Chapter 28
I pick up my coffee while I wait for her to speak but put it straight back down when I see how much my hand is trembling.
Maybe it’s the sleepless night I’ve had, or the coffee I’d already downed before Teddy arrived at the Starbucks near my work and ordered me another without asking, but most likely, it’s because I’ve just told her everything in one long, breathless monologue, and she hasn’t talked for what feels like hours.
‘Teddy?’
She shakes her head, picks up her coffee, but like me, puts it down again without taking a sip. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You can say anything you want, but please, please tell me you can forgive me,’ I plead.
Teddy wraps her cream cardigan tighter around herself and shakes her head.
‘What am I forgiving? The fact you slept with Elliot less than a week after we broke up? The fact you kissed him despite not even knowing we’d broken up, or the fact you’ve secretly liked him all along but have been too scared to tell even yourself, let alone me? ’
Her words are bullets, but I take them. ‘All of the above. I should have come to you first. I know that. I really messed up.’
‘Yeah, you did. And now you’re sitting here asking me for forgiveness, expecting me to give it because we’re best friends and that’s what best friends do.
Only, this isn’t some boy in sixth form I fancied, this is my ex-boyfriend.
The man I cared a lot about for months. The man I’ve just broken up with and am still hurting about.
I—’ she stops herself. ‘You know what, I can’t even begin to do this.
’ She looks around and begins to laugh. ‘Starbucks, seriously? What was the plan? You’d tell me, then I’d get a bit upset before letting you off the hook all in the time it takes to finish our fucking coffees. ’
She slams her cup down, froth splashing over the sides. ‘I can’t even be with you right now.’
She walks out, leaving me to finish my drink and pretend the two baristas and the group of mums and toddlers on the table next to us haven’t just heard our entire conversation and are looking at me like I’m the worst friend who ever lived.
KARINA: You can’t blame her, Lizzie. What you did was terrible.
Our group chat has been silent for days, and I’ve resorted to texting Teddy and Karina separately. Teddy hasn’t responded to any of my many messages apologising, so I’m left to seek solace that I’ve at least one friend left who will reply to me.
LIZZIE: I know it was. Do you think she’ll ever speak to me again?
KARINA: You know she will. But you’ve got to be patient, and you’ve got to stop plaguing her with messages. You’ve apologised, now you need to give her time. Respect that at least.
I end up waiting two weeks. Two miserable weeks, in which I have to physically remove myself from my phone, putting it in cupboards and leaving it in my car when I get home so I’m not tempted to call her.
Two weeks that consist of going to work and avoiding Elliot before coming home and sitting in front of the TV without taking in any of what I’m watching.
But I listen to Karina’s advice, and finally the message from Teddy arrives.
TEDDY: We should talk. Come round to mine tonight?
I race round, stopping to buy wine and flowers and Toblerone on the way over.
When she opens the door, I try to stop myself hugging her, to let her lead in what happens next, but I’m so relieved to see her, I can’t help flinging my arms around her.
I squeeze her even tighter when I feel her hugging me back.
After I let go, she pours us two glasses of wine, and we settle on her sofa.
I’ve no idea how she’s going to begin, if she’ll demand an account of the night Elliot and I spent together, if she’ll want to rake over everything in forensic detail, but she doesn’t ask me anything at all.
‘The thing is, you could have set me up with anyone, Lizzie,’ she starts.
‘Your whole ex-plan was just a bit of fun for me. I didn’t need you to choose Elliot.
I was looking for a few dates, that was it.
But you did choose him. You did that when there were feelings there.
Massively supressed feelings, but feelings that existed.
That was your choice, and it was a bad one. ’
‘I know.’
‘And you dated Jordan and let me date Elliot without dealing with how you felt. That was so unfair of you. Jordan liked you, he thought there was something there between you, and you led him on. I felt so bad for him when it didn’t work out between you, and now I feel even worse because he never stood a chance. ’
‘You’re right. I feel awful about that. I wish I could go back and undo everything. I wish I’d have owned up to my true feelings months ago.’
She scoffs at that. ‘The feelings that came out by you kissing him and sleeping with him when we’d just broken up? What if I’d have still liked him, Lizzie? You could have really hurt me.’
My face stays contrite, but my stomach uncoils, and my heart slows down a few beats. You could have really hurt me, meaning I potentially haven’t. This might not be the end of our friendship.
‘Seriously,’ she carries on. ‘What if I saw a future with him? What if he bought into that future thinking nothing would ever happen with you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed off with him too for choosing to be with me because he felt he couldn’t have been with you, but it’s your choices that bother me most. Tell me, if we hadn’t have broken up, would you just have gone along with it forever?
Would you have got to your death bed before telling me how you felt? ’
‘Probably not even then.’
Her lip twitches, and she finally takes a sip of her wine to hide it.
‘If you’d have been honest with me, you’d have known that I’d have been OK with you acting on how you felt about Elliot. It might have been a little weird, but I’d have dealt with it. But you didn’t. You went behind my back.’
‘I know,’ I say again. ‘Everything you’re saying is true. I can’t feel any worse than I do, and I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not that it’s Elliot, it’s the not telling me that’s the worst bit, you do get that? That’s what hurts.’
I reach forward and take her hand. ‘I hate that I hurt you. It will never happen again, and I promise you nothing’s going to happen with Elliot.’
For the first time since I arrived, a flash of anger crosses Teddy’s face. ‘No, don’t you do that. You don’t get to use this as an excuse not to be with him. You don’t get to hide behind me.’
My head jerks back in surprise. ‘I’m not.’
She pulls her hand away. ‘Lizzie, you’ve spent your whole friendship with Elliot coming up with reasons not to be with him, and I won’t be another.
‘You know what I think? I think you’re in love with him, and you’re so scared by that, by the prospect of him being everything, you’d rather tell yourself it can’t happen than face up to the possibility that it could.
I can forgive you for everything else, but if you make me part of that, I won’t forgive you for it.
It’s time to face up to this, Lizzie. All of it. ’