The Lie

She turns and walks away. I stand there for a second, dumbfounded that she’s actually going to leave it like this. Then I jog after her, fighting through the crowd until I’m at her side, out on Baker Street.

“What happened? What changed?” I hiss in her ear as I hurry alongside her. “Monday night you were feeling fine, we were doing good, I was the happiest I’ve felt in years!”

Her brows shoot up. “What happened?! You just kissed me.”

“So what’s the difference?”

She stops, walking back a step to get out of the way of pedestrians. She blinks at me. “The difference is everything. Being friends is difficult enough, but anything more than that…”

I take a step toward her, bearing down on her. “You used to be in love with me. And I was in love with you.”

“And look what that love did! It ruined both of our lives.”

My pulse hammers against my throat, but I can’t look away from her. So much of me wants to agree, does agree, and yet that’s not the whole story. It’s brutal, but it’s not that simple.

“Natasha,” I say quietly, my eyes roaming her face, searching for something to latch on to. Her cheeks are flushed, her lip worrying between her teeth. “I’m not sure when I’ll stop feeling guilty. I’m not sure when you’ll stop feeling guilty. But the fact that both of us have come out a dark hole, to emerge here,” I throw my arms out, “where we are now, says we’re capable of letting go. Capable of moving on.”

“And how can we move on if we’re back to square one?”

“Because this isn’t square one,” I tell her, gently running my fingers under her chin. “This isn’t going backward. This is going forward. We get to start again. Now. From scratch.”

She closes her eyes briefly, taking in a deep breath. Then she shakes her head. “That’s easy for you to say, Brigs,” she says sadly, moving away from me, “when I’m feeling everything for you that I felt before.”

God, my fucking heart.

She leaves.

“Please don’t walk away from me,” I call after her, some passerby turning their heads, hearing the hurt break my voice.

But she doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t listen. And I know this time that running after her again will be futile.

Maybe it was futile all along.

I sigh, running my hand through my hair. Then I turn and go back into the theatre to finish the rest of the film.

She was right about the movie.

I hate it.





CHAPTER TWELVE

Brigs

Edinburgh

Four Years Ago



I’ve gone mad. Bloody fucking mad.

That’s what love does to you. Your heart becomes so fucking needy that it siphons energy from everything, including your own brain cells. Your pulse beats to thoughts of her, your veins run hot with need and want. Everything about you becomes so singularly focused on one person that there’s no room for you anymore.

And you don’t care. Because as maddening as it is, love is the only time you really, deeply feel what it is to be alive. And for that, you’ll put up with anything.

I have to put up with a hollow chest filled with hornets. I feel utterly empty because Natasha is back in London, has been for two weeks now. I feel completely ravaged because I still remain married, still lost in what the hell I should do, what the right thing is.

After Natasha told me she loved me in the car, leaving me to soldier the weight of it, I grappled with what to say to her. I texted her that night asking if she was all right and she said she was fine. That was it.

Then on Monday she came to my office as usual. I tried to bring it up but she only raised her hand and said it didn’t matter.

I wanted then to tell her how I felt, that I loved her too, that I’ve been fighting these feelings for months. I wanted to tell her everything.

But I couldn’t. I don’t know why I held on to my truth like that. Maybe I was protecting myself, protecting Hamish. Maybe I was protecting nothing at all and I was just a chicken shit. The latter is probably true. In the face of it all, I just wanted to run and hide.

I wish I hadn’t though. I wish I could have manned up and told her the truth. And because I didn’t, the last week of us working together was strained. The joy, the fun, the laughs were all gone. Natasha completely threw herself into her work, saying she needed to do as much for me as she could, but I could tell she was just looking for a distraction. She laid herself bare to me and I couldn’t do the same.

Coward.

And then the last day we were together, the last time I saw her, she leaned forward, kissed me gently on the cheek, and whispered, “I still mean it.”

And I said nothing.

Fucking coward.

So here I am, in my office at the start of the new semester, wondering how she’s doing while trying to go over my course outline at the same time.