‘James …?’ Rosie said, her voice soft and reassuring. ‘Is everything OK? Is there something you wanted to talk about?’
Relief flooded his features, though his face remained pale and clammy. He looked almost shaken – like he was willing himself not to panic.
‘It’s all right,’ Rosie murmured, sinking down next to him on the sofa and slipping her hand into his. ‘You can talk to me.’ His hesitancy was charming, she thought – a sign that, while he wasn’t the most proactive of partners, he didn’t take her for granted in the way she occasionally worried he might.
James sighed and she saw a tiny drop of sweat drift past his temple, then disappear into the dark-blond hair above his ear. His blue eyes were darting around the room, like he was scanning for an escape route.
‘I … I do need to talk to you,’ James finally mumbled, focusing intently on a wood knot in one of the floorboards.
‘I’m listening,’ Rosie said, smiling at him and squeezing his hand.
James took a huge breath, then looked up at her, his sand-coloured eyebrows high in his forehead. His eyes were wide, now: round with apprehension.
He opened his mouth to speak and Rosie’s stomach rolled over.
This was it. The start of the rest of her life. The moment she’d remember forever.
‘It’s … it’s us,’ James eventually managed. ‘You and me.’
Rosie nodded gently, making it clear he should go on. She felt almost sick with excitement.
‘I can’t …’ James faltered. ‘I can’t dothis –us– anymore.’
The wordsYes! Of course I’ll marry you!stuck in Rosie’s throat a second before she uttered them.
She froze in shock, as if a jet of cold water had hit her full in the face.
James had robbed Rosie of the power to speak, tothink, leaving her able only to gape at him in horror. She couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said – the words she thought she’d just heard.
‘Er … what?’ she said, after what felt like an eternity.
James pulled his sweaty hand away from hers, and she felt as if he’d slapped her.
‘Fuck,’ he groaned, clawing at his hair in despair. ‘I just … I can’t dothis.’
He flapped his hands, gesturing at the space between them, the room they sat in and, obliquely, their relationship.
Something inside Rosie begged her not to set off the bomb that was primed to detonate. She knew that the thing James was steeling himself to say couldn’t be unheard once spoken aloud, any more than a lobbed grenade could be unexploded after blowing up a building. Nevertheless, her need to understand what was happening squashed the urge not to ask.
‘Tell me what youmean, James. Say it with words. I don’t get it,’ Rosie cried, and her eyes began to swim with tears as the lie left her lips.
She might have quit university after only a term, but she was plenty smart enough to know where this discussion was heading – even if she didn’t want to think it possible. In recent weeks, she’d convinced herself James’s nervous behaviour might mean marriage was imminent. Now, his edginess made a different sort of sense. She cringed at her own stupidity.
‘I just feel like we’re not good together anymore,’ James murmured, his ashen face desperate and pleading.
Rosie had seen enough break-ups in soaps and TV dramas to understand how this was supposed to go. There should be shouting. Swearing. Maybe some smashing of china or glassware thrown into the mix.
As it was, she felt too winded to scream or get violent with James. She was numb, immobile, incredulous – even though there was no reason to doubt that he meant what he was saying.
‘So, what? You’re unhappy?’ Rosie asked, feeling tears rolling down her face.
‘Not unhappy,’ James said in a rush. ‘Just … not ready. You know I’ve made a lot of changes lately. I realised I wasn’t living my best life – that there might be more out there for me, and that I didn’t have to … plod on with things as they were.’
The words were a volley of punches to Rosie’s gut.
‘Plod on?Not ready?’ she repeated. ‘We’ve been together almost ten years, James. Am I supposed to believe you felt ready after five years, or seven, but not now? It makes no sense.’
‘I don’t want to settle down,’ he said.
