Chapter 29 #2
“We’re adding a box bay with a window seat here in place of this picture window,” he said, motioning to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pond, “then expanding the bedroom forward and flattening the ceiling in there to create a bit of loft space, and fitting some custom wardrobes on the interior wall.”
I narrowed my eyes at Jack. “Those sound like very comfortable changes,” I said. “Especially the window seat. If only we knew someone who missed her window seat desperately.”
When Jack and Morgan had first gotten together, she’d lived in a cute, terraced house with a bay window seat. It had been her favourite spot in the world, but then the owner had sold the house, so she’d moved in with Fatima. That had been nearly two years ago now.
Jack glared at me and spoke through gritted teeth. “Say a word, and you’re dead, Barlow.”
I gasped in genuine shock. “She doesn’t know about this?”
“Who doesn’t know about what?” Phil asked, a hint of panic in his voice. We looked over to see him struggling to bounce over a rotating obstacle, then continued ignoring him.
“She will eventually, obviously,” he said, his voice low, as if Morgan might appear in the doorway at any moment. “She’s here often enough to see it happening.”
“She’s not an idiot,” I stage-whispered. “She’s going to know why you’re doing it. You could just ask her, you know.”
Jack’s jaw set, and I could see the agony on his face, the vein in his forehead looking like it was about to pop.
Poor, repressed Jack, I thought. He’d spent so long before Morgan ignoring what he wanted, and now, years later, he still didn’t really know to ask for it.
He was probably hoping he wouldn’t have to at all; that it would be obvious once he’d done it, and Morgan would just piece it together and say yes to a question she hadn’t actually been asked.
“I will,” he said, his whisper less paranoid and more embarrassed this time. “I’ll figure out how to do that. But for now, I can do this.”
I patted him on his obnoxiously toned bicep. Men were so stunted.
As soon as I’d had the thought, I saw a spark in his eye, and I knew before he even opened his mouth what he was going to say. How he was going to deflect onto me. But I couldn’t open my own mouth fast enough to stop him.
“And how are things going with Teddy?”
I groaned, then turned back towards the TV. Phil was in the middle of the final level of the episode, but I yanked the controller away from him anyway.
“Hey!” he cried. “I was winning!”
“I am not talking about this with you,” I said, pushing Phil off the cushion in front of the TV and resuming my place. Phil had decidedly not been winning.
“What?” Jack asked, crouching next to me. “So, you can drill me about my relationship, but I can’t ask about yours?”
“Are you dating Jen’s niece?” Patricia asked with a gasp, tuning in from across the room. “That’s wonderful!”
“I am not,” I said, my eyes glued to the screen as I set a trap for another player. “And that’s the difference, Jack. I’m not actually in a relationship, am I?”
Jack scoffed. “Right, so you’re going to tell me there’s absolutely nothing going on between you two? Nothing at all has happened on those weekends away?”
I rolled my jaw. “Nope!”
Maybe I’d responded too quickly. Maybe I’d enunciated just a tiny bit more than usual.
Maybe it was just a kind of brotherly intuition.
But I’d known Jack my entire life, and I knew the moment the lie left my mouth that he hadn’t bought it.
I had intuition of my own, and I could feel the triumph in his breath.
I hopped away from the hexagonal tile I was on as it disappeared beneath me, only to run smack into another player, ragdolling over the edge. I’d lost.
My cheeks burned with rage – both at the game and at myself for what had happened with Teddy. It was all too much. I’d wanted a mindless distraction, but the intensity of this stupid game and my stupid best friend had riled me up anyway. I just couldn’t win.
“Fuck this,” I said, chucking the controller onto the sofa and striding across the room.
I slid open the patio door and closed it as dramatically as possible behind me, slightly undermined by how slowly it shut, both from my fear of breaking the glass and from the weight of the door itself.
Then I sat down on the edge of the wooden deck, which extended out over the pond, running my bare toe along the surface.
I heard the door open and shut again.
“Fuck off, Jack,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Language,” came Patricia’s voice, making my eyes go wide. I spun around.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but then I softened when I saw that her expression was teasing rather than offended.
“It’s okay,” she said, sitting down next to me.
“I’ve seen you three rage-quit video games plenty of times.
Do you remember that silly portal game Phil could never get the hang of?
You’d all just met at secondary school. He must have just learned a few choice swear words, and they all came out of his mouth in one big string.
I’d never laughed so hard, but he was so embarrassed thinking he’d offended me. ”
I didn’t remember that, but I laughed anyway; it sounded about right. I’d spent so many hours in their lounge playing with Jack, and then with Phil, too, when we’d met him. So many hours escaping my own home life.
“You were always a soft place to land,” I said wistfully, and she bumped my shoulder with her own.
“And I was always happy to be,” she said, “though I wish I hadn’t needed to be.”
I bit at the inside of my lip, knowing where this was heading. I’d been continuing to ignore Mum’s calls since the festival, and I was certain she would have been pestering Patricia about how I was or if she’d heard from me.
“How is she?” I asked.
“The same.”
“I’m sorry she bothers you about me,” I said. “I wish she would just leave you out of it.”
“I don’t want to be left out of it,” Patricia said, and I looked over to see that she wore a sympathetic smile. “Sarah’s easy for me to deal with. I know a dozen women just like her. But I know she’s not easy on you. So if me being in the middle makes things better for you, I’m happy to be there.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. Patricia could clearly tell I was on the edge, because she cleared her throat and looked out to the water. “So,” she said, “tell me what’s going on with Teddy.”
