I get horrible lurches in my stomach. Weird, sickly butterflies at the thought of setting eyes on my gorgeous idol after all these months apart.
I know Josh is battling with thewhat ifsas much as I am. I see him staring blankly as he stirs coffee on autopilot, or scrolling through his phone feed without even looking at it. Spaced out while his mind is spinning.
It’s him who is key in this. The heaviness is far more on his shoulders than mine.
His relationship with Heath is the foundation at the heart of this situation. It’s him who is going to be the driving force in how things play out from our side.
No doubt about it, this one proposal will change everything. It will set the ground for the future, whatever that might be.
For good, or for bad, it will change our lives.
The onebadthat is changing my life for the good is the mess Connor is making of his.Daddysure did an excellent job on that front, and the hole my prick of an ex is digging just keeps getting deeper. The mouthy motherfucker doesn’t help himself, bitching back at fans, trolls and reporters and making an enemy of the whole goddamn world. I catch snippets of him on social media, and it’s clear from his dilated pupils that he’s off his tits, all too happy to dish out the middle fingers and thefuck yous.
I’m old news now.Ella Edwardsis a name rarely mentioned. The ex who allegedly broke his heart is just a flash in the pan of a shit storm. It was one hell of a rough storm to bear, but it’s moved on now. I’m like Dorothy in the world of Oz, dropped back on the ground after the tornado.
With two days left to go before our proposal with Heath, the jitters in both me and Josh are clear to see. We’ve even been avoiding Tiff so she doesn’t catch wind of it. Josh moves like he’s buzzing with electric, hardly able to stay still. He’s twitchy on thesofa, and twitchy in bed, the both of us a pair of fidgets as the hours close in, one by one.
We don’t talk about it, other than giving each other snippets of how brilliant seeing him again is going to be. Smiling about how great it’ll be to see him, right there in the flesh before us. But under the surface, the nerves and the tension are thrumming like a bass note, getting louder.
“Are you going to be alright tonight?” I ask my boyfriend on the morning of the meetup. “You should eat something, you know. Even just a piece of toast. Try to settle your stomach.”
Josh shakes his head, sipping coffee as he avoids breakfast.
“My stomach wouldn’t hack it.”
I chew down a piece of my toast, and I understand the avoidance, because my own guts are churning, too. I hope I don’t barf up when the nerves crash in.
“What do you think will happen?” I ask Josh. “I mean, really happen? You know Heath way better than I do.”
Josh shrugs. Gives me a nervous smile. So uncharacteristic of his usual chill.
“I have no idea. I must have run through at least a thousand scenarios, and I’ve given up on the predictions now. I just don’t know where his head will be at.”
I give up on my toast, dropping my half eaten piece on my plate.
“What about where your head is at? What do you want to happen? What’s the best case in the thousand scenarios?”
His shoulders are tight. His fingers gripping the counter. We’ve been skirting this conversation for weeks.
“Normality,” Josh says. “That’s my best case in the thousand scenarios. The one that makes the most sense.”
“Normality. Ok…”
I try to gauge what normality means. Heath has been a regular client of Josh’s for years now. Normality for him mustlook like regular meetups, secure and constant. But this summer was… different. We both know it. It wasn’t just a week-long proposal. It was…
Falling in love.
Even thinking those words makes me feel ill, it hits so hard.
Josh turns away from me, which is unusual. He busies himself arranging the fruit in the fruit bowl, but I don’t let the conversation go. I can’t. I need to know where Josh stands before we face the grand reunion.
“But what about Cannes? That was more than normality, wasn’t it? That left normality in the dust.”
Josh shrugs again, but doesn’t turn around.
“I don’t know about that. We had longer to express ourselves, and feelings build quick in a pressure cooker, but they were always there in the first place. They will always be there. It’s just how we get to express them that’s at stake.”
My brain feels like a whirlwind as I try to digest what he’s saying.
