‘I didn’t!’ She looks close to laughing, meaning she absolutely did.
Saying that, as I walk to the door, careful not to release the floofs, I could murder some Comte grated into paper-thin slices and served with?—
My stomach bottoms out as I open the front door.‘Jack?’
He’s really here.
At my house.
He looks better than I remember, all wrapped in a thick black coat, scarf tucked under his chin, hair tousled by the icy wind. I’ve never seen him dressed for winter and he looks dapper as hell. How dare he look this good when I’m in jogging bottoms and covered in popcorn.
In fact, how dare heperiod. Hide me like he’s ashamed of me for months, make me fall in love with him, stomp all over my heart, and now show up to my house uninvited expecting me to— I don’t actually know what he wants, but I don’t want to hear it.
‘Hi,’ he replies. It’s more vapour than sound, and I will my knees not to buckle. Traitorous knees. We don’t love him anymore.
‘How do you know where I live?’
He opens his mouth but the reply comes from the living room. ‘I told him! For god’s sake talk it out. I can’t take Mopey Minnie any longer.’
Mumdid this? I don’t know how I feel about that. No, wait, I do. She’s a traitor too. How humiliating, my own mother summoning my ex—whatever he is. Was. I don’t know anything anymore.
‘I have a speech,’ he says, ‘like the one inJust Friends.’
‘Well, Ryan Reynolds got pied, so—’ I make to shut the door when his hand juts out and holds it open. He’s infuriatingly strong.
‘Minnie, stop being a cow!’ shouts Mum even though she can’t see.
Jack leaves his hand on the door while he rushes to say, ‘The only person I’ve ever said “I love you” to is physically incapable of saying it back.’
I drop my hands.What?
‘I didn’t grow up in a loving household,’ he goes on, ‘and I’ve always associated love with struggle and pain. Then you came along. The feelings I have for you petrified me – they still do – but I want this. I want you. And I… I love you, Minnie Roberts.’
My heart’s doing somersaults. My eyes are prickling. He’s saying all the right things, and there’s nothing I want more than to throw my arms around him and surrender to the possibility of us.
But what if I fall for his newfound bravery only to have him freak out next week and dump me again? Get a taste of what we could be only for it to be snatched away? It’ll destroy me even worse than Las Vegas did. I’ll need more than Alanis and Toni to save me.
‘You have some gall,’ I retort. ‘You forced me to fall in love with you – I didn’t want to, it was against my will – and then you par me in aforeign countryafter I pour my heart out to you, and you think you can just come here?—’
‘Oh Minnie, get off your high horse!’ Mum calls.
‘No, you’re right,’ says Jack. ‘It took a long time to earn your trust and I wrecked it. But I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win it back.’
‘Words, Jack, these are just words.’
He rubs the back of his head. ‘I want to court you. I want to hold your hand. I want to buy you dinner – not a takeaway, a real dinner in a real restaurant, with fancy knives and forks and specials and shit. And I want you to meet my brother. And I wantto go for boozy brunch with your friends because that’s all they seem to do.’
A small laugh bubbles up but I manage to stifle it.
‘I want to do everything with you,’ he says. ‘I don’t care where it is or why, I just need to be next to you.’
He steps up the porch stairs and I falter back. My resistance will vanish if he gets too close. God I’ve missed him. I’ve missed him so much my bones ache. And now he’s here, standing in front of me, a strange magnetism is wrenching me towards him. It’s messing with my head.
‘I know you’re scared, and I’m scared too,’ he continues, taking another step. This time I don’t move. ‘But I think… I think I’ve been made to love you, and I think I could be good at it.’
He’s so freaking cute. What am I supposed to do? I don’t want my heart to get broken again, but…
He takes the final step and we’re on the same level, barely a foot apart. I can smell his deliciously familiar scent. I can see the exhaustion around his eyes. I can catch the rawness at the base of his nose. He’s been hurting as much as I have. I don’t know why but the idea surprises as much as it softens me.
