“But Rad wasn’t my first love—Duck was.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “Your first love isn’t the first person you give your heart to—it’s the first one who breaks it.”
On the day before my flight, there was a knock at the door. Lucy was out, so I went to the front window to see who it was. My heart pounded wildly when I saw it was Rad. “Hey,” he said when I opened the door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” The last few days had been good for me. I felt in control again, like I was making progress. But now, seeing his face, being close to him—I was ready to fall to pieces. “Want a coffee?” I asked as he followed me inside and down the hall. I willed my voice not to betray me.
“Are you going somewhere?” said Rad, spotting the suitcase, next to the door.
I turned around to face him. “What are you doing here, Rad?”
He sighed. “Can we sit?”
“Okay.”
We sat on the blue couch facing each other. “It’s been a shitty few weeks,” he said. “I’m sure for you as well.”
I nodded, swallowing hard.
“I’m sorry I lost it that night; it’s just a really hard thing to get your head around, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“But I’m glad you told me. I mean, I always felt there was something you were holding back.” He raked his fingers through his hair and looked around the room as if he was trying to search for the words he wanted to say next. Then he turned back to face me. “The thing is, I know you’re not a bad person, Audrey. You just did a stupid thing, and I know you’d take it back if you could. I know how sorry you are—it all makes sense to me now. I was angry when you told me, and I have tried to hold on to that anger because it seemed like the right thing to do for Ana. But I couldn’t stay mad at you, even though I wanted to.” He reached over, taking my hand in his. “Then I found myself just thinking about you and not about what you said that night. Just you. And I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again.”
Tears flooded my eyes and ran in watery streaks down my face. Rad reached up, gently wiping at them with his thumb. I looked away, trying to steady myself. “I’m in love with you, Audrey. I love you so much that I can’t see straight, and the truth is, I don’t even want to.”
“Rad,” I said, my voice all choked up. “No, we can’t do this.”
“Yes, we can. We can start all over again from the beginning. Clean slate.” He peered at me hopefully. “Please?”
I shook my head, pulling my hand away from his. “No, it doesn’t feel like a clean slate, not to me. Not yet.”
“Audrey, you can’t be serious.” His face fell.
“I’m just trying to be realistic,” I said, looking down at my hands.
“Fuck being realistic. Too many great things in this world get lost to reason.”
I bit my lip and shook my head, trying to gather as much resolve as I could muster. I thought of what Mum had said the day she showed me that old picture of my father. That’s what boys can do, Audrey; that’s the power they can wield over you. It’s like being under a spell. Somewhere during my heartache, my insufferable pain, there was something else stirring within me, and it was growing stronger and more insistent with each day. I had the sense that I was coming back to myself—that I was the one in charge again. Anxiety took that away from me, and in a way, so did love. And now I wanted to reclaim it in the only way I knew how. As much as it hurt, I knew this was my last chance to be free, to learn to stand on my own.
“Please,” said Rad.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know who I am, and I need to find out. I have to do it on my own.”
“Whatever you’re going through, we can work through it together, help each other.” He reached over and held my face gently between his hands. “Please, Audrey,” he pleaded. “We can’t just throw this into the fire; it’s too important.”
I looked at him, his eyes glassy and wet with tears, and I knew—I knew I was just a hairline away from cracking, from taking him in my arms and telling him he could have anything he wanted.
“I’m so sorry, Rad,” I whispered. “I love you, but I can’t.”
On the morning I was due to fly out, Lucy came into my room with a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs on toast and bits of burnt bacon.
“Ta-da!” she announced proudly.
“Thanks, Lucy,” I said, taking the tray from her.
“So you’re all set?”
“All set.”
A few hours later, I was putting my phone and passport into my leather satchel.
“All packed?” asked Lucy.
“Yes, I’ve been all packed for the last week.”
“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”
“No, I want to do it alone.”
Her eyes filled up, and I held my arms out and hugged her. “Love you, sweetie,” she said. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too.” I squeezed her tightly. “I’ll call you first thing when I land.”
There was a honk outside, and I pulled away from Lucy, holding both her hands.
“My cab is here. You’ll be okay, won’t you?”
“Of course. You know Freddy practically lives here anyway. Maybe I’ll convince him to move in officially.”
“Good luck dragging him away from his momma,” I said, with a smile. Freddy was a kid at heart, and I couldn’t imagine him flying the coop just yet.
She rolled her eyes. “That woman drives me mad!”
“She loves you, though. His whole family adores you.”
“Can you blame them?” She grinned, then her expression saddened. “I can’t believe you’re really going.”
I gave her another quick hug. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
As the car pulled out of my street, I nervously fingered the rubber band around my left wrist. I gazed out the window anxiously, as the city streets flashed by. Every sight, every sound, felt so much like Rad. I thought of that beautiful spring day when he turned up at my office in the pink Cadillac. That night when we kissed for the first time, under the stars. My phone rang all of a sudden, jolting me out of my daydream. I picked it up, my heart drumming loudly in my chest.
“Audrey.” It was Sam.
“Hey.”
“Have you left yet?”
“I’m just on my way to the airport.”
“Do you a have a minute to stop by? There’s a package that just came for you.”
I checked the time. I was running early. “Yeah, I can make a quick stop.”
Sam was waiting for me downstairs with a brown envelope in her hand. “A courier brought this in for you just after lunch,” she said as I got out of the cab. I took it from her outstretched hand and looked at it curiously. My heart skipped a beat when I recognized Rad’s writing on the front.
For Audrey
I tucked it into my satchel and pulled the zip across. “Thanks, Sam.”