Chapter 41
To this day Felicity will never know why she did it.
But that night when they got back to the house, she tried to blow things up. Not physically of course, that would be weird. And illegal. No, instead, Felicity did her damn best to put a torch to everything she’d built with James and he very nearly let her.
It started innocently enough.
‘I don’t deserve you,’ she said, as they were moving around the kitchen, making cups of tea, grabbing sofa snacks, pouring drinks, the cats roaming round their legs, rubbing against them, hoping for an early dinner or a late lunch or whatever time it was.
‘Why are you saying it in that voice?’ said James, pouring boiling water over teabags.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s not your usual voice. You sound… weird…’
‘Do I?’ said Felicity distantly, a bag of supermarket-brand Doritos in her hand. They had both ditched their wedding gear in favour of pyjamas and had planned an evening of movies and tortilla chips in an effort to block out the horrors of the day. But Felicity just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
‘You know you do.’
Felicity waved a hand. ‘I was just thinking how lucky I am, that’s all. I don’t deserve to be with someone as amazing as you.’
‘Erm, I’ll be the judge of that, thanks very much,’ said James, with a grin. He stirred the tea, added milk, spooned the teabags into the bin. Turned to look at her with that piercing stare.
Felicity gave a weak smile and leant back against the counter. ‘It’s just…’
James’s eyes widened and she could see the muscle in his jaw clenching. She cursed herself for what she was about to say, but somehow she couldn’t stop.
‘What?’
‘All that pain, you know? All that trauma. It’s astonishing how much two people can hurt each other.’
‘Where are you going with this, exactly?’
Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Well, I can’t help thinking I should let you go now, and get it over with.’
What the hell is wrong with you? said the voice in her head.
‘I’m sorry?’ said James, frowning.
‘To avoid the inevitable heartbreak when you eventually figure out that I’m a total deadbeat,’ she said, staring at the floor so she didn’t see his face crumpling in pain.
James’s voice was gruff now. Raspy. ‘Is that a joke? It sounds like a Felicity Brooks joke but it doesn’t look like a Felicity Brooks joke if that makes sense?’
She didn’t smile even then. Where once her head had been full of him, her thoughts were now black and despairing.
Even now, only eighteen months in, she couldn’t bear to think about how she would (or wouldn’t) cope if the man she loved was taken from her, at the altar or anywhere else.
Perhaps it would be better just to end it now before it became totally impossible to extricate herself without causing permanent harm.
She crossed her arms. ‘When I was a kid, right, this random relationships expert came into our school and told us about how sleeping with someone is like putting two bits of cardboard together to make it corrugated or whatever the word is. For some reason I never forgot it.’
‘What are you going on about?’ He smiled, hoicking himself up onto the counter opposite her.
‘Bear with me. So… once you make corrugated cardboard, right, it’s super strong but if you try and rip the layers apart again it’s nearly impossible to do without leaving pieces behind.’
‘Okay…’
‘I mean, I think the teacher was trying to just encourage us all to become nuns or monks or something, but the point still stands, right?’
‘I’m not following.’
‘Once you’ve connected to someone like that it’s almost impossible to separate again. Or not without a whole world of pain.’
James folded his arms. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said, a little sharply.
‘I’m not doing anything, I was just thinking out loud.’
James hopped down off the counter again and came towards her.
He put a hand on either side of the counter where Felicity was standing and leaned in.
She could smell his aftershave, his shampoo, his scent, and it was so distracting she almost lost her train of thought completely. Focus, Felicity. But it was too late.
‘I’m not letting you do this,’ he said. ‘Do you hear me?’
She tried to feign innocence and failed. His face was inches away now, and his eyes were flicking back and forth from her eyes to her lips. She had to look away again. Felicity had never been very good at eye contact.
‘Do what?’
‘Destroy us.’
‘I’m not.’
James sighed, long and low. ‘Do you remember what I said to you when we first got together? That I loved you and there was no way in hell I was ever going to let you go? Well, I meant it. And—’ Felicity went to interject but he held up a hand.
‘No, Brooks, wait. I know you have trust issues and I told you I would stick by you until you learnt to trust me, didn’t I?
And I think we made good progress, all things considered, but now you’re trying to blow it all up because you’ve seen the damage that two people can do to each other more times in your life than anyone ever should and you’re trying to protect yourself from the same thing happening. Am I right?’
Felicity looked up at him. He actually had tears in his eyes. Her heart clenched in her chest at the sight.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘How the hell did you know that?’
He sighed again. ‘Because I get it. I’ve been there too, remember. I’ve had my heart ripped out and stamped on and when you’ve been through something like that and then you meet someone new it’s hard not to spend every day in absolute terror of it happening again.’
Felicity swallowed a lump in her throat and shook her head. ‘Seeing Bex and Adam today. Her face. My God, I never want to go through something like that.’
He inched closer to her. ‘I would never do that to you. I mean it. Never.’
‘I know that,’ she whispered. ‘I mean, my brain knows that rationally, like, you’re a good guy and we have something great here… but I’m still scared every single minute.’
‘I get that. And listen, right, if you really want me to go and leave you to turn into a proper Crazy Cat Lady, I will. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I just want you to be happy.’
‘You’re making it very hard for me to concentrate right now,’ she breathed as he drew closer until he was a heartbeat from kissing her.
‘Tell me to go and I’ll go,’ he said, his lips millimetres from hers.
Her heart was thumping for different reasons now. ‘I don’t want you to go. It was a stupid wobble, that’s all.’
James bowed his head and she put her hands into his messy blond hair. He wrapped his arms around her waist and groaned with relief, pulling her to him.
‘Say that again,’ he mumbled into her chest.
‘It was a stupid wobble.’
‘Not that bit.’
‘Oh. I said I don’t want you to go.’
He let out a grim laugh and she could feel his body vibrate against hers. ‘Thank God. Please don’t scare me like that.’
She giggled in spite of herself. ‘I’m so sorry, that was really mean.’
‘It was really mean,’ he said, lifting his head and looking into her eyes once more. ‘And now you need to be taught a lesson.’ He gave her a cheeky grin.
‘Ooh, I like the sound of that,’ she said, as he lifted her onto the counter and pressed his body between her thighs. Her hands were on his shoulders and her heart was in her mouth.
‘You better believe it,’ he said, his voice a low purr.
‘Are you going to punish me?’ she whispered in his ear and he moaned once more, then covered her mouth with his and kissed her deep and soft and slow till it was her turn to moan.
And then his hands were lifting her pyjama vest over her head and running all over her skin and she had her hands on his taut stomach and they were kissing each other urgently and all Felicity could think was please, please, please never leave me.
Fortunately, she couldn’t embarrass herself by actually saying the words out loud or begging him to stay with her forever. After all, her mouth was busy.