There’s a long silence before she speaks again. Her scarlet lipstick is now little more than a raspberry-colored smear, like she’s overdone it on the jam sandwiches. She looks sorry, and slight, and full of regret. “You still love him, don’t you?” she says. “Max. You still adore him.”
Now, I do start to cry. “I shouldn’t. What kind of person does that make me?”Weak, sneers a voice in my head.Pathetic. Foolish.
“Max is the one for you,” Tash whispers. “Anyone can see it. And you’ll never know how much it kills me, Lucy, that I have might have destroyed that forever.”
I realize now there’s nothing more to say. That it all comes down to a simple choice: move forward with my life, or stay still and let this crush me.
—
The following morning, I conclude my long drive home from Shoreley by pulling up outside Max’s flat, my heart thrashing, barely able to believe what I’m about to do.
I get out of the car and walk unsteadily up the front path and into his storm porch, where I press the buzzer firmly before I can change my mind.
There’s an agonizing wait before it clicks. “Hello?” He barely enunciates, mumbling the word like he’s only just got out of bed.
“Max,” I say. “It’s—”
My words are buried in a buzz before I can finish, and in the next moment he’s standing in front of me, gray eyes wide and his body quite still, like he’s trying to remember how to breathe.
—
I’m literally amazed you’re here,” he says, once we’re sitting in his living room. He’s barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt, hair careless and eyes a little bloodshot. His skin looks rough and his cheeks are pinched, like he’s spent the past three months subsisting on little more than coffee and a punishing workload, much like me.
One end of the sofa is strewn with documents and open files—piles of Land Registry reports and oversized papers that look like title deeds. His laptop’s open next to them, and there are a couple of large Starbucks cups on the coffee table.
The room is warm from the morning sun, light striping our skin through the angled shutters.
“Me too, actually.”
He laughs, even though what I’ve said isn’t remotely funny, and puts up a hand to rub his chin. His usually clean-shaven jawline is grainy with stubble. He looks slightly more muscular too, than thelast time I saw him—not much, but enough for me to notice, like he’s been putting in extra hours at the gym. “So... how come you are?”
The truth is that missing him has just become too hard, but I won’t tell him that. “I spoke to Tash,” I say.
A cautious nod. “How’d it go?”
“We’re going to try to... work things out. For Dylan’s sake.”
“That’s really great, Luce.” His voice is full, sincere.
“So... how’ve you been?” I ask, sipping the tea he’s made me.
He rubs his jaw again. “Not great.”
“How’s work?”
“Busy. You?”
“Same. I haven’t stopped, these past few months.”
“Helps, doesn’t it?”
I try out a smile. “Yep. Thank God we didn’t work together.”
He smiles back, but in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Actually... I don’t really want to talk about work.”
I nod, because neither do I.
“I miss you, Luce. I meant what I said in my message. I’d do anything to have you back in my life.”
