Page 93 of Only Ever You

“This is the first moment in a decade where you’ve had a blip in your friendship?”

He nodded, listening as he lay down more cutlery.

“So you’ve hit a bump in the road. Do you not trust her anymore?”

“I trust Faye with my life.” His heart too.

He’d loved that for the last few days, the first and only thing he saw when he woke up, was her. Dreaming it could be that way for the rest of his life.

“Look, I know that there are feelings involved here,” Matt said. “Certain five-foot-five reasons why you wouldn’t want to leave. But … all I’mwondering is if perhaps you’ve become codependent on that five-foot-five reason.”

Codependent?

Bash frowned. “I exist outside of my friendship with—” Matt’s brow slowly rose in contradiction and he huffed with a tilt of his head. “ …Matt.I’m a whole person. There isn’t anything missing from me. I?—”

He choked up as a wave of realisation crested.

There isn’t anything missing.It was the first time that thought had ever crossed his mind or lips - and it was right.

Maybe he should’ve been telling himself this all along.

Matt slowly began to smile. “No, there isn’t, Seb.”

Bash felt his heart beating in his chest. All of his longing for a wife and family because he thought that’s what he lacked in himself, weren’t missing pieces at all.

“What Faye and I have … it’s the extra that takes my life from good to amazing.”

“Which is great. But you’re in stagnant waters, Bash. You won’t move forwards and search for those extra things. Youcan’tgo back ten years to act when you should’ve done. And you won’t risk the vulnerability that you open yourself up to to even try and grab what’s right in front of you.”

The reality check hit Bash straight in the chest; right in the tender spot beneath his sternum. By his soft expression, Matt knew exactly what he’d done. How long had he planned to say those things to his face?

Matt set down the last plate, placing him by Bash’s side. “I’m your brother, and I want for you to have everything in the world, but there’s only so much I can tell you to do before you need to act on it yourself.”

Reasons for holding back that Bash had never voiced before clouded his already juggling thoughts.

He inhaled, eyes squeezing shut. “I …can’t. And I can’t explain why. It’s like I’m scared that the answer I don’t want to hear will make meretreat after it comes. The gut-destroying feeling I lived with for so long of not being wanted anywhere growing upI knowwill come right back. And it won’t beherfault, it’ll be mine for still letting things from the past have a hold over me.”

Matt let him speak, listening to his feelings that didn’t match the festiveness around them.

“I barely survived that feeling back then, you know that,” Bash said. “I don’t think I can do it a second time. And now that she’s moving away … Faye won’t take a chance on what we have.” There was no sense in adding to Faye’s impending stress by taking that risk, as if she would even want to anyway.

“Have you spoken with Doctor Palmer about that recently?” Matt asked.

“I’ve not been low for a long time, Matt. I’m okay. You know I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”

“I believe you.”

“And I’ve been healthy, too, for years. My relationship with food is completely normal and healed.”

“Oh, I know, Bash. I wasn’t worried about that.”

“Then what are you trying to say? For once you’re not joking around and I need you to be my brother and help me, here. Because I don’t know what to do with all of” – Bash gestured around his chest – “this, anymore.”

“The timing is never going to be right,” Matt said after giving himself a second to think. “You just have to tell her. And if she feels the same, which I really think that she does, then it's not going to matter whether you’re standing under glittering lights or some decrepit old tree in the rain when you do . If Faye wants to hear those words from you then it's not going to matter when or where or how, so long as you speak from in here—” He pressed his finger to Bash’s heart.

Bash’s eyes had gone wet.Ugh. When had he turned into such a mess? Where was a tissue when he needed one?

“Uncle Bash?” Neither of them had noticed the nosy nelly that’d crept in the corner. Maya hugged her stuffed elephant teddy that was falling apart against her. “You look sad.”

---