“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That she’s smart and probably in love with you, and she knew who she was dealing with.”
“I’m sure if she really felt something, she’d have told me. There have never been any lies between us.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to risk what you had.”
I see where he’s coming from, but Casey isn’t like that. Casey looks you in the eye and tells you the truth. Like me, she never liked secrets, and that’s why we worked so well together.
So why do I feel like this? Why is something churning around in my stomach, threatening to climb up to that useless organ in my chest, that I’m no longer capable of using? Why am I so unsure that I made the right choice?
Why do I feel so guilty whenever I’m next to her?
“Did seeing her again stir something up inside you, by any chance?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I’m just saying what I see, Nick.”
“And what do you reckon you’re seeing?”
“An overgrown thirty-three-year-old kid who never grew up, with a huge ego and a tendency to open his big mouth just when he shouldn’t.”
“You’re no better than me.”
“Maybe…but I’m happy with myself.”
“So am I.”
“So why are we talking about it, then?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it! You’re the one who came and started pissing me off.”
Jamie stands up. “Well, if you don’t need me, I’ll get back to the kids,” he says, heading down the stairs.
“I left her behind,” I say, before he reaches the last step.
Jamie turns slowly and stands there, listening.
“I just…left. I told her I’d come back. And I didn’t.”
“And you can’t forgive yourself.”
There’s the problem. Jamie jumps in and gets straight to the point, making me finally pay attention to everything I’m thinking but I don’t want to say.
I lied to her. And I’ll never forgive myself for it.
When I saw her again, when I spoke to her, brushed against her… I felt that same old feeling, the one that tormented me every time we were close and every time we were far apart. It was the same feeling even at the thought of her, alone at night in my bed: that feeling that I would slip over the edge of the deepest abyss if I spent even another minute away from her mouth. When I felt that familiar chasm under my feet, I started to realise that I may have made a huge mistake: that I didn’t know how to appreciate what I had. That I had left behind the best thing that had ever happened to me, something perfect, important and irreplaceable.
Something that no one else could ever give me.
The two of us.
But I know now, just as I knew back then, that there is nousfor me and Casey. There’s just Nick and just Casey, and that’s how it has to stay: suspended in mid-air, with no chance of grabbing onto each other.
“Did you not even try?” Jamie asks, coming back up the stairs to sit next to me.
“I went to play in New Zealand, and she stayed here.”
