Chapter Twenty
Twenty
There was a lot to deal with after Minnesota.
The plane ride home, of course. Which most likely would have been more hell than it was, if Caleb hadn’t paid for business class.
A couple of people stared, but couldn’t really say anything to her.
Whereas they definitely would have if she’d been crammed into economy.
She could almost imagine someone next to her, poking her in her side.
Hey, aren’t you that woman who cried onstage at the Minneapolis Center for Business Excellence?
she thought, and then was grateful that she got to shut the little door between her seat and everybody else’s.
It made everything just a little bit more bearable.
Though if she were being honest, that didn’t mean a lot.
The journey back to her flat through drab, gray London still felt draining.
And of course the internet was dissecting absolutely everything.
Some thought she had been trying to explain that they were no longer together.
Some thought she had been attempting to ask people to leave them alone.
Others decided it had all been a ruse; many more thought it meant nothing at all.
She just wanted to show us some love, she read on the Reddit forum dedicated to his books. And that was enough to keep everything afloat, on the restoring-his-image front. In fact, if anything, it seemed to deepen his mystique. It added to the lore of Caleb Miller.
But it didn’t really feel like a victory.
In fact, she almost turned Beck down when he suggested a celebratory dinner.
She was running on fumes, severely jet-lagged, still in her pajamas at four in the afternoon when he called.
And he just sounded so overwhelmingly chipper.
She couldn’t imagine sitting through two hours of joy when she’d never felt further from it.
It felt like throwing herself into a pit of prickly things.
But her stomach was growling.
And Beck was strangely persuasive.
And that was how she found herself in clothes, outside, with a brave face on.
Instead of in pajamas, indoors, with her eyes all puffy from crying about things she was barely letting herself think of.
Half of her sure she’d made the wrong decision, until she saw Beck darting between plants and tables and fish tanks, in the jauntiest way she could imagine.
Bow tie enormous, hair in an impressively luxurious almost pompadour, already beaming from ear to ear.
It somehow lifted her spirits just seeing him.
And again when he bear-hugged her. If I learn anything from this, she thought, as he squeezed her so tightly, it’s that I shouldn’t tell myself that nobody wants to be my friend. That I don’t fit in, that I’m always too much. Too much is okay. Too much is this lovely, lovely man.
Because, god, he really was.
“Here’s to you and Emmett Solutions,” he said, as he raised the only thing currently on the table to her.
A salt pot shaped like a meatball. “A one-woman whirlwind of brilliance, who single-handedly brought a whole book career back to life with a bunch of pretend love. Now returned, entirely unscathed.”
Then he gestured with his eyes to the pepper pot.
The one shaped like a swirl of spaghetti.
She couldn’t oblige him, however. It felt kind of wrong to lie to a man that earnest and kind. “Well, maybe a little less pretend. And a little more scathed,” she said, and he lowered the raised pot. Put it down. Pushed it away, deflated.
“So you secretly fell in love with him, then?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he had kind of known this might happen. After all, it was practically a disease between them all, spread from one to the other. A really deadly one that made your heart try to eat itself.
Or, at least, that was how it had turned out for her.
Alfie and Mabel were married. They had a baby on the way.
Beck and Hazel were planning their wedding for spring.
Maybe if I’d had a name ending in -EL things would have worked out better for me, she thought. Then couldn’t avoid the question any longer. He was looking at her with the biggest, most anxious eyes in the world.
“Worse. I was already in love with him,” she said, and he sucked in a breath.
“Oh, that’s super bad. Oh, you should never, ever fly so close to the fake-relationship sun if you’re already mad for the person.
Didn’t they teach you that in fake-relationship school?
” he said. Then he clicked his fingers, like oh no, I missed a trick here.
“Shoot. Why didn’t I think of fake-relationship school before now?
I just let you rattle on, fumbling through this, figuring that you seemed okay.
Whole time I could have been giving you lessons. Great advice. Proper support.”
“Beck, you did give me proper support.”
“Not sure it feels like it right now.”
“Because you’re very sweet. But honestly it could have been worse.”
He shook his head, folded his arms across his chest. Sort of like Caleb, but so different at the same time it was almost funny. He did it too high up his chest; he made a face as he ticked his head side to side. And the face was adorable.
The very living embodiment of this is quite a pickle.
“Phew, well, I suppose that’s true. He could have been in love with you, too,” he said. And so oblivious to that being a possibility. It was almost devastating to have to correct him. Luckily, however, it seemed to show on her face.
He almost did a double take, before he settled into a wince.
“I take it by your expression that this was, in fact, the case.”
“Yeah, I’m the woman. I’m the one. It wasn’t made up at all.”
“So the birthday of his life?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. That’s me.”
“Without you he dwells in darkness.”
“Oh god, that’s such a gutting one.”
“It really is. Always used to want to give him a hug over it, truth be told. But you know how he is. Sort of like he might perish if you try,” he said, gaze drifting away as if he was remembering some near miss. Beck leaning in, Caleb’s face turning into a very subtle rictus of horror.
Just like it had many times for her.
“Yeah, I felt like he was perishing constantly.”
“And that’s why it can’t work out, then?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“Oh, so you just realized you’re not compatible.”
“That isn’t— I mean, that’s not the problem,” she said.
But that didn’t seem like enough, so she plowed on.
“In fact, if anything the whole experience said we’re very alike, in more ways than I thought.
Books, movies, music. Making ourselves smaller over the same things, to different degrees.
Always imagining that people think badly of us.
That they don’t like us. That we’re not enough. ”
“And what happened when you told him he was?”
She stopped the slight flailing she’d apparently been partaking in. Assessed Beck, and everything he was doing. But he wasn’t doing anything, really. He was just sat there with an earnestly interested expression. Hands folded in front of him on the table. Gaze steady, steady, steady.
In fact he didn’t even look away from her when the waitress came. He just ordered some champagne. Said they’d split the starter platter, like she’d suggested to him on the phone.
At which point she started to think he was doing something.
Waiting for her to hang herself with her words, maybe.
Or save herself, somehow.
“He didn’t want to listen. I didn’t know how to make him listen.
I can’t convince someone to be different; I don’t even know if I should or if I want to,” she said, while those soft eyes of Beck’s held her hand.
Helped her work a way through it, even when she couldn’t see one at all.
“He did something for me that he thinks is bad, but it wasn’t.
I don’t even think it’s bad in the way he imagined or wanted me to believe. He said he left me in the bar but…”
And suddenly he was actually doing it.
One hand over hers.
“I feel like maybe you should say this to him,” he said, gentle, gentle. She almost didn’t protest, it was that good. In the end, though, she had to. Maybe he could come up with a solution.
“He’s not returning my calls, Beck. He’s not returning my messages and emails. And I can’t climb his fence again, I just can’t, I can’t. I only managed to do it the first time because I told myself he’s awful. I don’t know how to force it on him when I know he’s good.”
“You go home, then.”
“But I need to—”
“I’ll speak to him. I’ll sort things. Everything is going to be all right,” he said.
And instead of saying no, she turned her hand and squeezed his back.