I couldn’t help the groan that came out of my mouth. “Really, Patricia, it’s not—”
“Let me stop you there,” she said, holding up a hand between us. “I’m not asking to be nosy. I mean, yes, I’m curious. But also, I just like to see you happy, and I know you haven’t had the best luck in that department.”
I was almost sure Patricia didn’t know the half of it, but I didn’t offer that information.
“There’s just nothing to share,” I said instead. “If I were in a relationship or some huge milestone happened, I would say, I promise.”
She nodded for a long moment. “You know,” she said, “you don’t have to have some huge milestone to tell people about for it to be worth sharing. That goes for whatever this is with Teddy, or anything else in your life.”
I shrugged. “But what good would it do?”
“Well, it could help you feel better. Help you gain perspective. Make you feel less alone in all of it.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Because what she was offering sounded wonderful, but in my experience, it didn’t actually exist. It wasn’t possible to get those things without also gaining the weight of other people’s opinions and expectations.
“The reason we all get so excited is because we care about you,” she said, patting my hand where it rested on the deck between us.
“We want you to feel as loved and cared for as you make everyone around you feel. But I’m sorry if that excitement feels like a burden.
Makes you feel like you can’t share the little things without people making a bigger deal of them than they are. ”
Damn, that familial intuition was popping off today.
And, honestly? I did want that. I wanted to be able to share what had happened with Teddy, just without anyone putting pressure on me to take it back.
To throw caution to the wind and just be with her, consequences be damned.
I’d been trying so hard to be more considered, and the last thing I wanted was other people’s excitement sweeping me up and bringing me right back into my chaos queen era.
But god, I really did need to talk about this.
Every time I’d closed my eyes for months, it had been Teddy’s face I’d seen.
I could still feel her hands on me, and it was driving me crazy.
It was taking every ounce of willpower I had not to fold – to run to her and tell her I’d been kidding; that I wanted to throw caution to the wind and let the chips fall where they may – and having everyone else rooting for us to be together wasn’t helping.
And yeah, Patricia was a mum, but she wasn’t my mum. So maybe I could actually talk to her about this?
“Okay,” I said, “so, Teddy and I may have hooked up last night.”
Patricia did sit up a bit straighter, but, to her credit, she played it remarkably cool. She nodded for me to continue, so I let myself rewind to last night, done keeping it all at bay.
“And, honestly, it was great. It felt like things were falling into place.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Patricia asked. “Why does that stress you out?”
“Because it can’t be anything,” I said. “She’s leaving in a few weeks.
If we got together, we’d have to be long distance, and even if we did that, she’d resent the fact that I’d be living the life she wants for herself.
I only got the job at Gwenynen because Jen used the money she’d been saving for Teddy’s visa. ”
“Did Teddy tell you she’d resent you?” Patricia asked, doubtful.
I shook my head. “No, but she didn’t contradict me when I said it. I would resent me, too, if the roles were reversed. I don’t know if I could be with her.”
“Do you know that you’ve got the job permanently?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But Jen’s implied that it’s coming. Either way, I’m not sure that matters.”
Patricia shrugged. “I mean, it sounds like you don’t have all the information yet.”
“Exactly,” I said, excited that she understood. “And I’m trying so hard not to be careless with this. With her feelings, or with mine. With the dynamic at the farm for either of us. And it feels like we crossed a line there.”
Patricia nodded and let out a deep exhale, clearly giving real thought to what I was saying. Then she turned her whole body to face me, taking my hands in hers.
“I think it sounds like you’re trying to do the right thing,” she said, and my shoulders sank in a strange combination of relief and disappointment.
Part of me had hoped she’d tell me I was being silly, and that I should just let myself enjoy Teddy whilst I could.
Even if I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“But Chloe,” she said, and I perked up slightly, “love is a powerful force. And even for the most restrained, considered people on the planet, some forces are just too powerful to ignore. So if you’re going to hurt yourself by staying away from Teddy…”
“I don’t want to hurt her, though,” I said, my voice cracking slightly.
“Listen,” she said, “I get it. You’re trying to let yourself hurt a little to avoid the big hurt for both of you. But I just don’t want you to sacrifice yourself at the altar of someone else’s future. You deserve to have what you want, even if you both have to do some reconciling down the road.”
A rogue tear escaped down my cheek, and I moved to wipe it away, but Patricia squeezed my hands in place.
“But if you think it’ll hurt less to wait until you have more information, that’s okay, too. You’re so young, and a matter of weeks is nothing compared to the future you have ahead of you. So, if you need to hold off, keep your distance until you know more, I think that sounds sensible.”
“Yeah?” Again, the strange cocktail of relief and disappointment churned my stomach.
“Yeah.” She was smiling at me, and I tried to mirror it back to her.
“And don’t worry about your mum,” she said. “You talk to her when you want. In the meantime, I can handle her.”
“Thank you,” I said, squeezing her hands the way she’d squeezed mine. “I’m lucky to have you.”
“And you do have me,” Patricia said. “Don’t forget that.”
She leaned in for a hug, and I let her wrap her arms around me, folding my own over her shoulders. It was a nice, warm hug, but it took me a moment to let myself sink into it.
When I finally did, the tears came hot and fast. Patricia didn’t move, just holding onto me as I cried onto her shoulder.