‘Max?’
He is striding towards them, looking from Phoebe to Luca and back again. Phoebe instantly regrets having dropped Luca’s hand, but as she reaches out for it again, she notices that he has stepped away from her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘We need to talk, Phoebe,’ Max says, doing his best to appear to ignore Luca.
Luca is hovering by the door to the deli and Phoebe glances inside at the lively atmosphere, wishing herself in there with Luca instead of out here, confronted with her ex-boyfriend. But before she can turn away, Max reaches out, placing a hand on her arm.
‘It’s over. I left her. It wasn’t even a real thing anyway. I miss you.’
It all tumbles out in one breath and Phoebe is so startledthat she can’t find any words. Looking at him, she realises for the first time quite how awful he looks. His face is gaunt, his eyes ringed with dark circles.
Luca clears his voice. ‘Phoebe, do you want me to stay?’
Max’s eyes meet hers and for a second she falls into them, pulled back by the memories of their life together. Jesus, it wasn’t perfect. But they were together for three years. When she looks into Luca’s eyes, she feels a spark of excitement and the thrill of getting to understand someone new. But Max’s eyes are so known to her that it throws her for a moment.
‘No, it’s OK. I’ll see you in a bit …’
Phoebe turns just in time to catch the steely expression on his face as he silently turns and opens the deli door and then is gone. But it’s too late then. Shit! What was she thinking? She wants to be in there with Luca, not out here with Max.
She finds her voice now, her expression hard. ‘What, Max? What the fuck do you want?’
His face twists into a grimace, but suddenly she doesn’t have any sympathy for his exhausted expression. He left her! He slept with someone else and took her bloody furniture!
‘Can we go upstairs? I need to talk to you.’
‘What if I don’t want to talk to you?’
‘Please, Phoebs.’ He bobs up and down on the spot. ‘Look, the truth is, I’ve been driving for ages and I’m dying for a piss. Please, just let me upstairs and I’ll use the loo and then go.’
‘OK, fine, but that’s it.’
She follows him upstairs, lingering in the living room as he closes the bathroom door. She paces back and forth by the window.
The sound of the taps running and then the bathroom door opening causes her to spin around.
Max casts his eyes around the apartment, his gaze falling on the sofa.
‘Wow. That’s, um, bold.’
‘It was a gift from a friend. I couldn’t exactly be picky once you’d cleared the place out, could I?’
‘Yes, yeah, of course.’ He looks nervous now, resting a hand on the back of the sofa and seeming very interested in the fabric. ‘I’m sorry about that. I was being a dick.’
‘Why are you here, Max?’
He takes a deep breath, rubbing one hand along his jawline. ‘I made a stupid mistake, Phoebs. I never cared about her. It wasn’t even a thing. And I know that’s not an excuse, I know I did a really shitty thing. But I was just feeling so lonely.’
His words hit her square in the chest. He looks smaller somehow and something inside her softens, anger releasing its grip.
‘All those nights when I’d be at home on my own, waiting for you to come back. Or when you’d cancel a plan yet again … I hated it. It made me feel that I didn’t matter at all.’
‘I know,’ she says quietly, all the fight suddenly draining out of her. Yes, the way he left was bad. But she has to accept the part she played in ending their relationship too. It didn’t break because of him. They broke it together. Or maybe it simply was never going to work to begin with.
‘What you said in one of your messages when you left,’ she says, perching on the edge of the bright orange sofa. ‘Maybe you were right. You do deserve to be with someone who makesyou feel like they want to be with you. I clearly didn’t do that and I’m sorry for that. But I also deserve to be with someone who understands how much my career means to me, who is proud of what I do rather than resenting it. And that will never be you, Max. We were never going to be right for each other. We can’t make each other happy.’
When Max left, Phoebe thought it was proof that she couldn’t make a relationship fit around her life, she’d just have to deal with being single forever. But now …
