Page 38

She looks away then, at the ocean in the distance. The sun has set now, and the sea is black, topped with silver from the light of the moon.

“Do you believe in soul mates?” she asks quietly.

I hesitate. “I don’t know. Do you?”

She rubs her nose. “I don’t know either.” She hitches her bag higher on her shoulder and also slides her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “I loved Jayden. Or I thought I did. No, I did. I think.” She gives a short laugh and extracts a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. “What I’m trying to say is that I think I did love him, in a way. At the beginning, anyway. But maybe there are different types of love, and I kind of got them mixed up. Do you know what I mean?”

“Kinda.”

“I mean… I thought I loved him. But… I think it was more of an infatuation. He was the captain of the rugby team. He was tall and handsome, and outgoing, and I was this quiet geeky girl who liked to read. I had no idea why he liked me. I think I was flattered. Which makes me sound really shallow.”

“No,” I murmur, “I understand.”

“I think I mistook excitement for love,” she continues, her gaze distant. “But it was only as time went by that I realised we didn’t really have much in common. He loved his rugby so much. I mean, I love watching it, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t my whole life the way it was his. I didn’t enjoy the big raucous gatherings he adored. I stopped going to them. He was really disappointed about that.”

I don’t say anything, understanding that she needs to talk about this.

“I think… everything about me disappointed him,” she says.

That makes me frown at her. “Don’t say that. That’s not true.”

“You would say that, Mitch, because you’re a nice guy, but it is true. I know that because he told me.”

Frustration flares inside me. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Don’t get angry with me.”

That makes me stop walking. “I’m not angry with you!”

She looks up at me, swallowing hard. “Oh.”

“Never with you, Vix,” I say softly. “Only with the fucking idiot you were married to.”

That makes her lips curve up. We both laugh then, and it breaks the tension.

“I’m ashamed of him,” I admit. “We were good friends, and he’s treated you badly.”

She sighs. “I know a lot of it was because he was in pain…”

“No, don’t make excuses for him. Being in pain doesn’t have to turn you into an arsehole.” We start walking again. “He had you by his side, supporting him, loving him, prepared to do anything for him.” I blow out a breath. “I understand how his injury, and the fact that he couldn’t do as much as he used to, changed him. Guys like Jayden need to feel useful. Their masculinity is important to them.”

“You don’t think you’re the same?”

“I don’t know, it’s difficult. I guess you can never know how you’d be in the same position. I like to think I’d be different. I like to think I wouldn’t have taken it out on you and Millie.”

“He used to yell at her,” she whispers. “It was so awful to watch. He was in pain, and suffering, but even so…”

My heart hurts. “Part of being a real man is learning not to take your frustrations out on other people.”

She nods. “His father left when Jayden was still a baby, so I guess he wasn’t around to teach him that.”

“Yeah, mums can teach it too, of course, but boys will often copy their fathers.”

We’ve reached the gate, and I open it and let her through, then close it behind us. We walk slowly around to the back door.

“Do you want kids?” she asks out of the blue.

I stop by the door, thinking about the last argument I had with Frieda. She’d cried as she’d demanded to know why I hadn’t asked her to marry me, and why I wouldn’t discuss having children with her. I hadn’t answered her, because I hadn’t known, and eventually she was the one who’d said, “It’s because I’m not her, isn’t it?” I’d denied it, but deep down I’d known she was right. Vix was in my blood, and the years we’d spent apart hadn’t been able to cleanse her from it. I feel bad about it now. I should have let Frieda go much earlier.