Chapter 40
Forty
CLARA
I f looks could kill, Andrew would have murdered me the moment Jesse and I walked into the kitchen together. And multiple times throughout dinner.
Jesse and I weren’t any more affectionate than we had been two days ago, but things had clearly changed . And everything about us seemed to give it away.
I tried not to let his non-stop death stare affect me, but the harder he stared, the more I found myself wanting to accommodate his clear outrage at the situation he found himself in.
If there was ever a sign that our break-up was still fresh, it was in the ways my body remembered what to do to accommodate Andrew’s needs. Andrew’s ego. It was the driving force behind me trying to stay out of the warmth of Jesse’s embrace just to make Andrew feel safer. To make him believe that Jesse and I were still just friends so that he wouldn’t make a scene the night before Becky’s wedding. I just needed to keep the peace until tomorrow, and then Jesse and I were free.
But my heart was no longer in trying to keep Andrew calm. Not when it knew it was falling for Jesse, and it was falling fast.
He became one of my best friends almost as soon as he entered my life, and because of that, he knew me better than most. And more than that, he understood me. He gave me my space and didn’t try to make me feel bad about needing it. He knew how to sit in companionable silence and just be. He effortlessly made me feel safe.
Which was probably why my body was so responsive to him. I had never been able to relax all that much during sex when I was with Andrew because I could always sense when he was getting impatient that he wasn’t getting any attention. Or that I didn’t appear to be appreciating the attention he was giving me because I didn’t come immediately. It meant that more often than not, I made sure that all the focus was on him. At some point, my brain must have registered that I deserved more than what I was getting, and then our sex life disappeared altogether, and neither of us wanted to rock the comfort boat to get to the root of that problem.
But Jesse acted like it was a fucking privilege to get to touch my body. He loved every second of it and seemed to want nothing more than to make me feel good. And fuck, was he good at it. I still couldn’t believe what he managed to coax of me that morning. My body was over-sensitised and sore in the best possible way.
I was also able to relax in different ways with Jesse. He liked my friends. I could see now that my friends had tolerated Andrew but liked Jesse, so I didn’t have to worry about stepping in or apologising for him.
As I watched him talk animatedly to my dad, both of them smiling and laughing, I realised, with a startling amount of clarity, that there was no version of Jesse and I that would settle for ‘good enough’. There would never be a scenario where I wouldn’t notice if I fell out of love with Jesse. If that happened, then the axis of my world would shift forever, never to be put right.
I would miss him.
I wasn’t falling in love with Jesse. I was already there.
And he had the power to hurt me.
Really hurt me.
As the realisation struck, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Between Andrew trying to kill me with eyes that used to look at me with some modicum of affection, and the fact that I had fallen hard and fast into being in love with someone else, I was in a tailspin.
By the time everyone started drifting away from the table as the dinner plates were cleared, I was itching to get into the pool. When I got up, Jesse gently grabbed my wrist so he could loosely tangle his fingers with mine and brush a kiss over my knuckles. I melted into the touch and smiled at him as he let me go.
He didn’t ask where I was off to. Or if I was okay. He didn’t seem annoyed that I was leaving him alone with everyone. He knew I was going to clear my head. He understood.
And I knew that he would come and get me later.
It was the feeling of love that overwhelmed me as I walked away that made it so much easier to ignore the scowl that Andrew was throwing my way.
* * *
The pool welcomed me as it always did when I needed it, with a turquoise tranquility that I gratefully dived into and let engulf me for as long as possible. I slowly broke the surface and started swimming.
I had barely done my warm-up lengths before my peace was disturbed. I heard the water move by the stairs, indicating someone was walking down them. There was only one person who would think it was a good idea to join me in the pool while I was swimming, his own needs always more important than mine. My stomach rolled with nausea as I tumble-turned and pushed off to swim towards that end of the pool.
When I got back to the end of the steps, I chanced a look around before I turned again and found Andrew standing at what I had come to think of as Jesse’s spot. Albeit he was usually outside of the pool. I tried to ignore his presence, but I could feel the weight of his stare on me as I swam another length. It was distracting enough that I misjudged where the wall was and almost swam face-first into it. I pulled up quickly and avoided a collision.
Just.
I had barely swum any distance at all. My head was still a mess, and I hadn’t been able to process anything the way that I wanted to. The way that I needed to. And I wouldn’t be able to do that with Andrew hovering in the pool, always in my eyeline when I turned around.
There was no way I was going to be able to concentrate. I’d already nearly collided with the wall. I swam over to where Andrew was standing. He watched me the whole time.
“You okay?” he asked. Once upon a time, Andrew’s voice had sounded like home. It wasn’t anymore.
“I’m fine,” I said as I settled in a good five feet away from him. I turned around and pressed my back against the edge so I didn’t have to look at him.
“Yeah, you look fine.”
I rolled my eyes at his flirty tone.
“What do you want, Andrew?” I asked with a sigh.
The water shifted around me as Andrew moved so he was standing in front of me.
