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‘You’re the only person I wanted to call.’
Jack looks at me, smiles deliciously slowly.
‘Because – well, I knew you had a lot of candles.’
Jack holds out a lazy palm – a ‘yep, makes sense’ gesture. ‘Plus, you know I can fight off rhubarb. And witches.’
‘Of course. You were an obvious recruit.’ I gulp down the wine. The air between us is thick and loaded; impossible to ignore. I imagine it surrounding us, dancing around us, specks and specks of it, like invisible stardust. ‘It’s been a .?.?. weird night. A big night, really?’
Jack nods, says nothing.
‘I went to see my mum on the way here,’ I say. ‘We talked about everything. About .?.?. her lie and Julian. And I sort of realised .?.?. we all have these unsaid things. All of us. Everyone. I drove away from there and I thought, nobody is exactly who they tell you they are. Are they? I spend my life holding myself to everyone else’s standards. Comparing myself to everyone else, what they’re doing, what they’re posting online, what they’re saying at brunches, or, announcing on Facebook. But what I’m comparing myself to a lot of the time isn’t even real, anyway.’
Jack nods thoughtfully. ‘You never get the full story,’ he says. ‘Really, the only person who ever gets your full story, your full self .?.?. isyourself.And if you’re not down with yourself, you’re against yourself. And who wants to hang out with someone for twenty-four hours a day who doesn’t back you. You know?’
I nod, wine heating my throat. ‘Well, maybe someday soon I can –get downwith myself. What do you think?’
‘You’re not down with you?’ asks Jack, then he drops his voice to that deep voice that always makes me melt and says, ‘I’mdown with you.’
I laugh, heat tingling up up up my body, and I genuinely thought it was impossible to fancy someonethismuch. I feel like leaping across the sofa and jumping on him.
‘I feel like Iusedto,’ I tell him, ‘but I sort of stopped being down with me.’
‘Since?’
‘Owen,’ I say, quicker than I think even my brain has realised that truth.
Jack nods, slowly, as rain pours, and inside the log-burner, the fire pops. A neon-orange spark drifting upwards, dispersing, like a child’s sparkler in the night. ‘Why did you break up?’ he asks. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever asked you. Obviously, we don’t have to talk about this shit if you don’t want to.’
‘The job.’
‘India?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’ I rub a thumb along the rim of the wine glass. ‘It was his dream. He was in production, working and working towards directing. Like, obsessively. And then he got offered the job to help Flye launch the new channel. And we trundled along for a while, talking about long distance and all of that. Then we agreed on a break, which, in hindsight, I know was him sort ofacclimatisingme to the idea of splitting up. But then Petra offered me some work out there. Only four weeks. Helping set up. She sort of – did me a solid. And then I just thought, well, he’s always talking about being bold, being .?.?. you know, driven? So I used my own savings for an open flight ticket, took some annual leave, and thought, fuck it, I’ll make it up as I go along. I’d always wanted to do something different. Something exciting and new. And I thought I’d surprise him. So, I told him just as we were about to go into the restaurant for his leaving meal – he said no. That it wasn’t what he wanted. That he was sorry. And he dumped me. Just like that.’
Jack looks at me, his eyes narrowing. The reflection of the fire, dances in them. ‘That’s fucking shit, Millie.’
‘I know. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt something actuallydiein me before, but in that moment – every bit of truth. Or boldness or .?.?. me-ness? Just shrank away.’
Jack hesitates, his brow furrowing. ‘I hate that he did that to you,’ he says, soothingly. ‘Do you want me to take him out onInstinct? Tie breeze blocks to his ankles?’
I laugh. ‘You’re not taking Owen out on handsome littleInstinctbefore me, thank you.’
Jack smiles. ‘Just say the word. Although, we’ll have to make it soon.’ And I ignore that. The soon. I don’t want to think we’re on limited time.
We pour more wine, and Jack gets up, adds two more logs to the fire. I watch him, will time to slow down, so I can savour the moment. The light of the fire, flickering across his serious face, the slow, careful hands, the sweet smell of wood hitting flames.
‘Do you think .?.?. he could’ve sent the emails?’ I ask. And it sounds wild, coming out of my mouth, but I’ve been mulling it over, more and more. Especially since Leona disproved Vince’s theory this morning.
Jack screws his face up, settles back next to me. He rests his hand on my foot, under the blanket, a warm, safe grip. ‘Owen? I mean, stranger things have happened. But why would he?’
I shrug. ‘It’s just, it’s niggling at me. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. Because I do leave my laptop open, sometimes, and my desk gets alotof traffic. Maybe it was prank. Maybe it was .?.?. I don’t know.’
Jack sips his wine. Slowly, he meets my eyes.
‘Ugh, you’re going to go all cakes about it, aren’t you?’ I laugh. ‘You’re going to say, let it go. That it doesn’t matter.’
‘Mm,’ he says. ‘Iamgoing to go all cakes about it.’ He puts an arm along the back of the sofa and, with a finger, strokes my shoulder. ‘Because why does the how matter? Wondering about it, turning it all over and over, going around in circles . . your brilliant brain deserves to be thinking over much better things than that.’
