“I’ll wait,” I say quickly.
She disappears into the living area, then I hear the door to her spare room closing behind her. I look around her bedroom. I’ve never been in here without her before. The colour scheme matches the living area, and matches Izzy: soft pastels, faint polka dots, and fluffiness.
I catch sight of the bath through the bathroom door and wonder. There is no specific rule about baths, but running her one would feel like a step up from leaving the minute we’re done, and she did say I could stay here. What was her plan for afterwards?
I head into the bathroom. There is a gold-edged mirror above the basin, and make-up cluttered across the surfaces. I’m just turning on the taps when I hear her voice.
“The sex is incredible,” Izzy is saying.
It is almost perfectly clear through the bathroom wall, even with the water running. I retreat to the door after a split second’s hesitation, but then she says, “But I’ll never be his girlfriend, will I?”
I freeze. I can’t hear Grigg and Sameera’s response, just a tinny rattle of voices.
“I mean, the sex doesn’t really change anything. He’s still . . . Lucas. That guy.”
I should leave. I don’t. Horror settles quietly in my stomach.
“Who, Louis?” she says.
I bite down on my lip.
“Oh, yeah, I guess so.”
More echoing, indistinct voices.
“Yeah, he’s still a contender,” she says. “Still in the game. That’s how he’d put it,” she says, and there’s something in her voice I can’t identify—a sort of fondness, maybe, or wryness. “Ugh, it’s been such a mad couple of weeks. Anyway, how are you two? How did Rupe manage the journey?”
I withdraw, clicking the bathroom door shut.
I leave her flat, walking blindly to my car. I think about all the ways I’ve tried to show her the sort of man I am. How I’ve treasured every moment with her, and tried to make her feel treasured, too, and yet still I’m “that guy.” Good enough to take to bed but not a contender. Not like Louis.
Before this winter, she would just have been proving everything I already felt about myself. But these last few weeks have changed me. I’ve changed me. Now, through the chorus in my head telling me I’m not good enough, there is a small voice saying, Actually . . . I deserve better than this.
Izzy
What the fuck?
I stare down at the bath, water still glugging down the overflow pipe, and then around at my empty flat.
He just . . . left?
I know I was gone a while chatting to Grigg and Sameera, but surely he’d pop his head in to say bye if he had to shoot off?
I call Grigg back. He looks unperturbed.
“What did you forget?” he says.
“Lucas left.”
“Left?”
“He’s . . . gone. Without saying bye. He left the bath running . . .”
Grigg blinks a few times and then says, “Maybe he’s passed out somewhere?”
“God, maybe,” I say, heading out of the bathroom to check for collapsed Lucases behind sofas and doors. My flat is small—this doesn’t take long. “Nope. Just not here.”
“It must have been an emergency. Have you rung him?”
“No,” I say, feeling stupid. “I rang you.”
“Call him, then call me back, OK?”
He’s gone. I flick to my WhatsApp with Lucas. Above our last exchange—Come to mine later? I’ll be there at eight—is this:
You left your pink socks with fairies on them here.
Are you sure those aren’t yours?
. . .
Ha OK bring them next time you come over. Or wear them to work? Good conversation-starter?
I actively avoid starting conversations. Conversations find me more often than I would like as it is.
You are so ridiculously grumpy for a man in hospitality.
I warm up sometimes. For some people.
I swallow. It looks . . . flirty. Coupley, almost. That’s exactly what Sameera and Grigg said on the phone, too. So are you dating now? Sameera had asked, nose wrinkled. When does having nonstop sex become a relationship?
But it’s not a relationship—it can’t be. There are rules.
I gnaw the inside of my lip as Lucas’s number rings and rings. No answer. I hang up and message Grigg, and then sit down on the edge of the very full bath.
I am more unsettled than I would like to be. Lucas and I are . . . a fling. We’re flinging. I shouldn’t care if he’s acting like a dickhead, walking out without saying goodbye. But I do, and that’s scaring me a lot, and the overfull bath is making the whole thing feel especially dramatic.
I message him.
Are you OK? Where did you go?
He sees it but doesn’t reply. I can’t decide whether I’m worried or angry, but I hope it’s angry, because if I’m worried, that means I care, and I mustn’t. I’ve put my heart on the line for Lucas da Silva before and it was such a disaster. I am not a person who lets someone burn her twice. Life is too short for wasting time with people who don’t deserve you.
I’m fine. I just needed some space.
I stare at the message, baffled, until another pops up.
Apologies about the bath.
Ugh. This man. He is bewildering. I chuck my phone onto the bath mat and strip off. If I’m going to mope around about Lucas, I might as well make use of this bathwater. I sink into the water, my heart thumping hard, and I tilt my head back as the heat begins to relax my muscles. You don’t care about Lucas, I remind myself. He doesn’t care and you don’t care. But as I close my eyes, I can still feel my heart thudding in my ears, and it’s not slowing down.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
“Sweetie, I only have five minutes, Max,” Jem whispers into the phone. “It is so cold out here. I may die of frostbite, and Piddles definitely feels the same way. But I have so much I want to say to you. I feel like I’m going to have to be Mean Jem.”
Jem is standing outside her parents’ house—if she takes a call inside, she’ll wake everybody up. It is so good to hear her voice. It’s the middle of the night and I am foraging in my fridge, because after lying awake for hours you really start to realise how long it’s been since your last meal. I don’t normally go this long without eating when I’m awake, so why start now?
“You know what I think your mum would say to you right now?”
Oof. Jem is one of the few people who will throw my parents into conversation without flinching. She lived on my road when we were at primary school, and was around at our place all the time—my dad used to joke that they’d only wanted one kid but it seemed this extra one came with the house. She’s the only person who could guess at what my mum would say and actually have me listen.
“She’d say you’re being stubborn as a mule and blind as a bat. How can you not see how much you love this boy?”
I stare wordlessly across my kitchen. I can hear Jem blowing on her hands to warm them up.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” she says.
“Yeah, hi, I can hear you, I just . . . What?”
“Izzy . . . I’m pretty sure you’ve loved him all year.”
“I have not! I hated him until about five minutes ago!”
“OK, so, let’s try this,” Jem says, “tell me the other people you’ve really hated in your life. People who give you that icky, skin-crawl, what-an-asshole feeling.”
I think about it. “Obviously evil dictators and stuff.”
“People you know, I mean.”
“Oh, Mr. Figgle!” I say, grabbing a bottle of milk and heading for the freezer. Milkshake. Milkshake is the answer. “Our old PE teacher, remember? He was so horrible to the kids who didn’t play sports, and do you remember he laughed at Chloe when she said it wasn’t fair that only the boys got to have a football team?”
“Anyone else?”
“Kyle from my interior design course,” I say. “He gaslit, like, six girls on the course. A total sleaze.”
“Gross. Go on.”
I think I’m already out. Hate is a strong word, and generally speaking I quite like most human beings. Except Lucas, obviously.
“So . . . did you want to have sex with either of those people?” Jem asks.
“No, eww,” I say, peeling a banana and splitting it into the blender.