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“I hope that you know that I’m not letting you quit. You’re too good, and you’ve worked too hard to give up now. Jordan wouldn’t let you quit for anything, and I promised that I would keep his memory alive for you.”
“Freddie…it’s…it’s not that easy.”
The nod he gives me is about as agreeing as milk with vinegar. “I’m taking you to New York. You’re going to audition, and when you get it, we’re going to figure out how we’re going to go about it all.”
“I know you mean well, but—”
“I want you, plain and simple, and I want you happy. That’s the most important thing.”
“So, even though you don’t realise it yet, you’re going to marry me.”
With another chuckle, he toys with the horseshoe ring on his right ring finger. Twisting it off, he holds it up between us.
“Who said I haven’t realised it?” he asks, grabbing my hand and slipping the ring on my thumb. “Every time you look at it, you can remember that I am already a full stride ahead of you. In many things.” He smiles before pursing his lips. I’m still far too lost on the fact he’s just put a ring on one of my fingers. “Which is why and how I know that you’ll eventually regret and resent giving up.”
Freddie threads his fingers with mine, looking down at the table as a waiter brings our drinks over. It looks like he’s trying to think something through. A watchful gaze follows our drink bearer away from us before he pulls the curtain shut and scoots closer. Our bodies press together as Freddie touches his lips to my head.
“I want you to have the life you want, not a life that’s dictated by blows and misfortunes. You’re better than that. You deserve better than that. More than anything, I—” Pausing, he swallows audibly while twisting the ring on my thumb.
“What is it?”
Freddie still hasn’t answered my question, and I’m scared of what that means for us. I don’t want him to think that the life I’ve envisioned with him is a deal-breaker for the life that we could have without all of that. Really, I only want a life with him; everything else is a bonus, small gifts that I think will enrich what we will have.
“I spent most of my childhood caught between my dad and my mother. They were complete opposites, a bit like you and me. Alice wasn’t a bad person; she simply wasn’t prepared for the life she was pushed into. She didn’t have all the facts, and in the end, her resentment over the situation she ended up in cost my dad his life.”
“Anytime you talk about her, it sounds like you hate her. You make her sound like the worst person.”
“She may not have been a bad person, but she was a terrible mother and wife. There were ample opportunities for her to walk away. Of all of us, she’s the only one that could without any consequences. You get those choices when your father is all-powerful sovereign.”
“What are the facts, Freddie?” When I look up at him, he grimaces, gnawing on his lip in that uncertain way of his. “Why did she leave your dad? Why did she leave you?”
“He was sick. An unfixable kind of sick.”
The steady rhythm of my heart picks up its pace, panic shocking it into an all-out race that chills me at the recollection of his words at the lake.
I’m like my dad. I don’t want to end up like him.
It’s not like he had to spell out and paint the full picture of what happened to his dad. I’m smart enough to put all the pieces of what he’s told me together. Enough to know that he took his own life. I haven’t pushed for more on that, even though it’s been a constant curiosity that I analyse with every single one of our touches and glances.
“What’re you trying to tell me?” I ask as he continues chewing on the inside of his lip and focusing on the twist of his ring on my thumb. There’s a vulnerable and wary air about him that makes me wonder whether he’s holding back because he is scared that this will change how I feel about him. “I told you, my love, you can tell me anything. Even if it’s a hard or bitter truth, I can take it.”
A disbelieving smirk tugs at the corner of his lip, but before I can quash whatever thought put it there, he says, “The first time he went away…that I noticed…my mum told me he was working. All the whispered conversations she had with Francis and Emily didn’t register then. Or the fact that they were always checking in on us when he was gone.”
The curtain twitches as the waiter’s hand pokes through with the order tablet. Freddie instantly sits back, straighter, and when the waiter opens the curtain, he makes quick work of ordering for the both of us. Once we’re alone again, he takes a long gulp of his drink as I swill mine around my glass. I’m not sure I can stomach anything right now.
“He was in and out of hospital and clinics a lot. Something I only found out when I was old enough to understand the cryptic conversations and put the puzzle pieces together.”
A weight settles over us as he obviously forces himself to stop playing with the ring. Instead, he moves on to folding the linen napkin on the table.
“He’d come home, and Emily would stay for weeks on end, constantly checking on him.”
“Was he better when he returned?” Although I know the story isn’t going to have a happy ending, I desperately want him to have some happy memories to hold on to. That I can remind him of like he promised to remind me of my time with Jordan. It seems a sin that he has nothing but shadows clouding his childhood.
“It never got better, Georgina. It doesn’t get better, and I need you to understand that. I need you to understand that I’m like him.”
“We all get sad, Freddie. I know that maybe for you it’s darker, but you have to trust me to be able to take care of you when you need it. In all the ways I know how and that I can. And if at any point I’m not enough or you simply need more, then you need to know that I will never think any lesser of you for it.”
“It’s not the sadness for me. It’s anger. I get angry, and the only way I can push through it is by exerting it physically.”
