She shakes her head, wipes away more tears. I get a petty twist of satisfaction from watching her smudge mascara and eyeliner all over her face. “Not yet.”
Simon and Tash met after all this happened, so technically it’s irrelevant—but I guess she’s kept it quiet because she wants him to think she’s principled and virtuous, morally flawless.
Well, maybe I’ll tell him, I think savagely.Just so he can be aware of the type of person he married.
“You know, it’s funny,” I say. “When I came back from traveling, you said I was a different person. Like I’d changed, forgotten how to have fun, or take risks.” She nods but says nothing, clearly too ashamed to speak now. “And when Max came into my life again, I remembered what you’d said. And I thought,I’m going to take a risk, and go for it with Max.” I shake my head. “What an idiot. I shouldneverhave risked my heart with him again.”
She exhales and goes to speak, but no words leave her mouth. So we just sit in silence for a few moments, like two completely broken people.
“You need to leave now,” I say.
“Please, Lucy. We can’t—”
“Get out,” I say, not looking at her. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
—
Jools must have wondered why I’m not up when she gets home a couple of hours later, because she taps my door, opens it, and sticks her head through the gap. “Morning.”
I’m back in bed, where I’ve been flicking through the notebook from my travels, my sole souvenir from that time, containing the sketchy first seeds of the novel I’d wanted to write. I’m recalling afresh how every page was colored with self-recrimination about Max, with heartache and regret over my lost soulmate. And now those words have taken on a completely different meaning, like the language I wrote them in is obsolete. Because all my confusion about the way Max and I ended seems foolish suddenly, childish and naïve.
I shut the notebook, shuffle into a sitting position, draw my knees into my chest. I rest my chin on top of them. “Tash was here earlier.”
“Oh God.” Jools sits down on the edge of my bed. “Did you talk to her?”
I nod. “She said it meant nothing, her and Max. That it lasted less than five minutes. Like that makes it okay.”
I stopped crying an hour ago and my head just feels blank and woolly now, like I’ve swallowed a sedative. My brain’s way of shutting down, I guess, when I’ve been thinking for too long and too fast.
“Oh, Luce,” Jools says, taking my hand. She looks exhausted from her night shift, and I feel instantly guilty. She needs to eat and sleep, not listen to me complain about my ridiculous life.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “How was your shift? Shall I make you some toast?”
“Shut up and come here.” She pulls me into a hug. “Make me nothing, and tell me everything.”
So I relate the conversation to her, and afterward we sit quietly together, like we’re surveying the broken glass of my relationship, trying to figure out how best to clean it up.
“So, what’s worse,” I say, eventually. “A meaningless, drunken shag, or a passionate affair?”
“Neither. End result’s the same, isn’t it?”
I’m so glad Jools is here. As well as my closest friend, she’s also a longtime expert in familial drama. Literally nothing can shock her.
“You know, since I got back from Australia, Tash has always made such an effort with me. You know—like she’s been so desperate for us to be close. I thought she was just worried about me... and sometimes I even felt guilty for not telling her what happened with Nate. But now I realize she did all that becauseshefelt guilty, for what she’d done.” I brush away a fierce tear, trying not to picture Max’s face. Max, who I thought—until a month ago—was my soulmate, fated to come back into my life. Who I would look at in bed, thinking,This is exactly how it’s meant to be. The man I was falling in love with all over again, unable to quite believe he was mine for a second time around.
“Jools, can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“Am I overreacting?”
Her eyes narrow. “About your sister and your boyfriend... sleeping together?”
“It was nearly ten years ago. Max and I were twenty-one. Don’t we all do stupid things when we’re young?”
“I mean... a stupid thing is nicking a lip balm from Boots. Or drink-dialing someone shady. Or eating a kebab from that dodgy chicken shop. What Tash and Max did... It was cruel.”
It feels unusual, to hear Jools speak out against Max. She’s always been so good at treading a neutral line.
