AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stared at him in the lobby, blinking until it made sense.
He approached me with placating hands.
“Don’t freak out—” he started. “Or be a twat.”
I gave him a dark look. He shook his head as he hugged me extra tight.
“I just thought… you two would be friends now…” He raised his eyebrows in hopeful expectation. “Now that you know it wasn’t her who fucked Beej.”
Big, awkward smiles from both of them.
I glanced over at her for a few seconds — unimpressed — then back to Henry.
“Yeah, but she did fuck BJ, so…”
“Yeah.” Taura rolled her eyes. “But who hasn’t?”
Henry froze.
I stared at her for a few seconds.
And then I snorted a laugh. Figuratively, obviously. I don’t actually snort.
And that’s how it happened. That was how Taura Sax wormed her way into my heart and to self-professed best friend territory.
She jumps off the bench and goes fishing in my fridge.
It’s mostly just a lot of wine and olives in there because I still don’t cook, but I am on a first name basis with half the Uber Eats drivers in this city.
Taura bleakly pulls out a jar of pickles, bites down on one.
“How’s Tom doing?” she asks and I scowl over at her.
“How should I know?”
She shrugs innocently. “You might talk, I don’t know.”
In case you don’t know, here are the bones of my last few months:
I left London and I flew here.
Tom flew out the next day to meet me — just to be there for me, because he’s like that. And then we were back together. Until we weren’t.
It was hurting him. I was hurting him. We weren’t just in the foxhole. He was more like a shield and a security blanket and a pacifier and bandage and a stitch for my broken heart.
I wore him like a flak jacket. He bore a lot for me, I can see it in retrospect. He took many, many bullets. Actually, I suspect that one of those bullets nicked his little heart too, the one that deserves so much more than I could ever give it.
He stopped it. It was sudden.
I didn’t see it coming.
He flew in, we had sex, we had a fight, he left. It was bad, and so out of the blue.
I don’t do so well on my own. I never have. And that night — afternoon if we’re being specific, because I remember the tiny bit of light bending around the blackout blinds we’d pulled down because I don’t like to have sex in daylight — we fought about a film and then he just left. He grabbed a few things from the apartment that technically was just mine but really we shared — a phone charger, a watch in a drawer, his spare passport — and then Tom was gone.
Him leaving was akin to finding oneself in the middle of the Arctic Circle with nothing but a light cardigan.
Searing pain, head to toe.
