“Was that what you wanted to be? I mean, I can’t imagine anybody getting where you are by accident.”
“I read Classics at Oxford. Joined a City firm as an intern, switched to McKinsey, then decided to join people who buy companies rather than fix them. Moved to bigger firms, bigger departments, more power, spun out, founded my own.” James hesitated. “But I guess you read my CV on the website.”
“I didn’t.” Cal settled on the bed, back against the headboard. “You’ve probably seen mine, though.”
“Honestly, I haven’t.” James turned towards him. “I hired your uncle’s company, but didn’t know much about the specific driver I was getting.” He was quiet for a moment. “What’s on your CV?”
Cal smirked. “Not a hell of a lot.”
“What did you study?”
“I dropped out of law.”
“You did?” James chuckled and ran his hand over the thin sheet covering Cal’s leg. “Well done.”
“It was killing me—like it was breaking down how I thought, the way my brain worked. It became all so terribly banal, life.” Cal rolled his shoulders as the subject brought back an inkling of the tension and stress he’d been so desperate to escape back then. “I started reading the small print of every web service I subscribed to, bought computers with my mind much more focused on my statutory rights than what I was going to do with the bleeding thing. It twisted everything.”
“And now you’re happier?”
Cal considered it for a moment. Happiness. Well, he was content most of the time, unless he was drooling over a guy he thought was out of his league, or when the words on the page didn’t even bear a passing resemblance to how glorious they’d sounded in his mind.
“Happier than I was then, yes.”
James furrowed his brow. “Does that mean you aren’t happy now? Just less miserable than you were back then?”
While law hadn’t been the right fit, getting a degree in English and literature also meant he’d studied to be a taxi driver or a barista; all the debt, and nothing to show for it. Cal gnawed on both his lower lip and James’s two-part question. “I guess I am. Still kind of finding my footing, I guess.”
“I know the feeling,” James said absently.
“What do you mean? You’ve got that house, the career, the—” That divorce we both know cost you more than just the kids and the huge chunk of cash she took when she left. “I . . .” Fuck.
James sighed. “Money isn’t everything, believe me.”
“So what’s missing?” Cal’s heart beat a little faster as he steered the conversation in that uncomfortable direction.
Looking down at their hands again, James was silent for a moment. Cal almost retracted the question, but then his . . . boss? Lover? Who was James to him anymore?—met his eyes. “The job and the house are pretty much all I have now. So what’s missing?” One shoulder rose in a halfhearted shrug. “I know it sounds melodramatic, because God knows anyone who’s got money has no right to be unhappy, but I’d say almost everything. I’ve got a roof over my head, an income, a job. But I . . .” He paused, then shook his head and gave a soft laugh, another self-deprecating sound. “Yeah, it does sound melodramatic, doesn’t it? But I guess I’ve had to rethink my priorities in life since Irina and the kids left.”
There it was. The mention of her name. The nod towards that dark period when Cal had wondered a few times if James would unravel completely. That, or spend every last pound at Market Garden as he tried to drown himself in anything other than his divorce.
Cal squeezed his hand. “You’ve, um, been doing better, though. Since things ended. Right?”
James nodded. He ran his free hand through his dishevelled hair. “Better, yes. Less miserable.”
“If you want to talk about it . . .”
James stared off into the middle distance. “There’s a funny phase in a divorce when you’re not sure the fighting was actually worse than the silence. Rationally, you know it was worse, and . . . the collateral damage of it, too.” He glanced at Cal. “The kids, we . . . we both knew we’d be putting them through hell whether we stayed together or split up, and I knew once it was over, I’d see less of them than I did before. I kept wondering if we were making a huge mistake. But there’s this moment, one that can drag on for weeks, when you really think the silence is worse than the shouting.” He played with the edge of the duvet. “I realised eventually that the silence leaves room for lots of echoes, and I’ve never learned to deal with them. There was always someone. The nanny, or the dog walker, or the . . . the kids. And now they’re gone. It’s like an amputation. Phantom pain from a lost limb, I guess.”
“But you still see the children,” Cal said softly.