was worth losing everything.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I say, as though it can ever make amends. It’s the truth. I am sorry I hurt her. I should never have entered into a relationship with her. “I . . . made a few terrible choices.”
“Like the choice to date me whilst you were in love with your teammate.”
“I wasn’t in love with him when we started dating, Georgie,” I say and then immediately slap a hand over my mouth. My pulse spikes. Heart pummels my ribcage. I feel like I can’t breathe.
Georgia stares at me, her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed tight, hiding her “aha!”
How? How did she know?
“I mean . . . I’m not in love with him,” I choke out, but it’s too late.
Those words are out there, bouncing around in my skull, and I understand in the darkest depths of my heart that they’re true.
“Ah, fuck.”
My knees buckle, my legs feel both weakened and full of lead, and adrenaline’s already pumping hard through my bloodstream. I drop to the ground. Sit with legs spread at geometry-problem angles.
“Georgie . . .” I’m in the wrong here. I’m the cunt in this situation. Still, I never considered just how much of a cunt I’d been. “No wonder you’re pissed with me. I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
Realise I was in love with him. I finish the thought in my head.
How was I supposed to know?
“When did you figure it out?” I ask.
She sits opposite me, caging Trekkie between our extended legs. He pushes to his feet in order to press his wet snout into Georgia’s hair and snuggles up cradled in her thighs.
“I’m gonna miss this smelly little dude.” She ruffles the fur on his back, then turns her attention to me. “I’m not pissed with you. Not any more at least, but I guess I always knew that your heart belonged to someone else.”
I stare at her for a minute. Or two. Or ten.
“Shall I tell you what my first clue was?” Despite everything, Georgia’s smiling at me. Soft and patient and . . . kind of understanding.
Her smile reminds me of the time we rescued a bunch—a flock? A waddle?—of ducklings from a dual carriageway lay-by. It’s the same smile she gave as we watched the little creatures pad over to Mummy Duck. Is that how Georgia sees this moment? Like she’s saving me and releasing me back to my kind?
Shit, maybe she’s right. I hate to admit it to myself, but the biggest emotion I’m feeling now isn’t sadness. It’s not even relief. It’s a sense of . . . hope.
“Sure, what was the first clue?” I ask.
“At Owen Bosley’s karaoke,” she begins. It’s the furthest thing from funny, but she laughs anyway. “He sang that song for you. To you. I know everyone else joined in and had a great time, but Finn sang those words about you. And I watched you live them.”
I’m stunned into silence. The memory of that evening comes flooding back, and I swallow a painful lump. That party was over seven months ago. She’d known since then?
“Obviously, I had my suspicions long before that, but that was the first time I understood . . . how deep this went,” she says.
It takes me a while to pull a single coherent thought from my head. “Does Megan know?”
What I really want to ask her is if she thinks Eggo feels the same about me? Is he . . . is there . . . any possibility he could . . . be in love with me too?
And whether his girlfriend, Megan, has any inkling. They have a strange relationship, stranger than anything Georgia and I had, but I can’t see them splitting up over me.
I don’t ask that, though. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to hear those truths.
She doesn’t answer my question anyway. “Megan is Megan.”
“What does that mean?”
It’s Georgia’s turn to stare at me silently for a few minutes. “She knows.” She pauses again, choosing her words. “We talk about it often. But Megan and Finn have other issues they need to resolve first.”
First?
“You could probably help if you talked to him. Tell him how you fee—”
“No, I can’t do that.”
She waits for an explanation. I can’t give her one.
“He has a kid. He’s a dad,” I say. It’s not the real reason I could never admit my true feelings, but it’s the best I can come up with at short notice.
“I’ve seen pictures. Logan’s cute as heck.” Georgia shrugs like she can’t see the problem either.
“Eventually he’s going to move back to Newquay to be closer to him.” I’m not sure why saying their names, Finn and Logan, is so difficult. It’s as though the words get stuck in my throat, like swallowing painkillers dry.
“Cornwall’s lovely. Honestly, it’s a very you place,” Georgia says, giving me one of her more patronising looks.
“That’s not what I meant.”
She sighs. “You aren’t moving back to Australia.
We both know that. You might want to visit occasionally, but can you imagine retiring from the Cents and going home to your family?
I’m not being rude, Aid, but . . . I fucking hate them.
If you’re gonna stay in the UK, you could do a lot worse than the beautiful golden beaches of Cornwall.
You’ve been there. You know what it’s like.
Fishing villages, farmland, cream teas, pasties .
. . more National Trust properties than you can shake a stick at. ”
I actually laugh. I fucking love a good castle or historical manor house to wander about in. “Damn.”
I love Australia. I miss Perth. I miss the landscapes and the beaches and the wildlife and the arts festivals and the summers and the weather. Fuck, I miss the weather, especially during winter in Bath when it’s minus four degrees and there’s rain inside my fucking wellies.
But at least they’re not here.
My family. I can handle seeing them every other year when I fly home for a fortnight, but to move back there . . .
A knot twists in my stomach. Suddenly, six weeks over the off season instead of the standard two seems a lot more daunting than when I booked my flights.
“Just because I can’t stand walking around castles in freezing sideways rain, or sweating to death inside a museum, doesn’t mean Finn and Logan will hate it too.
” She laughs, perhaps remembering all the times she vociferously protested yet another visit to a historical site.
She complained so often that eventually I just stopped asking her to accompany me.
That was probably the first sign of her tapping out.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
Georgia knocks her runner against mine. “What d’you wanna know?”
I take a moment to gather my thoughts, order my words, and realise that no amount of philosophising will ever organise this mess inside my head. “When did feelings get so . . . vast?”
She laughs. “What?”