Chapter 24
I manage to doze off in sporadic, thirty-minute stretches until the sun beats through the curtains and I give up entirely on sleep.
My head is a foggy minefield; for every delicious vignette from the café, of flesh and relief and excitement, there are two from the apartment, of Archie and his anger, of Florian’s sad, dejected face.
I reach into my bedside drawer for my diary and release it all onto the page until it’s all there, in black and white, every detail and realisation taunting me.
My phone vibrates. I half expect to see that it’s Florian, getting there before me, but instead my mum’s contact card appears. I feel a comforting relief wash over me and I shelve the diary back in the bedside drawer.
‘I thought you would still be asleep.’ Her voice is full of surprise.
‘No, I’m awake.’
‘Well, there’s a nice surprise. Is it sunny with you? The weather lady said there was a heatwave over Europe at the minute.’
‘Yes. It’s really nice,’ I reply flatly.
‘You are getting out of the apartment, aren’t you, making the most of it?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘I have visions of you locking yourself in a dusty little attic with just your laptop for company.’
‘Not quite.’
There’s a longer, heavy pause. ‘Are you okay, love?’
I let the silence speak for itself.
‘Ava, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, Mum, just saw some friends last night, have a bit of a hangover.’ I try to restrain the words that come out at first as a little whimper.
‘Florian?’ Mum asks. His name physically hurts me, creates this aching chasm that exists in a part of my body that I have no control over.
‘Yeah, and some others.’
‘On a Sunday?’ The judgment starts to pepper through her tone.
‘Yeah, I…’ My train of thought is interrupted by a quiet knocking at the door. ‘Mum, I’ve got to go, I’ll call you back later.’ I cut her off before she can protest.
‘Hi.’ Archie’s head materialises around the door. He looks like the old Archie, softer, apologetic.
‘Hi.’ I swallow back the emotion, try to make my face look as sorry as I possibly can manage at seven in the morning with a burgeoning hangover.
‘I need to grab my clothes.’ He gestures to the pile on ‘his’ side of the bed.
‘Okay.’
‘Thanks.’ He enters, starts to root around in the pile of clothes for things that look like his.
‘I didn’t hear you come in last night.’
‘It was just after two. Slept on the sofa.’
‘Right.’ I nod slowly, pulling the covers up to my neck as if he hasn’t seen what’s underneath before. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere really. I walked around a lot, found a nice little bench to sit on for a bit, came back when I ran out of battery.’ He picks up the last remaining pieces, folding them half-heartedly.
‘He didn’t stay then?’ Archie gestures to the empty space in the bed next to me, a space that he had slept so happily in the night before.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, he left after you.’
‘Well, looks like we all had lonely nights.’ He goes to leave but something is stopping him, he lingers in the doorway and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to tell me it’s all okay, that he knows it was just a lapse of better judgement.
‘I need to apologise, Ava, I shouldn’t have called you a bitch, that was uncalled for.
I was drunk and upset but I’m not that kind of guy. ’
‘You don’t get to apologise!’ I shake my head fervently. ‘I am a bitch, a messed-up, psychotic bitch.’ My nails claw a little at my shoulder leaving sharp, hot lines. The pain is a relief.
He chuckles at the floor and shakes his head.
‘No, you’re not a bitch – you are messed up, I wouldn’t go as far as psychotic, but a little messed up.
’ When he looks up, my heart aches because there he is, the nice, safe, loving man who wanted me, who answered the phone when I called, who came out here at the drop of a hat because I asked him to.
It would all be so perfect if I didn’t know in my bones that Florian had been right, that it would never quite be enough.
‘I know this sounds like a petty excuse, and I would punch someone if they said it to me, but I really don’t know why it happened, Archie, I don’t remember making the decision to do it.
It just suddenly was happening and…’ Archie shakes his head, thumps himself down on the corner of the bed, plays with his phone charger.
‘Anyone else could see it happening from a mile off.’ He looks at me, at my apparent confusion, because then he tuts a little at my obliviousness.
‘It’s weird because I think I knew even before I came out here; he riled you up too much for it to be nothing.
But I wanted to ignore it, believe that it was just the grief talking.
I definitely knew when I first met him though, had that twist in my gut that was screaming at me that this wasn’t right. ’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, I mean he was this attractive guy who was standing in your apartment grinning wildly at you dancing in your knickers. And the fact that he looked quite so crestfallen when I walked in, I mean I did enjoy that bit.’
‘I didn’t know… not really. ’
‘Oh, I believe you on that front. And I believe that you really did need time, that you needed to take things slow and that you were holding out for a moment where it all felt right between us and I thought we were going to get there. I think if he hadn’t turned up, Ava, then I would have worn you down and we would be something. ’
‘Yes.’
‘And what a terrifying thought.’ He smirks.
‘No, it’s not!’ I reach out to him, grab his arm. He looks at my hand with a kind of sad familiarity. He pats it softly, removing any hint that once we were in this bed together, legs wrapped around each other, and I was as close to happy as I had been in months.
‘I mean for me, to have given everything to a woman who never actually loved me.’ I go to object but what can I say that would make it better? I don’t love him, I’m not sure I ever would. It isn’t his fault, it’s not mine either, just a sad, unpleasant little fact.
He gets to his feet with a groan. Clearly his head feels about as heavy and aching as mine does. I think of the three whisky shots he managed almost simultaneously before the verbal assault; at least I had stopped drinking at the café.
‘On paper we would have been good together,’ he says as he reaches the doorway.
I nod furiously in agreement. ‘On paper we would have been the best.’
‘Just that “on paper” isn’t exactly what romance novels are made of, are they?’
‘No.’ I manage a little smile. ‘No, I guess they’re not.’