I felt the last little part of my love for Ollie drain away. Everything had been a lie. Again.
“Since Christmas? Five months,” I said to no one in particular. “All the begging and pleading to get backtogether was … what? An act. If I’d said yes, you’d have kept him on the side like before?”
“Of course not. Look, Jamie, you know we’re just casual,” he said, giving him a serious look. He turned back to me. “We were just passing the time—”
“Excuse me?” Jamie yelled again. Louder this time.
I stood for a few seconds and took a deep breath. I felt like I was going to be sick. “So … the one person I begged you to never see again. The one man I couldn’t even stomach being in the same room as” – I threw Jamie a look at this, but he didn’t even flinch – “is who you ran back to for a comfort fuck the moment I collected the last of my stuff? Jesus, Christmastime, I had clothes in the wardrobe here and you were still begging me to come back.”
“Always the victim,” Jamie muttered and rolled his eyes.
“I know, I know, it was stupid, but I was lonely and—”
“Anyone but him!” I yelled, my temper snapping and flying to opposite ends of the room. I picked up one of the stupid ornaments on the console table that I stood beside and threw it on the ground. “ANYONE ELSE! But. Him.” Spit was forming at the corner of my mouth. I must look demented, and I didn’t care. “You humiliated me for months with him, you invited me to that stupid summer barbecue with your chambers and introduced me to him.” I pointed at Jamie, and this time he did flinch. “Half your fucking colleagues already knew; your secretary was already lying for you about it. We all stood there laughing, while you two had probably just finished fucking before I got there! And after all that, you couldn’t findanyone else, out of all the thousands and thousands of gay men in London, that you could go with instead.”
“Arden,” he said again.
I whirled on Jamie. I hated him. I hated him more than anyone else in my entire life, and I always would. I hatedhis privilege. His degree from Cambridge. His RP accent. I hated that he was perfect for Ollie in every way I never would be. “You’re a deceitful, nasty, little piece of shit, and I hope you die. You homewrecking slut.” He jutted his chin out. “Remember the old saying: when a man marries his mistress, it creates a job opportunity.”
I turned to Ollie, full of self-righteous rage. “As for you!” But I looked at him, his lip wobbling, his watery eyes and just felt … nothing. I paused. I took a deep breath. “You’re not worth it. You’re nothing to me.”
I felt, rather than saw, something out of the corner of my eye, and Simon’s arm arrived on mine. He gently chided me along to the door. “Come on, Arden. I’ve got our stuff. Let’s go home.”
“Arden!” Ollie called back to me. His footsteps followed us down the hall.
I turned to see him approach us, but Simon’s hand flew out and landed on Ollie’s chest, keeping him at a distance. “Not going to happen, mate.”
“Fuck off,” Ollie snapped and tried to surge forward, but Simon held him back. I walked out to the stairs and took them two at a time. After a few floors, I heard Simon’s footsteps behind me, and then we came to the main entrance, where I exploded through the doors into the baking sunshine. The sky was a perfect blue, and already, London was hot enough to feel like your energy was being sapped from your body. But of course, Jamie had probably walked several streets in this heat and still looked perfect when he’d arrived, whereas I’d have looked like a dishevelled mole rat.
As I’d gone down the stairs, I’d been too shocked to think, but the fresh air jump-started my brain, and before I knew it, I was calling Ollie Ross every name under the sun that I could think of. “Fucking … piece of shit … lying … wanking … fucking tosspot … arsehole … cheating … two-faced … limp-dicked … wanker … arsemonger … bastard… fucking stupid, ugly, waste of space, cunty, narcissistic, shit-eating, fuckface, prima donna, wankstain, little, bollocking evil, hateful, Scottish, cock-sucking, miserly, micro-dicked, weak-chinned, knobhead, string of piss, dumbarse, fuckingcunt.” I kept marching towards the car – or at least where I vaguely remembered Simon had parked the car – all the while my diatribe kept going. I ran out of words in English, so reverted to Polish. I reached a crescendo as I took a corner onto the street where I was ninety-nine per cent sure we’d parked – and scaring a mother with a child – I called Ollie a “horse-fucking cabbage sniffer” (it sounds better in Polish).
I reached Simon’s car as my anger hit boiling point and my muttering burst out of me. I swung my fist down on the bonnet of his truck as hard as I could.
“KURWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWA!” I screamed.
There was a long silence. I was panting – quite loudly.
“I’ll admit you lost me when you switched to Polish. I knew a couple of them, but that last one, well, that’s become universal,” Simon said.
I was still panting.
Simon nodded and put the bags inside. “In you get.” He opened the door, and after a few more seconds of huffing, I eventually slid into the seat and curled up in the corner. I didn’t want to look at Simon, I didn’t want to interact, and I definitely did not want to talk.
He seemed to understand this because, after a brief look at me, he put his sunglasses on and made his way out into the morning traffic. He switched on a playlist from his phone, and an upbeat techno song started playing.
We drove for about forty-five minutes. Simon began to slow down and took the exit to the motorway services.
“Why are we stopping?”
He looked at me. “Because we didn’t finish breakfast. All your histrionics got in the way, and I’m a growing boy.” He pulled into a parking space and got out. “Come on.” He jerked his head to the building that promised all sorts of delicious carbs. I shook my head. I wanted to wallow. Wallowing was good.
“Suit yourself, I’ll bring you back something.”
I sat in the car and – as was my wont so often – felt ruinously sorry for myself. My phone buzzed in my hand. Another message from … him. I looked at the screen but didn’t open the message. I deleted it unread.
Simon was gone a long time. After twenty-five minutes, I started to wonder if he was coming back. He’d taken the keys. I shrugged. Oh, well, the only way to make my day worse was to lock myself out of the car, so I did just that. There was a pretty-ish copse of trees off to the side of the car park with a few ducks around. Some picnic tables were scattered about, and all of them were empty. I sat. I stared into the middle distance.
Eventually, I saw a red-haired man make his way out to the car holding a selection of baked goods in little white bags with blue logos on them. He looked around when he saw the car was empty and seemed slightly panicked for a second. I raised my hand and gave a wave, so he’d see me. Odd to think about Simon being worried about me.
