Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sweaty, broken and drained, Sam and I collapse on the sofa.
It’s been an intense hour of screaming and running, with a lot of IT’S ON ME IT’S ON ME IS IT ON ME GET IT OFF ME I THINK IT’S STILL ON ME OH GOD GET IT.
But we’ve finally got the ladybird and the daddy long-legs out and any remaining open windows are now firmly shut.
Our demons finally conquered – external ones at least – I go to fetch us celebratory biscuits from the kitchen. When I return, I pick up my phone. ‘I’m going to message Justin,’ I say.
‘What?’ Sam sits up straight. For a moment she looks half excited, then remembers our new deal. ‘No, you can’t do that,’ she instructs. ‘That is not a healthy choice. You need to let him and Orla go. They will only make you sad.’
I laugh at her change in tune. ‘Thank you for saying that. But actually, this isn’t some humiliating “pick me” thing. I’ve just been afraid to be honest for so long. I want to tell him the truth.’ I gasp, turning to her. ‘I didn’t tell you! I bumped into him and Orla.’
She echoes my gasp. ‘You followed them again?’
‘No!’ I exclaim, outraged, as though we didn’t do that very thing in Hamleys not so long ago. ‘They were in my coffee shop, ordering my hot chocolate!’
‘Not the hot chocolate with all the cream!’ She looks horrified. ‘That gave me a sugar headache for three days straight last time.’
‘Swear to god,’ I confirm. ‘It was surreal.’
‘Were they following you?’ She looks agog. ‘And wait, oh my god, didn’t Orla recognise you from our podcast fangirling? Ohhh, this is so unfair! I can’t believe we weren’t speaking when the maddest thing in the universe happened.’
‘I know!’ I giggle girlishly. ‘But no, I don’t think anyone was following anyone. I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence and evidence that Justin hasn’t completely changed into a different species. He’s still too lazy to come up with his own ideas for coffee shops.’
‘And did she remember you?’ Sam is enthralled.
‘Yep.’ I swallow, remembering my horror.
‘But she didn’t tell Justin, because she is an absolute babe.
She took me to one side, and we had a proper chat.
She’s the nicest person, it’s a shame she’s not single.
’ I grin. ‘And I feel so free of it all now. I’m actually, like’—I feel my eyes widen—‘glad for them. I genuinely thought to myself afterwards, good for you, and I wasn’t being sarcastic! ’
‘Wow.’ Sam is stunned into almost-silence. ‘No one in history has ever said good for you before, without being sarcastic. You’re so evolved these days. What has therapy done to you!’
‘I am evolved enough these days to realise I’m not really evolved at all,’ I sigh, typing my message to Justin. ‘I have a long way to go.’
I write out my message. It comes quickly and easily – a surprise even to me.
There is no agonising over commas or kisses, because I am just not that invested.
I want to say something straightforward, for my own sake.
I’m not trying an angle or trying to force an outcome or manipulate him into saying something back.
I just want to say what I want to say and then get on with my future without him.
I hit send without even consulting Sam, and she looks annoyed but lets it go.
I reread the message quickly, feeling calm.
Hi Justin, nice to see you and Orla the other day.
She seems great and I’m happy for you both.
I wanted to say a proper sorry for the way I behaved that night when you ended things between us.
You were right, we weren’t good for each other, and I only regret that I wasn’t more honest with us both leading up to that point.
It could’ve saved us a lot of internet humiliation, ha.
I really do wish you all the best. Maybe see you around my favourite hot chocolate place sometime. Hopefully with Orla. Take care, Liv x
Beside me, Sam makes a choking noise. ‘God, you expect too much of me, Liv. You have to at least let me read it! I won’t give you any advice, I just want to read it.’
I hand her the phone, and she scans it greedily.
True to her word, she offers nothing, except, ‘Do you feel better?’
‘I do actually.’
She opens her mouth to say something more, when my phone starts to ring in her hand. She gapes at it, then thrusts it at me like it’s molten hot.
‘It’s Justin,’ she whispers. ‘He’s calling you.’
‘Oh my god,’ I whisper back, like he can hear us. ‘Should I answer?’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t tell you what to do. Do you think it’s a good idea? Will it make you feel better or worse?’
I stare at her, and then at the ringing phone, now lying on the sofa between us. In slow-motion, I reach for it, and hit… accept.
‘Justin?’ I ask with trepidation, half hoping it’s a butt dial.
‘Liv?’ he answers, sounding equally horrified.
‘Er, yes?’
‘Hi, um, sorry for calling,’ he says nervously. ‘I know it’s weird.’ He pauses. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t think we ever actually spoke on the phone when we were going out, not even once.’