“I thought it might be good for us to talk when you don’t have one of your guard dogs watching you.”
It felt like the time for talking was a month ago, when we stood in front of each other, extinguishing the flames of our relationship. But neither of us felt the need to do then because the truth of the matter was, we didn’t love each other anymore. Or at the very least, I didn’t love him anymore. If I did, maybe I would have fought for him.
But I hadn’t.
“I don’t really think we have anything to talk about,” I said steadily.
“I miss you, that’s something,” he said quietly. There was something vulnerable about the way he said it. It reminded me of the early days of our relationship when I was getting to know him and knew it was costing him something to open up to me. Just like it had then, it made me want to reach out and comfort him. But that was the muscle memory talking.
The real truth was simple.
“I don’t miss you, though,” I said.
I could pinpoint the moment my words landed with him. Hurt flashed across his eyes before he had time to cover it. Then it turned to annoyance. Anger.
“Because of him?” he spat.
“Yes. And no.”
It was the truth. I didn’t miss him because without me knowing, my life had already adjusted to him not being in it before he was even gone. I hadn’t noticed how separate our lives had become while we were living together, calling each other partners. But out of it, and with some distance, it was clear that we hadn’t been partners for a while. Not in the way my parents were.
Not in the way I thought I could be with Jesse.
Andrew sneered at me. “You always told me I had nothing to worry about with him.”
“You didn’t. Nothing ever happened between us until this week. Contrary to the narrative you want to spin, I didn’t cheat on you. Not physically and not emotionally. I was all in with you until I wasn’t.”
“I don’t believe you. I can’t believe you. Not after I’ve seen the way you are with him. You let him take food off your plate. You don’t flinch when he casually touches you?—”
“I never flinched when you casually touched me. I don’t flinch when anyone I know touches me. You were the one who didn’t like it when I touched you without some kind of warning.”
“Your hands are cold. It’s always shocking.”
I swallowed my next sentence about how Jesse didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I still knew him well enough to know it would only make him angrier, and I didn’t want to deal with that.
“I also didn’t let him take food off my plate. I gave it to him because I wasn’t going to eat two pieces of toast, and it would be a waste of food,” I said instead.
“There is no way that you would be behaving this way with him if you hadn’t been at it for months. Maybe even years.”
“Right, yeah. I have been having a years-long affair. I was going to ask you to marry me. You think I would do that while I was actively sleeping with someone else?”
“Why not? I’m the kind of guy you marry. Not him.”
It was my turn to feel anger now. “What do you mean by that?” I snarled.
Andrew stepped closer to me. I tried to move away, but I was already pressed against the wall. There was nowhere for me to go.
“I mean, I’m the steady and dependable one that you want to bring home to mummy and show off to everyone. He is the one that you ride for a good time, but not a long time.”
I scoffed. “If you are trying to get me back, shit-talking Jesse probably isn’t the way to do it. Also, not for nothing, but my mother doesn’t actually like you. She seemed a little heartbroken when she found out I was going to ask you to marry me and was very relieved the relationship ended because of it. At least when I show Jesse off to her, I will know that she likes him. He is just as steady and dependable as you are.” I paused. “And riding him is both a good time and a long time.”
Andrew’s face flushed red. He stepped closer.
“You know I won’t ever fully be out of your life,” he snarled. “Our best friends are getting married tomorrow. Gavin and eventually Becky will be able to work their magic again to get you to take me back. They did last time.”
“Last time? Last time we were teenagers. We didn’t know any better. We had overly romantic views of everything. Best friends being in love with best friends sounded like the dream . We’re almost thirty now. Life happened. You said I wasn’t the girl that you fell in love with anymore, and you were right. I’m not. And you’re not the same boy I fell in love with. There is no magic that Gavin can weave that will be good enough for Becky to even bother passing it on to me. Are you forgetting that she was the one who allowed Jesse to come here for the week? There’s another room free. He could have slept in there, but Becky pushed us into the same room. You’re going to have to rewrite the script in your head, Andrew, it’s wrong.”
I hadn’t noticed that he was close enough now that our noses were almost touching. Reluctantly, I put my hands on his shoulders. I saw the hope bloom in his eyes at the touch. Why, I didn’t know. Probably because he hadn’t listened to anything I’d just said.
The hope died the second I pushed him away to give me enough space to push myself out of the pool. He spluttered, trying to find something to say.
I left him to it.
* * *
As I walked back through the house, I noticed that almost all of downstairs was dark, meaning everyone had retreated to their rooms. That made finding Jesse a lot easier.
I felt a buzz of excitement under my skin as I walked to our room. The swim hadn’t been long enough to clear my mind, but the conversation with Andrew had done it. Now I just needed to tell Jesse how I felt.
When I opened the door to our room, even though the light was on, it seemed quiet. Empty, even.
Jesse wasn’t on any of the furniture as I walked further in. He wasn’t on the bed, and we had left the bathroom door open so I could see that he wasn’t in there either.
He was gone.