“Are you sure? Because you look like you’re in pain. Are you in pain? Any sweating? Difficulty breathing? Light-headedness?” He peers at me closely. “Ross and Mason will kill me if you have a heart attack.”
“I’m not going to have a heart attack.”
“It’s a big step. I’d understand if you’re not ready.”
“I’m ready.” I push the keys towards him again. “Please, Stuart. Take them.”
“Alright.” Stuart fiddles with them, turning them first one way and then the other, as if he can’t quite believe they’re real – or that he’s holding them. “You’re still a part owner, you know that? That’s what tenants in common means. I’ve bought into the property. I haven’t bought you out.”
“I know. The lawyers explained it to me. I’m not a total idiot.”
He gives me a long look. “You can come back here anytime. There willalwaysbe a room for you. It’s still your farm.”
“Not my farm. Our farm.”
Stuart smiles. “Our farm. I like the sound of that.”
“Me too.”
Our farm. I roll the words around in my head. They feel good. Light. As though I’m part of something, instead of responsible for something. Which is exactly the point.
“When’s Jonathan coming up?”
“Tomorrow. He said he needed an extra night ‘to say goodbye to the city’.” Stuart shakes his head. “Bloody Londoners.”
Bloody Londoners indeed. One bloody Londoner in particular, whose voice I can’t stop hearing, whose touch I can’t stop missing.
The question comes out before I realise I’m asking it. “Do you think there’s a world in which she’d forgive me?”
Stuart, ever perceptive, doesn’t need to ask which she I’m referring to. “You were an arsehole,” he says with biting honesty, “and it’s been a year. And you didn’t know each other very long.”
“Right.”
Of course she won’t. I fucked it up too badly. And now I’ve waited too long. Who am I kidding? There’s no way Rowan has been waiting around for me.
“She’s still on your mind then?” Stuart asks.
“All the fucking time,” I admit. “Close my eyes, Rowan. Lie down to sleep, she’s there. Look at the sky, think about her eyes. I thought it would go away, but…”
But without her, the world isn’t as bright. The sunsets are dimmer, and the rain is colder, and my smiles are smaller, and even the view from the top is less beautiful because she isn’t there to see it.
I’ve never felt this way before, not for Evelyn, with whom I shared my first kiss, nor Kat, who took my virginity in the back of her dad’s truck, or Terry, who I dated on-and-off through university, sleeping cramped in her student single bed. Not even Violet, who I had it in my head to marry, before everything happened with Da.
None of them have even come close.
I shake the thought away. “It’s stupid. Forget I said anything. Like you say, it’s not like she’ll forgive me anyway.”
“I never said that.”
“You did.” I tick the reasons off with my fingers. “You said I’m an arsehole, which I am, and it’s been a year, which it has, and we didn’t know each other very long, which we don’t.”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I didn't hear the wordsshe won’t forgive youin there.”
“You know what I mean. It’s implied.” My neck is growing hot, and under my clothes I feel itchy. A year of therapy has helped me learn how to open up, but at heart I’m still the same Angus, and every instinct I have is screaming at me to end this conversation fast.
“It’s unlikely,” Stuart says slowly. “It's not impossible. You’d have to apologise.”
“Of course.”
