Oscar snatched up his phone and, ignoring the many messages and notifications,opened up the Twitter app on his home screen. Olive watched him scroll frantically and felt guilty that a small part of her triumphed in people knowing. Whilst Olive could maybe do without her private life being splashed across the world wide web, she’d never wanted to keep secrets in the first place and she knew if she was being completely honest, she might even be a little relieved thatwhatever they were was no longer something she had to hide.
But when she looked at Oscar she noticed his whole face had changed. Suddenly, his jaw was sharp and tense and the blue of his eyes was cold and uninviting.
‘Oh no. No, no, no,’ he mumbled. ‘Shit!’ He threw down his phone on the bed and knitted his fingers into his hair, thumping the back of his head against the wall behindhim. Olive braced herself and looked down at his phone and there still on the screen was an impeccably clear photo of Oscar kissing Olive on the District Line train earlier that evening.
‘We can fix this,’ she said.
‘We can’t.’ She watched him shake his head and her heart thumped in her ears.
‘We can! It’s slightly blurry! That could be anyone!’
‘Olive…’ he said, grabbinghis phone and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, searching the floor for his boxers. He stayed there for a moment, his back to Olive, and sighed before slipping them on. She wanted so badly to reach over and run a hand across his broad, freckled back, to let him know she was there for him to lean on, but there was already a distance developing between them.
‘Where are you going?’she asked.
‘I’ve got to call my agent.’ He left the bedroom without looking at her. She watched him walk away and she begged him in her mind to turn around, to look back at her, to show her some sort of kindness. Instead he opened the door to his living room and went straight inside without a moment to acknowledge that only moments ago they’d been the most physically intimate two humanscould be. Now she felt like she was floating in a sea of bed sheets and he was standing on a distant shore, unable and unwilling to be close to her again.
