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“It’s not like it was particularly romantic even before Ben appeared, though, was it?” I say, remembering the tense atmosphere on the boat that night. “We were barely speaking.”
“I was trying to sort out the transfer of the land to McTavish, and figure out how to tell you I was going to have to go to London to finalize it.”
“And you couldn’t just have told me that?”
“You’ve been so touchy about everything lately.” He plucks a piece of paper off his desk and stares at it so he doesn’t have to look at me. “Ever since we got engaged. It’s like we forgot how to talk to each other.”
The silence that follows this statement drives his point home.
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten engaged, then, if that’s what it’s done to us.”
The words are out of my mouth before I even knew I was thinking them.
No, wait. That’s not totally true, is it? Because Iwasthinking them. I even said them out loud to Scarlett, just yesterday: back when Jack had swanned off to London and hadn’t bothered to stay in touch.
A tiny spark of annoyance flares in the pit of my stomach, and I’m suddenly not so sure I want to take those words back after all.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I say, when Jack doesn’t reply. “Everything’s been different since then. And not just different, but worse.”
Jack continues staring down at the piece of paper in his hand as if it’s far more interesting than talking to me about our relationship.
The spark of annoyance turns into a small flame.
“What’s this?” he says at last, holding the paper up so I can see it. His tone is mild, but his hand is shaking slightly, and I feel my stomach tense with sudden nerves as I step closer to see what he’s trying to show me. It looks like a page torn from a notebook of some kind. I step closer, squinting at the words at the top of the page, which have been written in familiar looking block capitals, which…
Oh please God, no.
“Reasons Not to Trust Jack,” he says, pretending to read from the page, even though it’s obvious he already knows it off by heart. “Number one—”
“Jack, stop,” I say, almost throwing myself across the desk as I try to snatch the page from his hand. “That’s not… it’s not…”
The words die on my lips as he finally looks up at me, his eyes filled with hurt.
“Not what, Emerald?” he says quietly. “Not about me? Not written by you? Because it’s your handwriting: I’d know it anywhere. And unless there’s some other ‘Jack’ in your life who doesn’t like talking about his feelings and keeps the ketchup in the refrigerator — which is absolutely where it belongs, by the way — then it’s pretty hard to imagine it’s not about me.”
He puts the piece of paper on the desk in front of us, and we both stare at it silently, as if it might jump up and bite us. Although I’m pretty sure it’s done that already.
“Well?”
His voice is still soft, and it just about breaks me. I almost wish he’d start shouting, or throwing things: anything other than this ominous softness, which feels like the calm before some catastrophic storm. I once read that the first sign of a tsunami is the tide pulling out, leaving the ocean floor bare and exposed. Right now I feel Jack pulling away from me, and I have a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling that there’s going to be absolutely nothing I can do to stop the retreat — or the crashing pain of the wave that will surely follow it.
“I… I did write this,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m not going to deny it. But I didn’t mean any of it, Jack. I really didn’t. It was Brian’s idea — back when the messages first started. I told him I couldn’t think of a single reason not to trust you, and he suggested I try to … well, brainstorm it, I guess.”
“Brainstorm it. Right.”
It’s not exactly surprising that Jack isn’t impressed with this explanation. But I’m not done yet.
“It didn’t work, though,” I tell him, leaning forward so I can look him in the eye. “It didn’t work, Jack. All it did was prove to me that I had absolutely no reason not to trust you. That I had to make up stupid shit about ketchup and dishwashers, because there was literally nothing else.”
“And yet you still didn’t trust me, did you?” Jack interrupts impatiently. “Because you kept on and on about those messages. No matter how many times I tried to reassure you, you wouldn’t let it drop. If you’d trusted me, you wouldn’t have done that. If you’d trusted me, you’d just have blocked the number, like I told you to, and we could have gone on with our lives. And now look at us.”
He shakes his head, then drops it into his hands, looking utterly defeated. I want to walk around the desk and hug him. To take him in my arms and tell him it’s going to be okay.
The problem is, I’m not sure itisgoing to be okay. And everything about Jack’s current demeanor is giving off strong ‘do not approach’ vibes, so I stay where I am, and search again for some kind of reasonable explanation for everything that’s gone down.
“I shouldn’t have written that list,” I say in a small voice. “It was a stupid idea. I thought it at the time, but I did it anyway because … well, because I was really confused, and I couldn’t think of anything elsetodo. And Ididtrust you, Jack. Idotrust you. I was just in the middle of something that was really bothering me, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Not because I thought the messages must be true, but because I had to know who was sending them, and why they seemed to want to mess with my life.”
“And now you know,” replies Jack bluntly. “And you were so relieved to have your answer that you jumped onto the back of a pedalo and rode off with him.”
