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“He wants me to stay. I’m sure he feels worse than I do.”
“What doyouwant?”
“I want to go home,” I admitted. “Shove it under the carpet and pretend life’s still good. But it isn’t. What we have together can’t really beit, not if some other girl’s carrying his baby, right?”
“That depends whatitmeans.”
“In my bookitdoesn’t mean getting someone pregnant at a crappy work conference after too many tequilas.”
“That’s what your head says, what about the rest of you?”
“The rest of me will just have to toe the line and get over it. We’re done.” I met his eyes, determination bubbling through my spine. “So, how about you?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Me?”
“You said you’d been through the depths yourself. What did you do?”
He smiled. “I made the rest of me toe the line. What we had couldn’t have beenit,right?”
“Your wife?”
“Ex-wife on all but paper.” He flashed his bare wedding finger. There was still a faint pale band where a ring would have been. His eyes turned heavy and serious, staring so intensely at me that I had to look away. “It wasn’t a pleasant time.”
“But it got better? You moved on?”
“It took me a while to lose the ring, but I’m now glad it’s gone. Genuinely.”
Stuart’s face flashed before my eyes again. I pictured him, and Carly, and their tiny little baby. Maybe she’d have a ring one day, the one that should’ve been mine. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
James Clarke moved with purpose, he reached across the desk and took my hands in his, they were warm and steady and so much bigger than mine. The shock of the contact snapped me out of my misery, and I was back in the moment, right there in his office. It was strangely intimate, but I didn’t feel the urge to pull away. “Listen to me, Lydia. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s ok to fall apart until you piece your life back together.”
“That’s not really my style.”
“I know it’s a cliché, but it can be good for you, to cry it out.”
“Any other suggestions?”
He stared straight into my eyes. “Suck it up, all the way inside. Put a wall around yourself and refuse to dwell on the pain, not even for a second. Every time a memory comes up just push it away. Slowly, but surely, it becomes second nature. The hurt fades.”
“Is that what you did?”
“I should have binned the ring sooner, it would have made the process a lot easier.”
I studied the man sat before me, the hard line of his jaw, his confident smile. His black hair was perfectly tousled, making his dark eyes appear even darker. He was certainly imposing in his self-assured calmness.
Women in the office talked about him, a lot. He was the resident ‘I would’ eye candy of the female Trial Run populous, and up close I could see why. I sensed some darkness spring up in him, and he took his hands away. Whatever had gone down with his ex-wife had got him good, I could tell, but he’d buried it alright, just like he said, buried it deep. My angry ghosts saluted his, waving from the shadows. His waved back before his eyes returned to calm, mask restored.
I looked past him through the window as the dawn broke on a dreary day outside, the first day of life without Stuart.
Back at my desk I deleted the text messages and barred Stu’s number. I’d build the wall sky-fucking-high, higher than high, to the ceiling of the whole fucking universe, where the pain couldn’t reach me ever again.
***
It was almost 8am when the ping of my email sounded. I’d never been so pleased at the prospect of something to do, but the email wasn’t from a client at all.
From: James Clarke
Subject: Coffee
