His throat visibly tightened at my words, but his face remained impassive. He nodded slowly as he watched the bartender pass Adam three pints of beer.
‘He seems like a nice guy. I’m happy for you. I look forward to getting to know him better.’
That was three lies, one right after the other, but there was no time to challenge him on any of them, as Adam returned to the table and slid into the space beside me.
Chapter Twenty Three
It took me twenty minutes to finish tidying up the kitchen. I was moving much better now on the crutch, and despite Josh’s gloomy prediction, not a single piece of crockery had been lost.
I hesitated for a long time with the snow globe still in my hand. I could slide it back into the drawer and pretend I’d never found it, or I could stop running away from answers I might not want to hear. With a new resolve, I placed the snow globe front and centre on the kitchen window ledge, where it couldn’t be missed. As I did, the memory of a long-forgotten Christmas present that never was suddenly made sense.
‘I’d really wanted to get you that cute snow globe with the polar bear,’Adam had said regretfully on Christmas morning. The floor was a sea of colourful wrapping paper from the many gifts he’d given me.‘But when I went back to the Winter Wonderland the following day, the stall holder said someone else had bought it.’
At least now, seven years later, I knew who that had been.
‘So, that was Josh.’
I smiled around the toothbrush in my mouth. I’d been waiting over an hour for this conversation, but I hadn’t anticipated Adam would choose to begin it when I was frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.
To be honest, I’d thought it would come in the taxi on our way home from the Winter Wonderland. We’d been lucky and had snagged a cab almost as soon as we’d left the beer tent, and as I’d sunk back on its cracked leather seats, I was eager to hear what Adam thought of my old friend.
But I never got to find out, because Adam had given both of our addresses to the driver, and with hardly any traffic on the road we’d probably reach my flat in less than ten minutes. I had a feeling this conversation deserved longer than that.
As we drove towards my home, it was hard to ignore the niggling concern that perhaps this wasn’t a discussion that should be allowed to fester overnight. Acting purely on impulse, I leant forward to speak to the driver.
‘Actually, can you just forget about that first address and take us both to the second one, please.’
Adam looked surprised. Pleasantly so, I hoped.
‘I thought you said you couldn’t come back because you had an early client meeting in the morning?’ he queried.
I did. And I loved how he never complained when sometimes I had to put work before our time together. But tonight was about priorities, and there was something in his eyes that had been there since we’d run into Josh that I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t want it – or anything – driving a wedge between us.
‘I can get up super early to make my meeting,’ I assured him, snuggling against his side. He slid an arm around me, and I tilted my face up for a kiss.
Before my eyes closed, I’d searched his for the thing that had been vaguely worrying me for the last hour or two and had made me decide to change my plans. It was still there.
Now, I rinsed my mouth and patted it dry with a towel, which conveniently prevented Adam from seeing the way I was anxiously gnawing on my lower lip.
‘Yes. That was Josh. What did you think of him?’
The answer shot back so quickly I didn’t entirely trust it was his honest opinion. It was a knee-jerk response. ‘He seems very nice.’
I picked up my comb and smoothed out the tangles in my hair as I tried to navigate my way through an unexpected obstacle course.
‘No, he didn’t,’ I said, talking to Adam’s reflection in his bathroom mirror. He was wearing only a towel, having stepped out of the shower just moments earlier. The temptation to drop the conversation and slide myself against him was strong, but I resisted. ‘Josh was being weird tonight. I don’t know why, but he’s not normally like that. He’s not usually that ... prickly.’
It hadn’t gone well from the moment Adam returned to our table with the beers and unfortunately overheard Josh making some totally unnecessary comment about never having imagined I’d go for a ‘stuffed shirt, suit and tie kind of guy’.
Adam hadn’t reacted, but I’d noticed the way his lips had tightened. On the surface, if you read a transcript of the rest of the evening, there had been nothing said by either man to hint at any animosity or underlying aggression. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t been the world’s biggest silent pissing contest.
‘I think Josh was thrown to find out I was seeing someone, and that it was serious.’
Some of the tension went out of Adam’s features at my words.
‘Because he’s been carrying a torch for you for years?’
I shook my head so vehemently I messed up the smooth strands I’d just combed into place.
