AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Jonathan”—I take quite a firm tone with him—“can you please stop this? You’re not a monster in a fairy tale. You’re a person. You can be funny, people will actually laugh at stuff you say, and not just in a mean way.”
The nachos are mostly done, and Jonathan’s picking at what’s left of them without much enthusiasm. “Before you lost yourmemory,” he tells me, and he sounds so hesitant it makes me wish I could tell him I’ve not, “you and Claire used to call meHis Royal Dickishness.”
I try my best to sound like this is new information. “You’re the boss,” I tell him. “Everybody thinks their boss is a dick.”
“You also told me I was being a dick to you just in general, after the accident.”
“And you were. But you stopped. You don’t have to be”—I wave my hands in little circles that are supposed to convey everything other people think about Jonathan Forest and everything he thinks about himself—“who you are at work or who people thought you were at university or whatever the opposite of your dad is all the time. You can just be you. Y’know, theyouyou are when you’re with me.”
The waiter comes back with our burgers and sets them down on the table with a clink. Jonathan looks down at his but doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t even take his knife and fork out of the napkin they’ve been wrapped in. “I can’t, though, can I, Sam? Because—because of everything. Because you’re injured. Because I’m your boss. Because—because of a hundred other things.”
“Okay, but…” He’s sort of right about the boss issue, and if I’d not been lying he’d have been right about the injury thing. But not about the rest of it. “You can still be that other person. You can still have the stuff the other person can have.”
He’s glaring now. “I don’t want it.”
“You do. I’ve seen that you do.”
And now it’s less a glare and more—I’ve not got words for what it is. He’s looking at me as though if he stops he’ll turn to stone, like I’m some kind of reverse medusa. “I don’t want it if I can’t have it with you.”
Oh.
I should tell him that he’s being silly. That he can find anotherfeller and as long as he doesn’t try to take him skydiving it’ll work out. Except I’m not sure I want him to have this with anybody else either. For a start, I’m the one who put the bloody work in.
“Jonathan,” I try, but I’ve got no follow-up.
He pushes his plate away and stands. “Just—whatever you’re going to say, I’d rather you—” He pulls his wallet out his pocket. Perhaps it’s a holdover from his market trading days but he’s got a fair amount of cash in one of those clip things that nobody uses any more. “I think I’d rather we just left it here.”
He throws down enough money to cover the meal and then some, and before I can work out what to say, or what it was he thought I was going to say and was so determined I shouldn’t, he’s out the door. Leaving me with two burgers that somebody’s gone to the trouble of cooking and either of which it would feel extremely weird to eat.
I can’t decide which makes me look worse: abandoning a table full of food that no-one’s touched or sitting here on my tod, having a burger and chips like people regularly take me out to dinner, throw money on the table, and then bail.
I pick up a chip and pinch it between my fingers so the potato all mushes out. It hasn’t got any answers for me either.
CHAPTER 28
There was never going to be a good time for things to fall apart between me and Jonathan, but the advantage of it happening in Sheffield is that at least it’s easy to go home afterwards. I mean, I say home. I mean to the flat. Which doesn’t even have my fucking cat in it because he’s still in London with the family of the bloke who’s sort of not exactly dumped me, probably getting spoiled rotten.
I’d rented the flat because I’d just come to Sheffield and I needed somewhere to live. It wasn’t the first place I looked at but it might have been the third. At the time I’d been in no mood to…well. Give a crap. About anything. And especially not about whether I got picturesque views or a cosy ambience. Unfortunately, that means coming back to it sucks very hard indeed.
There’s a gentle smell of neglect in the air that, I hope, it’s picked up since I’ve been away but which, realistically, may have always been there. Not sure exactly what else to do with myself, I clean out the fridge. Even here, I kept things fairly orderly, but three weeks out of town has done a number on my milk and my orange juice is looking sorry for itself. Frankly, I know how it feels.
When that’s done, I kind of run out of steam and sit on the sofa. Technically speaking, nothing’s changed. All that’s happenedis that my brief window of being an extremely unexpected guest in Jonathan Forest’s needlessly fancy house has come to a premature end, and I’m back to being a sad bastard who manages a minor branch of a chain of bed and bath superstores and lives on his own in a flat above a butcher’s shop. At least, I’m back to being that until Jonathan fires me for being shit at the job which it seems increasingly likely he will if what Claire said is anything to go by.
Of course, if he does fire me then that means he gives up his best excuse for not dating me. I mean, it’d be awkward like because then I’d be going out with a bloke who just gave me the sack. But I reckon I’d get over it. Because sitting here in my crappy, cat-less flat on my own has reminded me of all the reasons I had for being here in the first place. Which is to say, I didn’t really have any. I was just looking to pay my bills and get out of Liverpool. And, thinking about it, that’s literally all I did. And unless I make a serious play for something I actually want, it’ll be all I ever do.
Fuck it.
I grab my coat and ring a taxi. Then I wait for the taxi, which sort of takes the edge off the romantic go-to-him-now-because-it’s-your-last-chance impulse. Then again, it’s quite a long way and he’s in a Premier Inn. And showing up at a budget chain hotel shagged out from a long run just isn’t a good way to get in touch with your inner Sandra Bullock.
“Ey up,” says the driver as I get in. “You’re going to that Premier Inn, then?”
“Yeah,” I tell him.
Heart Radio starts up as he pulls away from the kerb. “Forget your toothbrush?”
Now he mentions it, I have. “Sort of. Also my clothes. Also my boss. Who I want to be my boyfriend.”
“Eeh,” he says. “You want to be careful wi’ that. There’ssome potentially significant implications regarding relationships in t’workplace.”
