Chapter Four
BEA
‘On.’ Like Donkey Kong.
Okay, so I lie. But I’m unlikely to announce I heard my ex-boyfriend screwing someone else by phone.
More tongue....
The whispers echoed through my head all day long—his sighs and his moans—the accompanying images playing on a continual loop.
Yes, like that...
Like what? Like I don’t do it for him? Like I’m not enough?
‘Bea?’
Fin’s voice breaks through my thoughts, her tentative tone almost as if she can read what’s running through my mind. The scenarios and narratives. The images I’ve created, cruel and taunting, to match the words I wished I’d never heard.
‘Sorry. M-my mind wandered for a moment.’
More specifically, it wandered to the point when Jon told me last week—via a text—that he’d like for us to go on a break.
A break. What is that even? Press pause on our relationship? Is it an interruption? A complete discontinuance?
I now realise it was a warning. A warning I didn’t heed.
Right now, I’d like to break his fucking head.
No one knows me as well as Jon does. I’d thought the same the other way—and I hadn’t believed for a second he was serious. I’d just decided this was his way of trying to manipulate me into flying to visit him.How very wrong.I was tired and just coming off a twelve-hour shift and... Who am I kidding? I’ve been ignoring the signs. The fact he’d stopped making an effort to see me. The fact our sex life has been disastrous recently.
In hindsight, I can see he’d been dropping hints for months, but I wasn’t paying enough attention. I wanted to believe he was joining my family in their suggestion that I come home.Darling, you’re already a qualified doctor. Why put yourself through more study at all?Not that my parents would dream of saying this to my brothers. I’ve never heard them suggest Aiden come home from Australia or Luke from Brazil. My parents want grandchildren. Apparently, I’m the brood mare.
You and I want different things,was how Jon ended the text.
I’d assumed he was talking about children, too.
We’ve been together forever—I thought it would count for something. And I suppose it does. It counts as my idiocy. Becomes a great red flag for it. The fact that he couldn’tget it up the last time we were together now makes perfect sense.
Betrayal is such an ugly word.
I inhale a painful breath, pasting on a smile because this shit hurts. But not in the way heartbreak should. I’m not curled in a ball, sobbing over him. After my catatonic run, I didn’t want to climb into bed and block out the world. Quite the opposite. It’s been a wake-up call. Like someone has removed a film from my eyes. Or maybe tape—because itispainful. The sad thing is, my pride is mainly what’s hurts.
‘Yes, on,’ I repeat a little too loudly and a little too forcefully, using myI’m a doctor, you can trust meface. ‘Yes, Jon is my boyfriend.’
My lying, cheating, uninspiring dick of an ex-boyfriend, but tonight—here at the dinner to celebrate Fin’s promotion—I’ll just say theexbit in my head.
Meanwhile, I’d asked one of the male nurses to draw my blood while I sent Jon the following text and routed his future calls to an interesting voicemail.
Jon, you should take care not to roll on your phone when fucking someone. Especially if that someone isn’t me.
We’re over. Done. And if you’ve ever felt anything for me, you will now do as I say. Don’t contact me. I won’t answer. I don’t want to hear your excuses, especially as we’ve been here before.
I can see that now. I’d ignored the evidence; the tiny inconsistencies, the things he’d said or didn’t say. None of it pointed firmly to him cheating, but in hindsight, it screamedlying bastard!
It’s funny—or not—how things fall into place.
What’s not so funny is submitting yourself to a barrage of blood and STI tests.
