‘Cool story,’ Sarah sniffed. ‘Soph, say the word and we’ll tear him limb from limb.’
I shot her a thankful look but couldn’t afford to risk a smile. My face was fixed, angry and hurt, and I knew even the slightest emotional variation would see me in floods of tears.
‘My best friend Caitlin and I got married last year,’ Joe said, moving very slightly closer as I moved very slightly further away. ‘So she could keep her job in New York.’
‘Marriage of convenience plot twist,’ mumbled a woman in the front row, the girl beside her nodding with wide eyes.
‘She forgot to renew her work permit and it expired. I have dual citizenship through my mum and I was trying to be helpful.’
‘You really do have a terrible track record with that.’ I dug my fingernails into my palms before relaxing my hands suddenly. The scar on my right hand had taken forever to heal; hands that spent all day flying across a keyboard did not recover quickly. ‘And to think I called you inconsistent.’
‘You’ll be thrilled to know I’ve taken a vow never to try to help anyone ever again,’ Joe said, the slightest hint of a smile on his face that fluttered and died when I didn’t respond. ‘I married my friend for a visa, that’s the short version. The longer one is, I did it because I’m selfish. She was my best friend in the world, maybe my only real friend in New York, and I didn’t want her to leave, and I honestly thought I would never get married. I’d always said I wouldn’t, not after growing up with my parents. No one knew except our closest friends and family. As you know, I made the mistake of telling my dad but, obviously, he didn’t understand.’
‘Predictable,’ my dad muttered somewhere across the room. ‘Classic Gregory.’
‘It worked out great for a while,’ Joe went on, the rest of the room so quiet, you could’ve heard a Post-It drop. ‘Then my mum got ill and I needed to move home which messed everything up. We had to fill in all these extra forms, do more interviews, get letters from my mum’s doctors to prove why I was coming back to the UK and Caitlin wasn’t. It was a whole new mess. We made a pact to keep things clean; no social media and no serious relationships with other people. To make sure we didn’t get rumbled, no one else could know.’
He reached one hand out towards me but I jerked backwards. I couldn’t bear it.
‘But things were serious with you from the first moment we met,’ he whispered. ‘From the first moment I saw you.’
‘And your mum is OK?’ I asked.
‘Mum is OK,’ he confirmed, the room sighing with relief.
‘If you weren’t really married-married, why didn’t you just tell me?’ I could feel my resolve weakening when he raked his hair away from his face, close enough for me to smell his clean, warm scent, and feelings I’d fought off for what felt like forever came flooding back, consuming me too easily. ‘If you’d explained it like this, I would’ve understood.’
‘Would you?’ There was a genuine and reasonable question in his voice. ‘Oh, hello woman I just met and have completely fallen for, this is incredible and everything but, heads-up, I’m married and I can’t get a divorce for at least another six months and, until then, we’ll have to keep our relationship a secret, cool? Cool.’
‘You didn’t give me a chance,’ I said.
‘Because you didn’t trust me to begin with,’ he pointed out. ‘And I wanted to trust you but if things went badly, and they always go badly for me, that put Caitlin at risk. If I didn’t tell you and you found out, you’d never trust me again. It was a Catch 22.’
‘Overrated book,’ I heard Mum comment followed by Dad gasping in horror.
It stung because it was true. We’d made it very clear we didn’t trust each other. Only I thought we’d agreed to try.
‘After that night, I knew things had changed. All I needed was one day to go home, call Caitlin and explain before I could even attempt to explain everything to you. She’s been my best friend for years. I couldn’t break our agreement.’ Joe took a deep breath and held it in his chest. ‘Even if I had fallen in love.’
He must’ve known the crowd’s intake of breath would suck every atom of oxygen out of the air. It left me light-headed, reeling against my chair.
‘If this is all true and you got only married to help your friend, how come you’re telling me now?’ I asked, recovering myself and catching sight of Sarah’s warning glare melting into begrudging acceptance behind him.
‘Because when I talked to Caitlin yesterday, she could see this was killing me,’ he answered. ‘She’s decided to move back to Toronto. The whole thing was a terrible idea and I never should’ve suggested it in the first place but I really was—’
‘—only trying to help, I know.’
‘You still should’ve trusted her in the first place,’ called out a boy with furiously red hair and an even more furious expression.
‘He’s right,’ agreed the girl in the pink headband. ‘Eric would never do something like this.’
‘That’s because I’m not Eric.’ Joe’s eyes were still on me, fixed and focused. ‘I’m real and real people make mistakes, they apologise then try to earn forgiveness.’
My front teeth dug into my bottom lip to hold all my words in until I was absolutely certain about what I wanted to say. Joe had no such intention of holding back.
‘I did not see you coming, not ever,’ he said, shaking with determination. ‘I made myself stay away because I was so sure you were better off without me but, even when I managed to keep my distance from you, I couldn’t let go of this.’ He held up his copy ofButterflies, so well-read, the writing on the spine was completely illegible. ‘Every time I was lonely, I read your book. Every time I missed you, I read your book. Every time I woke up in the night and couldn’t understand why you weren’t beside me like you were in my dreams, I read your book. I know every word off by heart, because they’re your words. They’re sacred.’
‘That’s quite good,’ Pink Headband Girl whispered to Red Haired Boy. ‘He’s been practising that.’
