I’ve fucked this up. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant. I need to put it right.
I push open the door and go into the office. Jude is sitting at his desk, alone, working on some paperwork. He looks tired and grumpy. The red mark on his jaw where I hit him is starting to darken to a bruise.
He looks up as I go in, leans back in his chair, and studies me, not smiling.
I look at the box of sandwiches in front of him. “Late lunch?”
“Yeah.” He gestures to it. “Feel free to help yourself, because what’s mine is yours, obviously.”
We stare at each other for a moment. Then, very slowly, his lips curve up, just a fraction.
I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans and perch on the edge of the table next to his. “You want to talk about it?”
He shrugs. Then he sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me you had feelings for her?”
I study my Converses. “It’s not the sort of thing you tend to admit to your best mate about his girlfriend.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Has what been going on?” I frown at him. “We haven’t been seeing each other behind your back, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I wonder whether he’s going to say he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t.
“I’d never have made a move on her while she was with you,” I say. “When I spoke to you, you said you’d broken up, and she said the same.”
“Yeah, but it was the same night, dude. The same night! You’ve got to see how that stings.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Really?”
“I do, Jude, of course I do, and on the surface of it, I’m ashamed that it happened the way it did. But the thing is… what happened between me and Beth, it doesn’t have anything to do with you and her. I wasn’t waiting for her to break up with you or anything. But on Saturday night, I was worried about her, and I found her in the Driftwood, and we just got talking. She didn’t want to go back to your place because she wasn’t ready to talk to you, and she asked if she could stay at mine. Neither of us intended for anything to happen.”
“But it did.”
“Yeah.”
“So there must have been something between you. She must have had feelings for you already.”
Something occurs to me then. I don’t think he’s actually mad at me, or at Beth. I think he understands. He just looks sad, and that feels like a punch to my gut.
“I don’t know,” I say, although I’m pretty sure she did. “All I know is that neither of us planned for it to happen. But in both our minds and hearts, she was single.”
He exhales a long, slow breath. Then he says, somewhat irritably, as he scratches at a mark on the desk, “It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s done now. Guess the only way is up, right?”
I study him, feeling the weight of his unhappiness. It’s been there for some time, and I know Beth could feel it, too.
“She thinks you’re still in love with Chrissie,” I tell him.
He looks up then, his eyes widening. “What?”
“You still wear her ring,” I point out. “And Beth’s not stupid. She asked me if I thought Chrissie was the love of your life. Because she was pretty convinced that she wasn’t.”
Jude gives a short laugh and covers his face with his hands, then lowers them and stares up at the ceiling. Then he looks back at me.
“What?” I say.
He plays with a pen on the desk. Eventually, he says, “I heard from her, a few months ago.”