I shake my head though he can’t hear me. He’s right, I don’t think we did. And I don’t think it says anything good about us that we didn’t.
Beside me, a wide-eyed Sam mouths, ‘Shall I go?’ and I shake my head again, grabbing for her hand and squeezing it.
‘Thanks for your message,’ he adds, and I wait, still not knowing what to say. ‘It meant a lot, and I wanted to say sorry, too. Er, properly. I don’t think I have.’
‘I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad,’ I say softly. ‘With my message, I mean. I just needed to say it. For closure’s sake. To end a chapter.’
‘No, I know that, I get it,’ he says. ‘And I think I need my own closure, too.’ I hear him smile.
‘Hence the unsolicited phone call.’ He takes a long, slow breath.
‘I wanted to say that it did mean something, our time together. It wasn’t nothing.
But I wasn’t… I don’t know… fully myself, I guess.
Or at least, I wasn’t the person I want to be.
I was a useless oaf, I know that, and I let myself be that guy when deep down I knew I didn’t need to be.
Hell, I didn’t want to be, not really. I felt lazy and stupid a lot of the time. ’
‘Well,’ I say lightly. ‘You kind of were lazy and stupid a lot of the time.’ He laughs good naturedly.
‘That’s fair,’ he replies. ‘But to quote the great Robbie Williams, “No one is the villain in their own story”.’
I frown. ‘I think George R.R. Martin said that.’
He sounds a little impatient when he replies, ‘Okay, well, Robbie Williams said it more recently. Anyway, I don’t think I wanted to see that there was anything wrong with the way I was behaving.
The way I was treating you. I told myself that you liked doing everything for me.
Y’know, it’s how my mum treated my dad, and I see it happening in a lot of my friends’ relationships.
Not that many of them are happy.’ He pauses.
‘But none of that means it’s okay that I acted like it.
Meeting Orla made me realise that.’ He laughs a little.
‘Every time I act all helpless and useless about something that needs doing, she does the same, but takes it even further. She’s like, “Oh, you don’t know how to turn the dishwasher on?
Oh no, neither do I and now I’ve flooded the kitchen – whoops!
” She’s hilarious. She says she’s weaponising weaponised incompetence. ’
I laugh, too. ‘She honestly seems amazing. And I’m not just saying that. I want to be her when I grow up.’
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘I hope I don’t fuck it up.’
‘Me too,’ I echo.
I hear him swallow hard down the line. ‘I’m sorry if it hurt you, me meeting her so quickly after we split up. I didn’t intend for that to happen either. I hope you never thought I cheated or—’
‘Nah,’ I say simply, letting him off the hook. ‘And I get it now. These things happen when they happen. You can’t let someone like Orla pass you by.’
‘That’s… really…’ he trails off. ‘You’re a good person, Liv.’
‘Sometimes,’ I acknowledge, making eye contact with Sam.
‘And I’m working on being better.’ I pause, thinking of the man who’s been helping me with that mission.
‘Thanks alot for calling me, Just Tin,’ I say, knowing he won’t get the joke, but also knowing it’ll make Edward laugh when I tell him about it.
As we say our goodbyes, wishing each other well, I feel all glowy and light. I don’t think I’ll ever speak to Justin again – I don’t need to – and I’m fine with that. It was what it was, and now it’s time to let him go and get on with my life.
‘Take care,’ he says, and then – as I go to press the end call button – he says something that I barely catch. It sounds like the word internet, and then – bizarrely –redemption. He’s gone before I can ask him to repeat himself.
I frown at the phone as Sam watches me.
‘What?’ she asks anxiously. ‘It sounded like a really civilised, grown-up chat, until the end. What happened there?’
I shake my head. ‘He said something strange as he hung up, but I didn’t catch it.’
She shrugs. ‘Well, he’s a strange dude.’
I laugh. ‘That’s a fair point.’
She looks expectant. ‘Are you going to call him back or message to ask what it was?’
I consider this. ‘Nope,’ I tell her at last. ‘I need to learn to let things go.’
‘Therapy has been so good for you,’ she murmurs, and I nod.
‘It has and I feel like I still have a lot of work to do. I’m going to stay in therapy for a while.’ I swallow. ‘But obvs not with Edward.’
‘Oh my god,’ she shrieks, picking up a cushion and throwing it at me. ‘We haven’t even talked properly about you snogging your fucking therapist!’
We both laugh and I stand up. ‘Jesus, Sam, you and I didn’t speak for less than a week and everything in the universe went down.’ I head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I’ll get more biscuits; this is going to be a long night.’