Chapter Forty-Three
Jess
Jess didn’t expect Nathan’s response to her sending in the finished book would be a simple, Please come and see me at your earliest convenience.
She feels as if she’s been called to the headmaster’s office, about to be given a detention for etching the name of a boy on the underside of a wooden desk (she can neither confirm nor deny that this has actually happened to her).
Was her ending that bad?
Maybe it was. It’s possible she was more focussed on sending Alex a message than she was on actually writing an ending worthy of the rest of the book, which as a whole is really rather good, if she does say so herself.
She knocks on his office door more timidly than she usually would.
‘Come in,’ says a voice that doesn’t sound gruff or angry. She relaxes a little, takes a deep breath. This will be fine, right? It will be fine.
‘Hi,’ she says. Her voice comes out shaky. Not such a bad thing: it communicates to Nathan that she knows she has messed up. She hovers nervously next to the chair opposite his desk.
‘Sit, sit,’ he says, so she does.
She waits for the verdict.
‘So, the ending.’
Get to the point, she wants to shout. This was always the worst part about being called to the headmaster’s office. The waiting for the axe to fall.
She can’t bear it anymore. ‘You hate it.’
Nathan seems to be suppressing a grin. ‘No, no. I don’t hate it at all. I think it’s a great … outcome.’
He’s hedging. Jess waits for him to elaborate.
‘I think you both know that the ending needs to be rewritten. The most important thing about each part of a book is that it serves the story. And this ending – well, it’s serving something else, isn’t it?’
Her cheeks burst into flames. At least that’s what it feels like.
‘What do you mean?’ she says, for the sake of saying something, and then she cringes, because she doesn’t want to sit here while Nathan explains her own feelings to her.
He raises his eyebrows and slides some pages over to her.
She doesn’t recognise these, but she reads them anyway; her cheeks, impossibly, are getting hotter as it dawns on her that this is an ending Alex has written just for her. Lines of dialogue jump out, slapping her in the face, which must be why her face is increasingly burning.
You’re my family now. You’re the one I put first, regardless who else needs me, or thinks they need me, or has just got used to calling me whenever they need anything.
I know I’m not perfect. I know I need to work on my anxiety and get better at working through difficult issues.
I project my own fears onto others sometimes. I know that. I’ll work on that, I promise.
Jess’s eyes prickle with the tears that threaten to fall. She chews her lip, swallowing around the lump in her throat, willing her emotions to settle.
‘You’ve taught him well,’ Nathan says. ‘Those are some lines worthy of a full-on romance novel.’
She’s not sure if this is a compliment, but she says, ‘Thank you,’ anyway. Or at least she tries to. It comes out like a squeak.
‘He needed to loosen up, as an author but also as a person. I really hope you two can make it work.’
Jess nods. She wishes she had the wherewithal to verbally spar, to be funny in this moment and diffuse the cringe she feels.
But all she has is gratitude, and also a desperation to get out of there, and go and find Alex.
To get those difficult conversations out of the way, but maybe first to do some other things.
‘So once you’ve figured that out, maybe you can rewrite this ending?’
From deep within, she manages to summon her voice. ‘I think that can be arranged,’ she says.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Keep me posted on everything.’
Jess is pretty sure she won’t be doing that. ‘Maybe not everything,’ she says, recovering her smile. ‘But we can write you a better ending.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Nathan says. ‘I look forward to reading it.’
‘I look forward to writing it,’ she says. And then she gets up and goes before she embarrasses herself further.
‘So apparently we need to rewrite our ending,’ Jess says, when Alex opens the door to his flat.
She’s caught him in baggy shorts and a T-shirt – perhaps these are his pyjamas.
Or perhaps he is relaxing into more casual clothes.
A new Alex. She liked the old one, but she can live with this one too.
Although, live with is maybe a bit premature.
They’ve got a lot to work through first.
‘Ah. So you got that memo, too, then?’
‘Apparently we weren’t very subtle.’
