Chapter Thirty-One #2
How did I think this was going to end? My stupid little Day 366 fantasy, when he knocks on my door and presents me the signed divorce papers?
Was I really that naive? Claire is very much still in the picture, very much still married to this man who I’ve just been putting my body all over in a club, who I’ve been living with for months, who has just asked me to give him an out so he can escape with a clear conscience, leaving me to be the bitch who ruined their marriage.
All the truths I’ve been repressing come rushing back.
I mean, Christ, even if they did just get divorced of their own accord, I’d be complicit.
I can’t look back on these last few months without guilt: Even if the very thought of it still sounds laughable to me, haven’t I lured him away?
Haven’t I been shamelessly pursuing him, pretending she didn’t exist, pretending she was nothing more than a signature on a piece of paper, even though I’ve seen her with my own two eyes?
I have nobody to blame but myself. I should have shut this down ages ago, the very first time I met him.
Shit, before then. I should have cauterized the part of my brain that got excited the first time I googled him, the first time his confidence radiated out at me from his fucking Wikipedia page.
I should have heeded Charlotte’s warnings that these men don’t care about collateral damage.
But not only did I not do any of that, I encouraged that part of my brain, my stupid, hopeless brain, to run wild, to fantasize at will about what it would be like to be with this man, especially after the embarrassment of my failed engagement.
He could have just been a friend. Should have just been a friend. Because now, what is he? And what am I?
Something burbles up inside me, hot bile forcing its way up my throat, and I bolt toward the ladies’ room.
I shove open the door and find the room mercifully empty.
My mind reels as I throw myself into a stall and drop to my knees.
As I sit and wait for the sick to come, the face that swims into my vision isn’t Lachlan’s but Steven’s.
I think of our last conversation, in our living room.
After months and months of me hoping I was wrong about him having an affair, of hoping that if I just waited quietly, patiently, he would come home.
After I was wrong about everything. After he said he was leaving me for good, for real.
It’s funny, but even now, I’d only ever thought about that conversation having two participants: him confessing the affair, me nodding mutely on the couch.
Him deciding to leave, me lacking any energy to fight it.
But of course there was a third person there, in spirit if not in body.
Her. Her. The woman my fiancé was actually in love with.
Had Steven done the same thing as Lachlan, beg her to ask him to leave me?
To give him permission to quit fucking around and end it?
The implicit absolution of all guilt, because they were doing it all in the name of love?
The thought of it triggers my stomach once and for all, and I cradle the toilet bowl as the night comes back up.
It’s brutal, stinging my throat and watering my eyes, and I can’t stop.
I’m sobbing now, hot tears dripping onto the toilet seat, my forehead clammy with sweat, my hair sticking to my skin.
I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been. The hubris of thinking I could just start my life over, and how that’s ended up with me on the disgusting floor of the women’s room in a slick nightclub in Liverpool, totally alone.
But then, I’m not alone. There’s a pair of hands at the nape of my neck, strong, capable hands that swoop my hair back from where it’s fallen around my face and run soothing fingers across my brow.
Lachlan. I can’t believe it, but I’m so relieved he followed me. My stupid heart has overruled my stupid brain and I’m glad he’s here.
But the voice that accompanies the hands does not trill its Rs softly, does not make me think of windswept glens and deep blue lochs. No, the voice that accompanies the hands comes from much closer than that. Granby Street, born and bred. The Boy King of Liverpool.
“It’s okay, Abs. Get it all out,” says Kieran Campbell.
I pull my head out of the toilet bowl and look at him, and the sight of his earnest young face scrunched up in concern is devastating.
I slump onto the floor and put my head in my hands.
This is all too much; I have no idea what to do.
“Thank you,” I say through my fingers. “I’m so sorry you have to see me like this. ”
“Don’t worry about it, mate. We’ve all been there, yeah?” He pats my shoulder in a way that indicates it’s a thing he thinks he’s supposed to do, all stiff and formal.
“We’ve got to get you out of the ladies before you get tweeted about as some kind of sex pest,” I say.
He has a sweet smile, this kid. Kind of crooked, totally earnest. “Always on the job, hey Macca?”
“It’s not a good look for you.”
“I agree,” he says. “Which is why I asked the bloke at the door to make sure no one else comes in. To this toilet. Which is the gents.”
I blink. His words slowly push through the haze in my brain and then it hits me. My rock bottom is even lower than I thought, because the floor I’m on, the sticky, disconcertingly wet floor, is, in fact, the floor of the men’s room.
I throw my head against the stall wall and laugh to keep from crying. But a little bit of both come out. “Fuck.”
“You’d think the urinals would have tipped you off,” Kieran says.
He squats down next to me, and I’m jealous that the only parts of him touching this rank floor are the soles of his crisp white trainers.
He puts a hand to my forehead, and it’s such a tender gesture that the laughter fades and it’s now only tears.
Now I’m sobbing on the floor of the men’s room, the hot smell of sick in my mouth, the bile burning my throat, and Lachlan’s words ringing in my ear. And I’m utterly helpless.
“Get me out of here?” I beg through the sobs. I know it’s dangerous, know that it might be leading him on, but in this precise moment, covered in slime and at my lowest ebb, I have no one else to turn to. “Please?”
Kieran doesn’t say anything, just extends his hand.
His grip is warm and strong as he pulls me up.
He shrugs off his jacket and puts it around my shoulders, and I don’t want to think about how much it cost and how it’s now soaking up whatever I was just sitting in.
Kieran bends down to grab my clutch from where I dropped it.
“That’s a good bag for your outfit,” I say through my tears. “Really makes the color pop.”
He laughs as he throws an arm around my shoulders and shakes me a bit. “See? Already getting back to normal. Classic boot and rally, innit?”
I nod and sniffle and wipe the snot from my face. Kieran holds out his free hand for me once again, and with a nod at the man guarding the door to the toilet, he weaves us back through the gyrating crowd and toward the exit.
I know I should keep my head down and just follow him, but of course I can’t.
Of course I find Lachlan, because there’s no room in the world where I wouldn’t.
He’s not far from where I left him, and when I flick my eyes up to meet his, see him clock who I’m with, whose jacket I’m wearing and whose hand I’m holding, the darkness that passes over his face is enough to make me shudder.
But the last thing I see before we tear our eyes away from each other is that old familiar anguish.
And he shakes his head, but I don’t know if it’s for me or for him, I just know that I can’t bear to look at him anymore.
I clutch Kieran’s hand tighter as he pulls me out of the darkness and into the warmth of his waiting car.