She blinked. ‘You studied?’
‘That, I did know how to do. You wanted some garden stakes too, right?’ She nodded, so I started pushing the trolley down towards the garden care section. ‘I figured out pretty quickly that Ps make degrees when it comes to cleaning. It just had to be passable. But the better I got at cooking, the happier it made my girlfriend, and…’
‘Fisher,’ Sadie said, ‘did you seriously learn to cook so your girlfriend would fuck you?’
‘No!’ I flushed bright red. ‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Shaw. I learnt to cook so she would love me.’
‘And it worked.’
I stopped, looking sideways at her. She’d phrased it as a statement, not a question, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as everything around us went into soft focus.
‘You broke her heart,’ she clarified. ‘When you – I’m assuming it was you who ended it.’
‘Oh. Yes. It was me.’
I turned to face her, resting my elbows lightly against the handle of the trolley. ‘I realised, after a while, that with every extravagant dish I cooked her, she thought I was sayingI love you. But what I was actually doing was cooking her extravagant dishes as a way of getting out of saying it. Because I didn’t.’
The answer was right there for her, if she wanted to put the puzzle pieces together.I didn’t love her – could never love her – because I’ve been in love with you since the day we met, Shaw.
Sadie looked thoughtful. For a moment, I was terrified she’d figured it out.
‘That’s really quite emotionally intelligent,’ she said. ‘For – how old were you? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?’
‘About that.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘For making fun of you for breaking her heart. That was dickish.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, somehow both relieved and disappointed at the same time. ‘That water went under the bridge a long time ago. And I did figure out my one true love because of that relationship. Me and cooking have been going strong ever… Watch out!’
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into me. My back went crashing into a stack of plant trellises and Sadie came crashing into my chest, just in time to avoid getting completely flattened by a man barrelling along at top speed, the landscaping supplies piled high on his trolley blocking his line of sight.
He carried on, either not noticing or not caring that he’d nearly just mown someone down. The trellises behind me quaked ominously, and it was only the rough edges of one of them jabbing into my back that kept me tethered to reality.
Every line of Sadie’s body was pressed against mine.
‘Shit,’ she whispered.
She hadn’t moved. The words were hot against my skin, her gentle breath tickling the short hairs of my beard.
‘You all right?’ My voice came roughly out of my throat, like someone had taken sandpaper to it.
She nodded, hairline brushing against my nose. ‘Fine. Thank you.’
Her fingers curled into my collar, pulling it taut across the back of my neck. She looked up at me.
And it was our wedding day again. Sadie Shaw was clinging to me, and there was something desperate in her eyes, and the only answer I had was to kiss her.
My head dipped lower…
…just as she exhaled, forehead coming to rest against my shoulder. ‘I think you saved my life,’ she said into my clavicle.
I pressed my lips against the top of her head, pretending with everything I had that that was all I had intended to do. ‘I like a good garden stake as much as the next person, but they’re not worth dying for, Shaw. Get your shit together.’
The words were as much for me as they were for her.
‘Come on,’ I said, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her gently away from me. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
The business of checking out and packing all of the stuff safely into the back of Fi’s car was blessedly thought-consuming, and then we got distracted by a sudden flash of inspiration for one of our upcoming lectures, so when Sadie brought it up again, as we unloaded all our purchases back home in our garage, it took me by surprise.
