‘Right. Wow. I had no idea that had happened. She was always really negative about you, but I didn’t know she’d had a relationship with you.’
‘Well, it wasn’t really a relationship. We just slept with each other a couple of times after meeting during Freshers Week. I definitely wasn’t up for a serious thing so soon after starting uni and I thought she felt the same. She told me she did at the time and was fine with keeping things casual, but then she changed her mind.’
‘Ah. Okay. Well, she was probably really upset when you ended things then. Rejection is rejection, no matter how you couch it.’
‘Yeah. I felt bad about it afterwards. Until she started her campaign of harassment, that is.’
‘Hmm. Yeah. That wasnotokay behaviour.’
‘And she never told you about it?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘No. She was always just dismissive and a bit bitchy about you. And if I’m honest, I let her criticism get in my head a bit. She used to go on and on about what a player you were and how you were someone who couldn’t be trusted. And that I should give you a wide berth. Now I think about it, I remember her telling me you’d treated a friend of hers really badly and left her broken. I guess she didn’t want to admit it was actually her.’
He lets out a frustrated-sounding breath. ‘That sounds about right.’
‘I mean, I mostly ignored her when we first got together because I was having such a blast with you,’ I say. ‘But after a while, when I felt like things could get more serious between us – that I wanted them to, but you didn’t seem to – I let what she’d said get to me.’
‘I wish we’d talked more, back then,’ he says with regret in his voice.
Pausing for a moment, I weigh up whether I should admit to the thing that’s been rattling round my brain for a while now. I decide I may as well tell him everything. I’ve got nothing to lose.
‘Okay, this is embarrassing,’ I say, ‘but in all honesty, I was a bit scared about the way you made me feel when we were together.’
‘How so?’
‘Out of control of my feelings. I used to think about you all the time when we weren’t together. In an obsessive sort of way. It didn’t feel healthy to be so infatuated with someone. Especially because you didn’t seem to feel the same way. It felt unbalanced, like you had some kind of dangerous hold over me. I hated that.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this at the time?’
‘Because it would have given you even more power over me,’ I say with a tight grin.
‘Or I could have reassured you and altered my behaviour so you didn’t feel so spun out.’
‘But would you have done? It didn’t seem like it at the time. You were having too much fun being wild and free. You didn’t want me tying you down.’
‘No. I wanted to do the tying down,’ he says with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Trust you to bring this back to sex,’ I joke, feeling my whole body heat in response.
He lifts his hands in mock-apology. ‘In all seriousness, I guess you’re right. I probably would have freaked out.’
‘So it was all down to bad timing for us. We needed very different things at the time.’
‘I guess that’s the crux of it, yeah.’ He’s looking at me intently now, his dark gaze searching my face.
‘So there are no hard feelings?’ I ask.
‘I always havehardfeelings around you.’ The corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk. ‘And I was a bit cut up at the time, yeah, but I got over it.’
I find I have to force myself to smile at that.
So he’s totally over me now? The words slide like ice down my back.
I mean, I’m glad to hear he’s not holding on to any kind of grudge about our past, but I’m also strangely upset to hear he doesn’t have any feelings for me any more. I know that’s selfish, I’m not in any state to start a serious relationship with him –and that was never the deal– but deep down I have to admit I like the idea of him still caring about me.
Instead of admitting to that, I dip my head, look up at him from under my lashes and say, ‘Well, if there’s any lingering need for closure in your mind, you’d be well within your rights to demand some sort of penance from me.’
His eyes spark with interest. ‘Yeah?’
