Nick looked queasy. “He said, ‘So are you done slumming it with that Sofa Queen slag? Are we shot of that low-class bitch at last?’”
I let that wash over me; surprisingly, sadly, I found I’d heard its equal enough that I was now immune. Nick got up, creakily, and tugged at his hair, as if weighing what and how much more to say.
“He’s been needling me for a while. I’d been out with Ceres a bit”—at this, he paused, but I managed to remain impassive—“and he’d started tossing out stuff here and there about your bikinis, or who you’d been with. You know how he is. Loves to get a rise. But he must’ve really wanted me to crack, because suddenly it got worse. Really misogynistic. I shouldn’t have repeated it.”
I shrugged. “He’s said it to me, too. Nothing as American as bitch, but you English have a vibrant array of words for what he thinks I am. Slapper, that’s a good one.”
“None of them gives a toss about Freddie sleeping with half of London, but you chat up a movie star and it’s open season,” Nick said. “It’s vile.”
I closed my eyes briefly, and when I opened them again, he was looking at me protectively. But there was also a new emotional distance between us. I had been afraid I would come here and break down and dive at him, but instead maybe the tide was ebbing. I waited to have a feeling—of sadness, or remorse, of lust, of anything—but it was like I’d vomited them out hours ago and a country away, and so it was time, in classic Bex fashion, to just open my mouth and see what else came out of it.
“Thank you. I mean it,” I said. “I’m touched that you stuck up for me. But you can’t fight my battles anymore, Nick. It’ll just make things worse for you.”
“I am not going to let people talk about you like that,” Nick said fiercely.
“And I lo—” I caught myself. “I appreciate you for feeling that way,” I amended. “Mustache is a chauvinistic oaf, but let him be my problem. You have enough to worry about on your own.”
Nick went quiet for a second. “What happened to you at Joss’s party?” he asked.
I hadn’t remembered to come up with a suave excuse for that one.
“Are you dating Ceres?” I asked instead.
“It’s casual,” he said. “Are you dating anyone?”
I thought of Clive. “Not even casually,” I said, perhaps too emphatically, but Nick didn’t seem to notice. “Did you really yell something in Majorca about being free at last?”
“I think I was referring to being off the ship, but I was rat-arsed at the time, so who knows,” he said. “And you didn’t answer my question about Joss’s party.”
“Okay, fine. I ran away,” I confessed.
“From me?”
“Did you see my pants?”
“Only very briefly. You were moving quite fast,” he said.
“Yeah. Well. This whole thing hasn’t been easy for me,” I told him.
“That makes two of us.” He flexed his bruised hand. “You know, in that second before I swung, it felt really good to just do what I actually wanted to do, damn the consequences.”
That he’d realized this, months beyond the point where it could have saved us, was something I’d rather not have known.
“Just don’t get hurt punching people for me anymore,” I said. “I can throw my own.”
Nick looked at me for a long time. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “I will try not to assault people in your name if you stop running off anytime we bump into each other.”
“I don’t know if I can, Nick,” I said. “I really am okay, or at least I will be. But I’m not ready to pal around London with you like we never happened.”
He looked sad. “But this was a good step, right? Seeing each other, I mean. Not the Mustache part.”
“It was a very good step. Let’s take another one sometime.”
We lapsed into silence, companionable, but still more remote than I could fathom feeling around someone I’d loved so much. Back in that stale Paris hotel room, I’d known I had to make some changes, but Nick’s black eye drove home that I wasn’t the only person who would benefit from me putting down the bottle and picking myself up instead.
“Is it always going to be like this, do you think?” I wondered.
“Like what?”
“Well, it’s funny,” I said. “When we were together, whatever I did blew back on you. Once we broke up, I assumed that would stop, but it hasn’t. People will always connect the dots, and wonder if I’m pining for you, or if we’re secretly hooking up, or if we hate each other. It never ends.”
“You make it sound so appealing to have been with me,” he said wryly.
“It was. I don’t regret it for a second,” I told him. “But it’s just…a strange feeling. To be so tied to you in public now, when we never got to be tied to each other in public then. I guess being your girlfriend was temporary, but being your ex is for life.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just annoyed I couldn’t go on as many dumb benders as it took to get over you without people judging me for it. And now it’s made trouble for both of us.”
“Bex, the only trouble you’ve ever been for me is the fun kind,” he said gently.
And as our eyes met, the tide came in again. I had the turbulent thought that I could take his head in my hands and then just take him, like Cilla had with Gaz, and that he wanted me to and would let me. There was a softness in his bruised face, a hint of a question in his eyes. But if Nick and I were going to happen again, it couldn’t be three hours after Clive’s naked body inspired me to ralph in a hotel bathroom. I refused to be reckless with him. So I screwed up my nerve and turned away, and the charge fizzled as quickly as it had sparked.
Nick’s phone buzzed. I stood to leave, but he held up a finger before answering.
“Cer, can you hang on a tick? Thanks. I’ll just be a sec.” He pushed mute. “I’m glad we talked,” he said to me.
“I am, too.” I meant it.
“Do we hug good-bye?”
“Better not,” I said.
“Right,” he said, rubbing his phone with his thumb.
As I rounded the corner and crept down the stairs, I heard him take Ceres off hold.
“Thanks, I just needed to fix my ice pack,” he fibbed, his voice fainter as I got farther away. “Oh, just a bit puffy. I’m told it will be character-building…”
Joss’s now-empty flat was dark and stuffy and, but for Cilla’s bra swinging from a drawer pull in the kitchen, devoid of life. The clock said it was just gone eleven thirty a.m. but it felt like eleven at night. I wanted to talk to Lacey. I wanted to apologize to Dad. I wanted to take a shower. But most of all, I wanted to celebrate. I had seen Nick without bursting into tears, or flames, and as Joss’s front door clicked shut behind me, I knew, at last, that when I slept I would wake up to some kind of fresh start.
Chapter Four