Chapter 15
Noah
Despite my parents offering me to stay with them for a few days, I’d dropped them off and promptly set off home, longing for solitude and peace.
After a full week under my parents’ eye, I was ready for it. I was so ready to go back to work, anything to ease the mundane pace of living like this.
In this weird state of longing. I missed…him. Everything about him. I even missed his goddamn sunburnt foot.
I hated holidays. I hated time off. I just wanted to throw myself into a bunch of high blood pressure cases and someone’s weird-looking mole and the pain in someone’s hip, and I’d gladly take every toddler with chickenpox this week. Throw them at me. I’d deal with them all.
I also had my phone burning a virtual hole in my bag. I hadn’t looked at it since yesterday. Not dared to. I’d even turned the ringer off and silenced everything.
I didn’t want to know. Because he’d left and rejected me, and this was my last lifeline.
And I knew full well how it looked because he hadn’t offered me his number, not opened up the possibility of future contact, nor had he invited me to any such…thing.
My mother had instead demanded his contact details from one of his friends and then promptly entered them into my phone like she’d had that right. She’d also called me a pig-headed fool and told me to get myself together and ring the bloke because he was apparently as besotted with me as I was with him.
Lies. Total fabrication of truths from my gossiping mother. It was a hook-up. A random one. A rebound. A holiday fling. A mindless shag. All things I’d chosen not to further explain to my parents, despite my dad telling me I would regret not organising a repeat performance.
The shame was real. Truly, and I was mortified in every single way.
Welcome to my life. No wonder I was single. We’d been here before, me being set up on blind dates and introduced to suitable single men of the homosexual persuasion. I’d not been impressed and had fled in embarrassment after each one.
The other thing I’d done was delete the apps off my phone because that part of my life was over. I was not doing this again. I got attached easily, and overwhelmed, and what had it been? Two days of constant fucking and I was in love and ready to propose? Seriously, Noah. I needed to stop this.
So I went home. My semi-detached newbuild home, one of three hundred on a packed estate, where I parked my car mere inches from my front door and trampled in my tiny flowerbeds to get out. Everything was packed and stacked and tiny and fitted, just like my life. It had always felt like it suited me, but suddenly today? I felt enclosed. Like there wasn’t enough wide open space to breathe. Perhaps having spent the past week on a beach had altered my perception of things, but then I’d actually hardly spent any time on that beach. I’d fucked Fox Riley for two days and then spent the rest of the time hiding in my room. For heaven’s sake.
I unpacked, did laundry, mindlessly refusing to acknowledge the memories carried in every single piece of clothing in my bag. I couldn’t even look at my Crocs; instead, I took the bag out and threw them in the bin, sand running through my fingers.
I still had sand in those shoes, and even thinking of the song made me want to cry.
Nope. I wasn’t doing this. I was getting back to normal.
Food, I went shopping for it. Bought healthy items and stocked my freezer. Went back home and ironed my shirts for the week. Refused to look at the phone.
Then I had to set my alarm, and perhaps it was too early to go to bed and maybe I was just tired. Jet lag was a thing. But it meant I had to tap the screen on my phone.
So I sat there, phone in hand, the fear in me overwhelming. If there was no message? He’d cut contact. It was over. I already knew it was.
Any message in there would be him asking me to go to hell. I didn’t know which option was worse.
Truth was. I would do it. Overwhelmed or not, if he asked me to? There was nothing for me here, apart from this house and my car and my job. All of those could be easily transferred to somewhere where he was. CouldI practice in Scotland? I hadn’t even looked it up, too frightened to give myself hope.
Deep breath.
There would probably be messages from my mum. Some links sent from my dad. Had I seen this article on kidney function research? I was trying to mentally prepare myself here, and not die.
I was not about to die. I had to laugh out loud, and then I tapped the screen because I was being ridiculous. Four messages from Mum. Three from Dad. A reminder of my upcoming dentist appointment. I shook my head.
And a text. Not on WhatsApp, like normal people would. A proper text. A number I had already memorised in my head because I forgot most things, apart from things that mattered.
Can I call you?
Could he? My hands were shaking, and I was sat on my bed. My heart? I needed to invest in a defibrillator for my bedroom at this pace. What did he want? Apart from telling me he never wanted to hear from me again and to block his number.
Ridiculous.
