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CHAPTER 26
Oliver spent the next week doing what he did best. Being extremely organised to the point that teetered on OCD, except he didn’t pace and he didn’t count to three.
And he kept smiling stupidly at his jar of multi-coloured paperclips.
Looking at them made him feel liberated and determined. And he slept every night in the guest room with Felicity’s brightly coloured cushions around him.
He’d messaged her to see that she’d arrived safely, and she’d messaged back.
It was friendly, affectionate. No talk of anything more from either of them.
But he didn’t need that.
Because he had a plan. And too much to do to waste time keeping his desk pristine or sticking post-it notes everywhere. He made a list. Not on paper, not on his computer; inside his head. And he didn’t forget a single detail.
He worked through each task methodically. After all, there was no time to lose.
First, he booked his plane tickets.
Then he phoned the mechanics workshop in Adelaide. They’d sent it to the wreckers yard they informed him. His heart dropped. But when he phoned, miraculously, it was still there, uncrushed. He put in a call to Luke. “Mate, I need the best mechanic in Adelaide, no expense spared.”
The next, unpleasant task was having it out with Leonie.
Calmly, he told her his truth. He was in love with another woman. Firmly, he told her she’d done wrong by telling lies to the woman he loved. She sobbed, she screamed, she cajoled. Eventually she lobbed at him, “I’m going back to Bali, to a man who truly loves and values me. And anyway, I lied, you are boring…”
He didn’t believe her.
Because sitting on his shelf, next to him, was Felicity’s pink hat. And on his screen saver was the selfie of them laughing on the beach, way back on that second day of their trip across Australia.
Whatever happened, he was going to risk it, he was going to listen to his gut. He was going to remember something truly magical had touched them both.
And he wasn’t going to give that up. Not without fighting for it. He wasn’t stuck in a dream now, pinned to his beach towel with a sense of impending doom, watching that hat shimmy off into the wind.
What, he asked himself, was the worst that could happen? That when he faced her and told her “I love you,” she might say, “I don’t love you.”
There was no plan for that, no spreadsheet for losing love, no road map for putting your heart back together.
You just had to wing it.
Oliver was ready to risk it.
* * *
A week later,trying to compose an email to Oliver was not a happening thing.
She’d started, but she’d erased more words than she’d written.
It still stood at:
Dear Oliver,
There was something I should have told you…
Luckily, Evie was too caught up with her imminent exhibition to do more than occasionally ask sternly, “Have you contacted Oliver yet?” To which Felicity would say, “I will.”
Felix, being laconic Felix, said, “If you want to talk things through, I’m here for you.”
She’d replied, “I will if I need to.”
