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‘Owen, I really am so sorry. And I’msosorry if I’ve landed you in anything, with Chloe, too. T-that was never my intention. Just .?.?. Forget you got it. Forget I said anything. It was a mistake.’
Owen stares at me in the gloom; hooded, treacle-brown eyes, unblinking. ‘What?’
‘Ignore it,’ I say again, my voice verging on warbling now. ‘Both of you, you and Chloe, just .?.?. ignore it. Discard it, or whatever. It’s just – it’sstupid, you know?Iwas stupid. It was a draft, it wasn’t even meant to be sent, and I was a bit drunk and feeling sorry for myself and – you know when you just do something stupid? Something stupid andsilly—’
‘Are you .?.?.’ Owen grimaces, two tally marks etched between his eyebrows. ‘Hang on, so, what, the whole thing was a .?.?.jokethen?’
‘No, no—’
‘Someone said they got sent when the servers went down—’
‘You just weren’t meant to see it, is what I mean. I wasemotional.’ Our voices tangle, and both of us fall silent. Light rain, stipples us, like dust.
‘Emotional,’ repeats Owen. ‘About the wedding?’
I shrug from within my raincoat, which sticks with cold sweat to my arms. ‘I .?.?. I don’t know. Yes.’ I’m nervous;reallynervous, especially under Owen’s dark gaze. He did this to me, in the beginning. When we first met, when he’d come in for planning meetings back when he was a live-match producer, make excuses to talk to me at my desk, I could hardly bear to look at him in the eyes.
Owen is attractive, in that clean-cut, almost waspy way. Dark, Mediterranean eyes, hair always short and neat, sharp and after-shaved from head to toe. But it was more his .?.?.air? Alexis once said, about Owen, after we broke up, ‘the bloke is an only-just-six-out-of-ten without all the bollocks and bravado,’ and it wasthatI found intimidating when we first met, and charming too. ‘The bravado’. Owen’s demeanour.The .?.?.wayof him. Confident and sure of himself, but also infectiously, surprisingly warm. Affable. Genuinely interested in you. Like the boy at school who wound up the teachers, and who you tried to ignore, but who always somehow managed to get a genuine smile out of you.
We were a contradiction really. Owen, charming and polished. Me with my out-of-control cinnamon waves, the chaos of freckles all over my skin, T-shirts with silly emblems on he seemed to always be baffled by. Emotional. Clumsy. And I feel that now, as we stand opposite each other. Me, flapping, sweating in the rain, post-massive-life-blunder, Owen, put-together, baffled, in the middle of something he didn’t ask for, or would never plan for in his perfect, seamless life.
‘It’s just an email,’ I say, finally meeting his eyes. ‘And I’m sorry it made its way to you, Owen, but it was never meant to. Just – I don’t know. Pretend you never got it? Tell Chloe the same; t-tell her I’m sorry. I can tell her, if you like?’
‘Millie .?.?.’
‘Is she coming in at all? Monday?’
‘Millie, seriously, can we just .?.?.’ Owen holds up his palm, eyelids dropping closed for a second. ‘Can we just pause for a minute? This .?.?. I feel like I’m being bombarded.’
And I wish I could just disappear from here. The sky dimming fast, a blue haze from Owen’s phone in his hand lit up with my own words, glowing between us. God, those old versions of us .?.?. I can’t even imagine what they’d think, if they could see us now. They’d be bewildered, I think. Sad. Because Owen and I went so fast. Well,Owenwent fast. From one date, to huge weekly flower deliveries at work, to I love yous and surprise weekends in Prague, and meeting the parents. ‘Maybe a little too fast’, my friends said, grimacing as if the bouquets filling my room were severed heads.
And maybe they were right. Maybe it was too fast. Because it didn’t exactly end how we both planned, did it? Talking outside the same building we met in, tonight, the ominous bleeping of a forklift our only soundtrack, and a haze of rain misting us, turning this whole scene to a grainy old video tape.
‘Chloe wants to cancel the wedding,’ Owen says, pushing his phone back into his pocket and shame covers me like a hot rash. ‘Says it’s over. She thinks something happened with us. Stayed at her parents’ last night. Five fuckin’ grand, I’ve sunk into it as well.’
‘Owen. I .?.?. I’m so sorry .?.?.’
‘We’ve got two months to pay the remaining half to the venue, or it’s done. Game over. Venue gone, date gone.’ Owen brings his arms up and over his head, lacing his fingers together behind his neck. ‘And .?.?. Jesus, Millie, this whole thing is crazy. We’ve just moved into a new place. Cost me a fortune, too – the old Corona cinema? Been converted into flats. And now .?.?.’
His words taper off and I don’t know what to say; whether I should apologise again or congratulate him on his new flat. New things are important to Owen. Expensive things. Things that make a statement. ‘Is it pathetic that sometimes I want all these things and achievements just so my piece-of-shit dad will one day see them all and regret pretending I didn’t exist?’ he asked me once, and so much about him – that Owen bravado – suddenly made sense. Owen is the result of an affair his mum had at work. His father has a wife of forty years, children, grandchildren, and he denies Owen is his; that he exists at all. And my heart always broke for him, every time he talked about it.
‘I’m sorry, Owen,’ I say. ‘I really am. I’ll .?.?. I’ll speak to her. I’ll fix it.’
‘You’llfixit?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, and that’s it?’
‘I don’t know what else to say?’
‘Millie.?.?. fuck, this is .?.?.’
Owen steps forward then, the soles of his trainers scraping on the wet pavement, and I step back away from him, but he closes the gap again. He’s close to me now, there isn’t even two feet between us. I can smell him over the earthy, tea-leafy scent of the rain. The same washing detergent, the same stupidly expensive wax he always used on his hair. Something happens inside me now – an uneasy rush of something that feels like nerves and nostalgia, all at once.
‘I don’t know how to feel,’ he says, his voice low now, his hand grazing my forearm. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and rain mists our faces, so fine, it’s like static. ‘And .?.?. fucking hell, Millie, I can’t stop thinking about it. About what you said.’
‘Owen—’
