Chapter 32 #2
‘Yes. Why, do you want to come in?’ she asks happily but nervously, shimmying up to him.
‘I just want to make sure you’re okay tonight.’
‘You’re allowed inside when she’s there, you know. It’s not a complete ban on men in the apartment. Why don’t you come in and meet her?’
‘No, it’s okay, I need to catch up on some sleep.’
Melody feels the gentle rejection.
She notices Al patting down the pockets of his suit. Top pocket, inside pocket, then pockets of his trousers.
Nerves all of a sudden start to bubble up inside her.
Her body heat goes up. She feels like she’s back in the car park restaurant with Sam.
What’s he looking for? Is this what has been on his mind?
Is he going to propose? She tries to figure out ways to get out of the car.
After wanting him to come back to the apartment she suddenly can’t wait to get away from him. She needs to focus on her breathing.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asks nervously.
‘Just something I have for you. A parting gift.’
She recalls Sam feeling around for his engagement ring in his pockets, about to pop the question. How she had to escape that moment, that relationship, the damage it did them both afterwards. This can’t be happening again, surely.
Melody and Al are never short of conversation.
They laugh all the time. She loves the feel of his eyes on her, touching his skin.
It makes her feel good, he makes her feel good.
It wasn’t a day of trying to be his jester and he doesn’t seem like he is going to crack and cry at any moment.
He seems content, having worked his way through a hellish few months.
His hand serpentines across the car to reach hers.
His skin is warm, his hands are large, and strong and safe.
He makes her feel safe. He kept her company while she was alone, more than once.
She has felt less and less lonely in his company and that terrifies her.
But she knows that she must change. She must overcome her fear.
She’s afraid she’ll fail him, she’s afraid she’ll hurt him, this precious man with his precious fragile heart that has been through too much.
He is perfect. There’s nothing about him she would change. He has been through hell and she can’t put him through that again. He deserves better and she wants to be the person to give that to him. She’s ready to stop being irrational and she’s ready to start trying.
They say you should do one thing that scares you every day. What if that one thing is choosing to love the same person every day?
She holds his hand and turns to him, feeling calmer. She worked through her thoughts. She didn’t allow them to overwhelm her.
He retrieves something from his pocket.
‘I wanted to give you this,’ he says, placing a brand-new, large, shiny silver padlock in the palm of her open hand.
Initials written on it in black marker: MY & AC. Melody Yates and Al Collins.
She holds it in her hand, and looks at it, as if he has given her a diamond.
‘It’s just a joke,’ he says, worried about her silence.
‘It’s beautiful.’
He laughs. ‘Not exactly beautiful. A memento of these past few weeks. This little thing we were on. Whatever it was.’ He laughs nervously.
Was. Were on. A parting gift. He’s talking as if they were past tense. Immediately something feels wrong. He’s tense, inside himself as if he’s gearing himself up to say something.
‘Melody.’
Now her heart really starts pounding, and her mouth goes dry, because she knows, maybe she’s known the entire journey home. She wants to push the words right back in his mouth before they even come out.
‘You know I’ve been through the mill over the past while.’
She can’t trust herself to speak, it would come out as a squeak. So instead she nods.
‘And I adore you, I really do. A lot. You’ve taught me that I can feel again.
I was convinced I needed this one person, and this one relationship, and if I didn’t have it I couldn’t do anything.
You showed me I was wrong. You have no idea what that has done for me.
How dark things were.’ His eyes fill up and he steadies himself.
‘I kept telling myself that meeting you was too soon, but I wanted to keep going because, well because we’re good together.
You’re a breath of fresh air and you understand me like no one else I know, anyway … ’
He squeezes her hand and she nods along, as if she’s not feeling all the thunderous heartbreaking things inside her right now because she knows it’s coming.
She starts to build her protective wall up.
It’s coming, it’s coming … she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she never wanted this anyway. But it’s not working.
Al continues explaining. ‘I spent the past few years of my life pushing something that wasn’t there in my own relationship.
Trying to make it what I wanted it to be instead of seeing what it was.
And I don’t want to fall into the same delusional pattern and do it again with you.
This is my fault, not yours, you’ve been clear from the start about what you want.
Nothing serious. You’re so transparent it’s refreshing.
I wish more people were like you, and knew what they want so clearly. ’
I didn’t know! she wants to scream. I thought I knew but I didn’t, I was operating out of fear. Pushing everyone away, but I don’t want to push you away.
But she can’t say it, because he’s on a roll, he’s made a decision and she doesn’t want to beg.
And she’s terrified of saying those things aloud because really he’s making it easy for her to get out of this, to stop challenging herself, to stop having to fight the fear. She’s already lost him. Why fight it?
‘Even though I’m not looking for something serious right now, I can’t continue this with us, because I know that ultimately you don’t want what I do, and you will never want it.
And I swear I’m far too fragile at the moment to take another bit of rejection, and I like you too much to keep going down this road.
’ His eyes are filled with tears. ‘I apologise for the rowing analogy, but I need the person I’m with to be in the same boat as me.
It doesn’t need to be steady, or perfect, but at least two people need to be in it to work.
I need some time to myself and when I’m ready to meet someone again, I need it to be right.
I need us to both want the same thing. I think I deserve it. ’
‘You do,’ she finally says. The only words she can get out of her mouth. ‘You deserve it.’
They hug tightly, the lump in her throat crushed against his shoulder and threatening to shut off her air supply.
‘Thank you for understanding,’ he says. ‘I knew you would.’ He breathes a sigh of relief that it’s off his chest. But now it’s on hers, and it’s heavy. She can barely take breaths.
‘Of course I understand,’ she says, far more smoothly than she feels. Inside she’s trembling. ‘I’ve had the best time. Thank you and good luck, Al.’
She hates herself as she says these words. She has said them so often, she has always meant them. Now it’s killing her.
She smiles as she waves at him through the window of the car, smiles as she walks across the road to her apartment block.
She does a little run, then a walk, then an awkward run again, knowing he’s watching her, making sure she reaches the door safely.
She holds their love lock tight in her cold hand, and she smiles tightly for anyone and everyone who might be looking out their windows tonight.
A tight grimace of a smile. Her cheeks are sore from the pleasant show she’s putting on.
At the door, she turns around and waves one final time, and then enters the building. And then she stops smiling, and cries all the way up the three flights of stairs.