Chapter Five #2
“What a night.” He dug further into his pastry. Maddie concurred with a nod. “I wonder if Marley has proposed yet.”
Maddie reeled, blinking furiously, her mouth hanging agape for a few seconds, before it curved quickly into the biggest grin she’d displayed on her face in a long while.
She shook her head, surprised at herself.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t realised.
Of course that’s what Marley was doing. “Oh, shit!” she said.
“You didn’t catch on? Come on, Maddie. It was so obvious!”
“I was distracted, I think,” she said. “And if you only knew how anti-monogamy Autumn and Marley used to be, you’d be surprised, too. The fact they ended up here — and with each other — is quite frankly astounding.”
“They really love each other, huh?”
Maddie nodded, marvelling for a moment at how cordial they were being and how naturally their conversation flowed, given they did not like each other.
She was finding James really easy to talk to.
His effort was almost certainly not for her benefit — he liked Marley and Autumn and really wanted to help them out — but still, she appreciated it.
Tonight would have been miserable, boring and long if he’d been his typical moody self.
“I wonder what it feels like to be loved like that,” he said.
“I have no idea,” Maddie admitted.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked. Maddie shook her head. “Me neither,” he said.
“When was your last relationship?”
“A long time ago,” he said, sighing. “Back when I was in my early twenties. I’ve had some situationships since then. Bad sex, bad vibes, no risk of heartbreak because there’s no real heart in it.”
“Sounds like my entire dating history,” Maddie said monotonously. It was James’ turn to look at her. “I’ve never had a real boyfriend,” she admitted.
“Never ever?”
“Never ever ever,” she said.
“You’re not missing much,” he said. “Men are awful.”
Maddie laughed at that, and she knew he was smiling beside her.
She could feel the atmosphere thawing between them and found, to her surprise, she had no desire to stop it.
It had been an age since she’d had an extended conversation with anyone who was not a family member.
She continued. “Have you met my dad?” she asked in jest. “He’s wonderful, and so are my brothers.
Imagine growing up around all that gentlemanliness and then dating Average Joe. It was a real shock, I can tell you.”
“Didn’t Marley have a reputation once upon a time?” James said, thoughtfully.
“Oh, gosh, yes, he did,” Maddie confessed.
Marley was so devoted to Autumn now that Maddie often forgot about his days as a heartbreaker.
They’d started when he’d realised girls liked him and he liked girls at around age thirteen and continued right up until the summer they’d lost Bowie.
The summer he’d fallen in love with Autumn.
“I can’t tell you how many young women turned up at our house in tears over Marley when I was growing up. ”
“I’m not surprised,” James said. “He always was a sexy bastard. They both were. I think it was the musician thing. Every girl I knew was in love with either Marley or Bowie, depending on whether they preferred an introvert or an extrovert.”
“Bowie was so well behaved compared to Marley,” Maddie said, smiling fondly. “He wasn’t too bothered about women, really, he only cared about music and Marley. Until he met Autumn, of course.”
James snapped to attention and stared at her, and then she remembered, he didn’t know.
* * *
Maddie told James the whole story. She tried really hard to capture how painful and complicated it all was, how fretful and frightening, how torturous and terrifying.
Those had not been ordinary times or typical circumstances, and Bowie and Marley were not normal men.
Their love for each other had transcended all reason.
She knew she’d done a terrible job of explaining, because James still looked confused and a little disgusted when she’d finished.
“Autumn and Marley tell the story much better than I can,” she finished.
“Right,” he said. Maddie felt her dislike for James, which had been temporarily expelled, reappear in her periphery.
She set it aside to defend Autumn and Marley.
Doing so was much more important than her own capricious feelings.
She could continue hating him later if she needed to.
For now, she needed to protect those she loved from a judgement she knew followed them everywhere.
“I know it sounds weird. We all found it really hard to accept at first, but whenever I see them together I know there was no better possible outcome for Marley or Autumn, or for my family, who have Benjamin because of this entire mess. His presence in our lives as a result of their transgression and Marley’s happiness made it really hard to stay mad.
You said it yourself, they have the kind of love people spend their whole lives trying to find.
We have no choice but to accept that Bowie wanted this for them, for all of us. ”
James nodded curtly.
“Don’t fucking judge us, James!” Maddie snapped.
“I’m not!” James held his hands up in submission.
Maddie glared at him. “I mean, it’s an unusual story.
.. but I promise I’m not judging you. I’m just a little in awe, I think.
Of Bowie in particular, but of your whole family more generally.
I definitely judged you guys in the beginning and I’ve been proven wrong.
You’re all so... nice . There’s so much love and acceptance.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before. ”
Maddie wasn’t sure she believed him. She eyed him suspiciously.
He kept his hands raised by his face, as though she were pointing a gun at his chest. Perhaps she was.
They’d been so close to putting their initial arguments behind them, they’d bonded a little bit tonight, she felt.
If she was being honest, she didn’t want to go back to the stony silence they’d grown used to working in, but their budding friendship hinged on his understanding of their unique circumstance.
“I swear on Stevie,” he said, a little frantic. “And she’s the only thing I love in the entire world, so I would never say those words if I didn’t mean them.”
Maddie softened at his words. He seemed eager to prove it, but she had already known he would never lie if he was swearing on Stevie.
She had to consider that perhaps she was being defensive here.
She was hugely proud of her family — they were the only thing she had in the absence of any friends.
She’d take on anyone who tried to ridicule them in a heartbeat and had likely jumped to the conclusion that was what James was doing, because so many people had done so before.
“I believe you,” she said.
He let his hands drop. Maddie shuffled uncomfortably in her seat.
She watched him from the corner of her eye.
He sat dead still, staring out of the window in front of them, lost in thought.
Maddie knew she had a choice. She could sit beside him in silence, or she could say something and set them on a different path.
This was a ‘time before’ moment. Maddie pondered.
It would be easier to work together if they got on.
“You don’t love anyone except for Stevie?” she asked. James snapped to attention, turning to her, his eyes wide with surprise. He slowly shook his head. “That’s sad,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she smiled gently at him. He returned the gesture.
“Where did you go to uni?” she asked, breaking their lingering gaze to root through the dashboard for a packet of cola cubes she was sure she’d seen her dad stuff in here at some point.
She found them and held out the bag, urging James to take one.
He stared into her eyes, then down at the bag, then his eyes landed on her face once more.
He seemed to recognise that she was holding up a white flag.
When he didn’t reply right away, Maddie thought about stuffing the bag into her pocket and reverting back to necessary communication only, but she forced herself to give him a minute.
She recognised something in his stance, knew somehow that he, like her, didn’t have many people he could talk to, that this didn’t come naturally to him.
In light of his admission that he didn’t love anybody, she really didn’t think avoiding talking to him was the right thing to do.
For all she knew, she might be the closest person to him.
Even if she wasn’t, he had opened up to her.
She wasn’t going to mess around with someone’s mental health.
She was part of this now. To her relief, he stuck his hand in the bag, pulled out a sweet, and shoved it in his mouth.
“Leeds,” he said. “You?”
* * *
They chatted for hours after that, pausing only to update her parents that they were safe.
James did most of the talking. He talked her through the bars in Leeds, then segued into travelling.
He’d worked all summer the year he’d graduated to buy himself a van he could camp in, and then left without a plan.
He’d been on the road for years, stopping for weeks at a time to replenish his funds by working in beach bars or hotels.
He hadn’t needed much, just enough to buy food and alcohol. He’d loved it.
“That’s the life for me,” he’d said with a sigh. “Adventure, unpredictability and the open road. Though I’ll have to buy a new van at some point. I had to sell the old one when I ran out of money.”