I sit back on my heels, the two of us kneeling in front of the fridge in this tiny kitchen. “You can’t just throw money at everything tofix it,” I snap, even though it’s harsh. He’s exceptionally good at not throwing money at me, at not making me uncomfortable in that way.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I forgot,” I hiccup, through my tears.
“Forgot what?”
“I forgotthis.” I wave my hand around the house, then toward the faded picture of my parents pinned to the door. “I forgot them. I forgot Mary from down the road, and I forgot Laura. And you’re all just so out of touch, and I got so used to all the luxuries that I fell out of touch, too.”
“Ophelia, you’re not someone who’s used to luxury things.”
“That’s not what I’m referring to.”
I don’t mean the cars, the handbags, the shoes. I meanrealluxuries. Friends who care, who show up with chalkboards and snacks whenever something needs to be planned, friends who will drive you places at four in the morning just because you ask. Alex. Alex who loves me so much and so deeply that the chains of my past feel looser now.
Luxuries Laura might’ve had, if I hadn’t deserted her.
His eyes soften with understanding. “Being loved and accepted for who you are isn’t a luxury you don’t deserve.”
“Someonediedbecause of me.”
“I don’t know who Laura is, but I know that you are not the villain in her tale. You didn’t decide her fate. You’re giving yourself way too much power in her life.”
“Stop it.”
“We’re not doing that. You’re not depriving yourself of kind-ness because you think you don’t deserve it.”
My shoulders shake, chest aches. “Please stop.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I gave up on revenge for a relationship with you is what happened,” I bite out, angrier at him than I really mean. There’s only one person I’m really angry with. “I let myself get consumed by you.”
“Who is Laura?”
Self-loathing is a dull blade somewhere inside me, clawing its way from the inside out. “She’sme. She’s me if I hadn’t met you.”
He rises to his feet, and I hear the clatter of a mug against the counter, the spluttering of the kettle. And then he’s gone, footsteps sounding upstairs before the sound of water filling the bath.
It only makes what I’ve done feel worse.
I’M ON MYthird episode ofMasterChef, ridiculing the way Clare from Birmingham has made a roux even though I haven’t got a single idea what a roux is, when Alex finally joins me on the sofa after what felt like a hundred work meetings. Fresh out of contact lenses, he’s in those reading glasses, the ones that appear so rarely and yet feature in almost every single one of my daydreams.
Following what can only be described as a catastrophic breakdown overnight, today I feel all out of fight, like the still quiet after the storm when the sky couldn’t possibly rain anymore.
“She’s put rosemary in a roux,” I say, because I don’t want to talk about anything else.
His legs join mine on the coffee table in front of us, lifting my hoodie to check on the bruises that stain my ribs from my fight with Laura. “What the fuck is a roux?”
“Dunno. But I bet you’re not meant to put rosemary in it.”
“What an idiot.”
“Literally.”
He stares at the TV with mild disinterest, watching a contestant putting potatoes through a sieve with so much gusto that sweat is beading on his forehead. Alex is restless, the muscles beneath the ravens on his forearm flexing as he spins the gold ring on his index finger. There’s a darkness about him that reminds me of that first day we met outside the Sorrowsong gates, like there’s a storm brewing just beneath his skin.
I lean over to scratch my fingernails through his hair, watching his eyes drift shut and the tension dissipate from his shoulders just a little. “Talk to me.”
