Even after cheese and chips from the chippie to soak up the many Jack D and Cokes I’d consumed, there was still enough alcohol in my system to make me brave. And stupid.
I’d just been dumped the day before my twentieth birthday, and I think I was allowed to be stupid. “So true.” I nodded at my phone as I kicked off my high heels and stumbled back onto my bed.
My roommates had already passed out because it was now six in the morning. We’d decided to celebrate my birthday, despite Andrew breaking up with me over text yesterday. After a standard bar crawl, we’d ended up at our friend Jaz’s for an impromptu party he hadn’t been expecting. I’d spent the night laughing and listening to all my friends’ crazy stories and pretending like my heart wasn’t shattering inside my chest.
Not because of Andrew.
Andrew was a pompous arsehole who wouldn’t know where to find the clit if someone gave him a map and a torch.
Nah, I was dying inside and had been every single day since last month when I’d seenhim. And her. Them together.
Quinn and Kiera. They’d ventured into Glasgow for the weekend with their daughter. Mum had tentatively told me they’d called her Heather. Glasgow was huge, so it was completely sadistic of the universe to put them in my path.
I was a waitress at a café just off George Square and was walking to work, earbuds in, listening to Stereophonics.
At first, I thought I was seeing things.
But it was Quinn. He was pushing a pram so I couldn’t see their daughter. She’d be around eight months old, though. He looked unshaven and a bit tired, but handsome as always in his jeans and shirt. Kiera was beautiful in a short summer dress. They looked like young, cool parents.
My chest tightened as I froze on the pavement, panicked, my brain not thinking quickly enough to get away from them.
Kiera suddenly pointed at the window of a store and grabbed Quinn’s arm. He frowned at whatever she said but then she kissed him, slow and sweet. I felt sick to my stomach. Quinn’s expression softened and he nodded.
Kiera opened the door to the store and Quinn backed the pram up into it, disappearing.
It took everything I had to march past the store window, my pace quickening, hoping against hope neither of them looked out and saw me.
I made it to the café.
I never saw them again that day.
But it had split my heart open, and for a month, I’d felt as raw as I had when we first broke up. So many times I’d reached for the phone to call Quinn, to beg him to change his mind. Then my pride and anger would kick in. If you had to beg someone to be with you, the relationship was doomed.
Instead, I’d eventually tried to move on. I dated a bit. The pain of losing him, of losing my future with him, grew more bearable. Five months passed and then Laird told me Quinn and Kiera were married.
I slid right back to the start.
There was nothing left for me but to work through it again. Until Christmas when I fought with Laird because I refused to return to the island. Mum came to visit me in Glasgow instead. So on and so forth was the journey of getting over Quinn McQuarrie. When I met Andrew in February, it was a year to the day Quinn and I were over for good. I was physically attracted to Andy, so I probably stayed in the relationship because of that … and my desperation to move on.
Seeing Quinn with Kiera and Heather had broken me all over again. I pushed Andy away and he dumped me, and honestly, I didn’t care. I was awful.
Even now, still drunk at six o’clock on a Sunday morning, all I could think about was Quinn.
I wanted to tell him how much I missed him. I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to scream at him that he’d destroyed me and hear that it hurt him as much as it had hurt me.
Therefore, I was going to do just that. To my drunken brain, it sounded like a wonderful idea.
Laird had let slip Quinn and Kiera were renting his mum’s old place. I still remembered the house phone number because I’d called it so much as a teenager.
With my whiskey-soaked bravery (and stupidity), I dialed and lifted the phone to my ear. I could barely hear anything over the rush of blood. With each ring, my heart rate increased.
Just as I was about to hang up in equal parts relief and disappointment, the line clicked open.
“Hello?” Quinn’s voice sounded in my ear for the first time in eighteen months.
An ache of emotion expanded across my upper body, crawling upward to my throat.
“Hello? Who is this?” he asked, sounding sleepy and belligerent.
