CHAPTER 15
MAY 2014
LIAM
The Californian sunshine fills the world with brightness and colour that’s at odds with how I feel. Drinking orange juice and taking painkillers for my hungover head, I stare over Dylan’s infinity pool, at the illusion of the drop into the sea.
I expected to wake to a phone full of messages from Honey, but there’s none. I presume she’s still at our place in Malibu deciding on her next move, while I skulk here like the rat I am.
Leaving your bride high and dry on your wedding day is disgusting enough; leaving Honey and her carefully orchestrated media frenzy on a Blue Phoenix wedding day is the worst thing I’ve done in my life. I didn’t even hang around to explain, I just left. Bryn brought me to Dylan’s home. LA isn’t far enough away from the disaster for me, but Bryn’s right, I can’t leave until I’ve faced her.
No, the worst thing I’ve ever done is letting everything get to this stage and not backing out. What can I say to Honey? I can’t make this better, only worse. Once I knew I couldn’t marry her, I had two weeks to sort out the mess. And what did I do? f-uck all. I told myself it was too late and to just do it, and then see what happens. We could always divorce. This pisses all over my underlying belief that I marry once and for love. Nobody gets married with divorce in mind. That’s fucked up.
A couple of days before the wedding, my parents arrived with my sister. They moved into the guest rooms and watched in awe as the wedding took shape. I watched with a constant edge of nausea following me through the days. I asked how Cerys was. I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t help it. Louise was cagey, wouldn’t tell me much, but I did get out of her that Cerys and Craig split two weeks after Christmas.
Another punch to the head.
The day of the wedding, I crawled out of bed at the latest time I could. I dreamt about Cerys the night before my wedding and took that as a sign. The secret I’ve kept locked in my heart since Christmas can’t stay hidden. Cerys touched me in ways Honey never did and there has to be a reason why. If we’d really just been two hurt people looking for comfort, the need to see her wouldn’t have obsessed my thoughts for the last two weeks.
****
Avoiding confrontation at all costs has landed me in this f-ucking mess and led to the need for the biggest confrontation of my life. I want to run back to England – or anywhere – so I don’t have to walk through the door of my house and face the woman whose heart I tore out yesterday. I would’ve done it if Bryn and Dylan hadn’t talked me around. Cowardice is part of the reason I’m in this situation and I steel myself. I have to do this once, and then never see Honey again.
The house is quiet when I walk through the double doors, all the guests have moved to local hotels or returned home. I haven’t spoken to my parents yet either; f-uck knows what Mum’s going to say about me treating someone like this. I gently close the door behind me, but the sound echoes down the tiled hallway. Where will Honey be? If I’m really lucky, she’ll have left already.
Several large designer leopard print pink suitcases rest at one end of the open-plan room that spans the back of the house, but I can’t see Honey. Anxiety clutching my chest, I step into the room and wait for her to realise I’m home. I don’t notice the figure curled up on the sofa, until she speaks.
“You’re late, Liam,” says Honey, quietly.
The guilt at seeing the pale faced girl with red-rimmed eyes smacks me as hard as I deserve from her. Make-up free, she’s the Honey I met all those months ago before she shaped herself further into the illusion she surrounds herself with. There’s no clever shading hiding her skin tone and transforming her face, or dramatically made up eyes disguising her as someone else. This is the real Honey.
My mind blanks, I grasp at all the rehearsed words; but I can’t find them. I’ve received the brunt of Honey’s anger before and that’s included hysterical, physical attacks on occasion. That Honey isn’t here; I think she’s more broken than ever.
I f-ucking hate myself.
“I don’t know what to say,” is the best I manage after an eternal time staring at each other. I don’t sit but remain in the doorway, arms crossed in defence.
Honey makes a derisive sound. “I bet.”
“I should’ve stopped it weeks ago. I’m sorry.”
“You mean it wasn’t a last minute freak out?” she asks, voice cracking. “You decided before? When? How long have you lied to me?”
