‘Nope.’ Annie sniffed. ‘Feels worse than any break-up I ever had.’
Harri wished he could rub her back or something, but he kept his hands to himself. ‘She’ll come round, won’t she? When he gets caught out again?’
‘I have no clue. But if she does, I’ve learned my lesson. When friends break up, I keep my big mouth shut. Trashing their ex isnotsmart. How was I to know they’d get back together?’ She hugged her legs tighter. ‘I even told her we called him Deadbeat Dave.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘And now I’ve lost my best friend.’
‘Hey, joint best friend, surely?’ Harri tried to joke.
‘I’m hurtin’ for her,’ Annie said, sitting upright.
Her sad eyes pained him. Annie usually laughed things off but this was like nothing he’d witnessed before.
‘You’ll make it up, I know you will,’ he told her.
She shook her head, eyes glazing as she let them settle on the flames. ‘You didn’t see how she was set on hating me. I can’t forget the way she looked, like she was so done with me. Even when it all happens again, and it will, he’s got his hooks in her so deep she’ll forgive him, and I’ll stay cut off like this.’ Tears tracked down her cheeks.
Nine years of distance and his arms were wanting to reach for her after just ninety minutes? He stopped himself pulling her close. ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you,’ he said instead. ‘And I’m sorry for Cassidy too. Losing you won’t be easy for her either.’
Annie’s shoulders shook as she wept without a sound. This was new ground for both of them. What a way to start the holiday.
She slumped lower in the beanbag but had already seemed determined to stop feeling sorry for herself. ‘Here’s me breaking my heart and you’ve had a falling out with Paisley,’ she said, swiping a hand over her wet cheek.
‘What a pair of sad sacks we are,’ said Harri, inwardly comparing his sadness over his break-up with Annie’s heartbreak at losing her friend. Annie seemed to be taking things much harder.
When he really examined it, the strongest feeling in his heart was one of regret at having squandered a decade on a relationship that, if he’d been honest with himself, had been all but over for the last couple of years. He’d wasted Paisley’s twenties. On cue, along came regret’s companion, guilt.
‘Don’t go rebounding,’ Annie was offering, wisely. ‘It’s never a good idea. I did it myself a couple of times at Aber, remember?’
Harri screwed up his face like he was thinking. ‘Did you? Ah, it was all so long ago.’
Of course he remembered. Watching Annie hurling herself into another doomed fling with some rugby lad or bar crawl creep. It had felt rotten, but what could he do? He’d been on the sidelines while she’d been full steam ahead onto the next thing, and the next, never resting.
Annie seemed different now, though. She was calmer, if a little disillusioned and sad. Maybe they both were.
Sighing heavily, he hatched his fingers over his stomach. A stillness settled and for a while they said nothing, lost in their separate thoughts.
‘I couldn’t stand it if I lost you too,’ Annie said eventually, as they stared into the dying fire.
‘Luckily, you’re not going to.’
Annie reached for his hand. He watched as his own travelled reflexively for hers. Her fingers were cool.
‘Friends for life?’ she said.
‘Yep, friends for life,’ he echoed, ignoring the unwelcome feelings this set off within him. ‘And we’re going to have the perfect bookselling holiday, okay? I promise. No more upsets.’
She nodded and squeezed his hand before letting go. She didn’t seem to register the awkwardness of it. ‘And you’ll be back together with Paisley in no time,’ she offered.
Harri knew that was never going to happen but there was no point pushing back against his friend who’d been burned so badly with Cassidy and Deadbeat Dave. How could she possibly know what to say for the best after all that?
‘And you and Cassidy will be back on speaking terms very soon,’ he insisted, even though he couldn’t be sure about that. ‘Just you wait.’
In the glow from the fire, not to mention the wine, the tea and the scones, and the feeling of having unburdened themselves after a long, long journey of nine years, Harri made a solemn, unspoken promise.
Annie’s heart was already broken from losing one friend so there was no way he was going to risk all they’d built between them by following his inconvenient, and no doubt faulty, instincts that they could be more than friends one day – no matter how insistent those instincts were.