‘And we need to be subtle.’ Alex uses his fingers to mimic air quotes, a cover quote on a book. ‘So,’ he says, looking her up and down in a way that suggests he has missed her. Or perhaps just checking to see if she has brought writing supplies. ‘You’re here to rewrite the ending.’
‘In a way,’ she says, locking eyes with him.
It’s pathetic how much she’s missed him.
It’s only been a few weeks. They’re still standing in the doorway, kept close together by the walls.
Neither of them apparently wants to move from this forced proximity.
‘I think we should talk. But I also think I want to—’
Alex leans forward, and his lips land gently on hers. She doesn’t finish her sentence.
‘Talking can wait,’ he says softly, brushing her hair away from her face and kissing her more deeply. He pulls back, remembering his manners. ‘If that’s okay with you,’ he says, a note of desperation in his voice.
‘It’s very much okay with me.’
Afterwards, Jess pulls her T-shirt back on, while Alex makes tea.
She should probably have thought this through better, what she was going to say.
It feels like there’s so much, and she doesn’t know where to begin.
Maybe she should have brought writing supplies after all – her trusty, battered notebook for brainstorming.
What would she write at the centre, surrounded by a bubble? A better ending, probably.
‘So,’ Alex says, handing her the tea. ‘Where do we start?’
‘I was just wondering that too.’
‘Let’s maybe start where we left off,’ he says, shuffling back into bed and pulling the quilt over both of them. ‘Or where I left off. When Ivy was over.’
Addressing this head on. This seems like a good sign, an indication that he’s changed. That he’s not going to run away from difficult conversations.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘That sounds good.’
‘First of all, I want you to know that I wasn’t faking feeling unwell.
Sometimes, when my anxiety peaks, I can’t even see straight.
Or I feel sick. But anyway, I was talking to my therapist about it.
’ This is a good sign too: he is working on himself, becoming more self-aware.
‘And I realised that I was feeling defensive of you. That I put so much of my life on hold for other people for so long, and I was angry on your behalf, that you were going to miss out on things because of looking after Ivy.’
Jess takes Alex’s hand and traces the outlines of his fingers with her own. A gesture of affection, yes, but also a way to keep herself grounded, keep herself calm, keep herself from wanting to run away. ‘I get that. It’s not the same thing, though. You and me – we’re different people.’
‘Of course. And the reason it hurts so much is because it triggers stuff from my childhood, things about not having had the attention I needed. You didn’t have that. Well, not in quite the same way.’
She knows, now, though, that she needs to process her own childhood.
Stop assuming she’s fine, when she’s only fine as long as she’s running – to fun, to books, to anything that distracts her from pain.
‘I always say I don’t miss my dad because I don’t remember him, but I think growing up without him definitely did have an impact on me.
That, and a mum who kept trying to escape her grief by going on adventures.
’ Jess shuffles onto her side to face Alex, but also to move, to do something with the nervous energy coursing through her.
‘It’s not that I was unloved or anything.
My time with my grandparents was always special.
But I probably needed my mum more than I realised. ’
‘I’m really glad to hear you say that,’ Alex says.
He turns on his side to mirror Jess. The affection in his face calms her a little.
‘I’ve been worried about how much you suppress everything.
When I met you, I thought you were one of those people who’ve never had anything bad happen to them, and that was why you seemed to just float through life, enjoying it and insisting on happy endings. ’
‘You thought I was an airhead. Go on, admit it.’
‘No, I …’
Jess cocks an eyebrow. She has been practising doing this in the mirror for years, and this is the first time it’s worked at an opportune moment.
‘Okay, fine. But in my defence—’
‘Oh, this’ll be interesting.’
Alex rakes his hand through his hair. ‘In my defence, all I knew about you was that you were an influencer, and all I knew about influencers was that some of them are … kind of shallow?’
Jess whacks him on the arm, playfully, but also hoping to hurt him just a tiny little bit.
‘You think that’s a good defence?’
‘I see now that I was wrong.’
‘Good.’