I cover my eyes because the tears appearing in hers tighten my chest as the guilt strangles my insides. I need to take advantage of the calm I wasn’t expecting. “You know things aren’t right… weren’t right for weeks.”
“We were busy, things got hectic, and I didn’t know you stopped loving me. How could I know that?”
“Honey, when was the last time we spent time together. Really spent time together and not just a snatched lunch.”
“You’ve been busy…tired. You always wanted to be on your own when you came home. I respected that. I was busy too.”
“Do you think it’s normal for the man you’re about to marry not to want to share a bed with you…” I don’t say the words but the last time I had sex with Honey was weeks ago, it felt wrong when all I could think about was Cerys.
“You said you needed space; I was respecting that.” The tension in her body, the breathing speed increasing, these are signs I recognise too well.
“I’m a f-ucking asshole,” I tell her. “I hate myself for what I’ve done to you.”
“Why? Why did you do it on the day? You could’ve done it a week before, Liam… a day….”
“I don’t know.”
Honey approaches me. She’s dressed in a blue, silk gown fastened around her waist. I brace myself for anger, screaming, a slap; but instead she touches my cheek. “Because you’re still not sure, if you were, you’d have cancelled earlier. It was just wedding day nerves. I still love you, I understand if you were scared. We can take a step back, see how things go…”
“What?” I rip this woman’s heart out and humiliate her in front of the world, and she tells me she loves me? I move away. “Honey, no.”
“But if you don’t know why you walked away, we can figure things out, can’t we?” she asks.
No, no, no. This is worse. I want her to be the Honey who yells and screams, accuses me of not loving her and tells me she hates me. The woman I compared in my head to the calm, strong girl in Wales and she didn’t measure up.
The next words to come out of my mouth sicken me, the one thing I should’ve said the first day the clarity hit. “I don’t love you.”
“You do, Liam, you’re just confused.”
Again, the wrong f-ucking reaction. Shit. I can’t be mean to her; be any worse than I have in the last two weeks, but what do I do? “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, this has to end.”
Honey wraps her arms around my waist and my anxiety over an imminent attack changes to one of despair as she rests her head against my chest. I don’t know what to do, how do I stop this? I feel nothing for this woman apart from guilt.
Guilt she’s playing on. This is the reason I didn’t end the wedding before the day arrived. This is the real reason I didn’t want to step through the doors today. I’m weakened by the emotion of my own, the tsunami of confusion that’s engulfed me.
I grip Honey’s arms, and move her away. “Don’t do this.”
The tear-filled blue eyes meet mine again, pulling at my resolve, dragging me back to the lost girl I wanted to help. “Please, Liam. I love you. Don’t leave me.”
There it is. Honey’s fear of abandonment; her need to accept love from wherever it comes. I once tried to be that person, to help her fix this fucked up part of her mind but failed. If she did love me, the affair would never have happened. The random accusations that I didn’t love her; that I was f-ucking groupies because she wasn’t good enough wouldn’t have been thrown. One minute I’d be the love of her life, the next she’d scream poison and hatred. I accepted it because I wanted to help her change, only I got dragged into the same deep water drowning her, pulled under too.
Honey doesn’t love, she needs. What she needs could never come from me.
“I don’t love you,” I repeat. “I can’t make myself love you or pretend I do.”
She searches my face for a glimmer of emotion, but I’m locked down now, blocking her out. Allowing her in would end me right now. When Honey doesn’t see what she wants, she chooses one of her two usual reactions and crumples to the floor. The sobbing begins and she grips her hair, pulling hard.
I did this. I f-ucking did this and I want to feel nothing. I don’t want to need to comfort her and apologise; I don’t want to be the man who made things worse. But I am.
I add to this when I walk away from Honey, because if I stay the weaker, soft-hearted Liam who wants to fix the people around him will appear. And if he appears, I’ll end up back in a relationship which would kill that Liam for good.