Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
CLARA
I ’d stopped to tie my shoelace, and by the time I stood up again, the rest of the group had moved on.
Except for one person.
Drew was lagging behind, pretending to look at his phone.
It looked like my luck had run out when it came to avoiding him.
I sighed as I started walking towards him and the rest of the group.
“You good?” he asked when I reached him.
“Fine. Just a loose shoelace,” I replied. I started walking faster, forgetting that I was with a man who knew exactly how to keep up with me.
“And more generally?” he pushed.
“Also fine.”
I could see out of the corner of my eye that hearing it so bluntly surprised him. The two words made his steps falter for a second.
“You and Jesse seem close,” he said when he got his step back.
My gaze immediately went to the man in question. Jesse had turned in my direction, his shoulders too stiff and his jaw visibly clenched even though I was still metres from him.
“We’ve been friends for years, why wouldn’t we be close?” I said flatly.
“Samuel thought it might be something more than that. Aren’t you two sharing a room?”
I looked away from Jesse and back to Drew. “Well, if Samuel said it, it must be true. We’re friends. And yeah, we’re sharing a room, but there’s nothing more to it.” Only half a lie.
Drew’s nostrils flared. Then the coldness in his eyes melted into concern.
“You been sleeping okay? I know how much you hate sleeping in beds that aren’t your own.” There was a care to his voice that caught me off guard.
More than that, he wasn’t wrong.
I didn’t sleep well in beds that weren’t my own.
But over the last two nights, I’d slept better than I had for weeks . My eyes searched for Jesse again. He was still looking at me. Our eyes locked for a moment, and then I turned back to Drew.
“Could have done longer with bed this morning, but on the whole, I’ve been sleeping fine.”
It was brief, but I saw the sadness that flooded his eyes before it went back to his earlier coldness.
“My side of the bed isn’t even cold, and you’ve already found someone to fill it?” he spat.
I scoffed. “You know you don’t get to be the asshole in this situation, right? I wasn’t the one that opened the conversation about ending things. You did. I was going to marry you. You’re the one who moved out with my sofa, which, in case you haven’t figured out by now, you can keep. Our relationship is over. The final nails have been banged into the coffin. As such, anything I choose to do with my life, romantic or otherwise, is actually no longer any of your business.”
Drew’s face turned downright vicious. “But you are fucking him? That is the only way I can make sense of the fact that he is here. Becky promised me that he wouldn’t be invited, and yet I show up here and there he is, cosying up with you.”
“I’m not. And again, even if I was, it’s not your business. My invite came with a plus one, and Becky agreed that I could invite him. I’m not cosying up to him. I just no longer have to double-think everything because you’re not in the picture. I’m sorry that you breaking up with me didn’t send me back to the pits of despair where I needed you to save me again. Did the script in your mind have me dropping to my knees to beg you to take me back the moment you showed up in France?”
Drew was usually pretty good at not turning red in most situations, and so, for it to happen, he had to be really embarrassed. As I watched a flush of pink bloom up his neck and onto his jaw, I realised I was right.
“Are you joking?” I asked, my voice an octave higher.
“Clara…” he started. I held my hands up to get him to stop. I felt angrier now than I had when he’d instigated our break-up.
I walked away to join the rest of the group.
Rachel broke away and met me before I could reach them all.
“That seemed intense. Are you okay?” she asked as she laced her fingers with mine. We started slowly closing the gap between us and them.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. He might be more of a knob than I thought.”
“What, did you ruin his narrative by rocking up with a better option?” she joked.
“You might be too observant for your own good,” I mumbled.
“This is why people pay me the big bucks, Clo. He could say that you changed all he wanted, but he didn’t think you had actually done it. Part of him probably thought he could get you back to the place where you needed him if he played his cards right. He’s now learned that he played the wrong hand because not only do you not need him, but you’ve also got someone who can fulfil your needs exactly how they need to be fulfilled. And it’s not him. It’s the one who made you melt a little while he applied sunscreen to your back.”
“How did you even notice that? You weren’t that close to us.”
“I noticed there was no denial there.”
“His hands and my imagination are basically married to each other at this point. So no, I am not denying it. It really fuelled my imagination.”
“Does this mean you are finally going to stop telling us that you two are ‘just’ friends? Are we finally on the acceptance track?”
“I think I might be, Rach. I just need to find out if he’s on the same page.”
A smile broke out on Rachel’s face. “He has been like a tightly coiled spring ever since he saw you got held back with Drew. I think he is definitely on the same page. I’ll let you get back to him.”
Rachel released my hand, and I walked over to Jesse.
His pinkie looped with mine.