Page 79 of The Truth About Love

And,God,the pain that cuts through me every time I’m forced to listen to another one of his phone conversations with his girlfriend. My apartment is nice but it’s not overly big, so it doesn’t matter where he is, I can still make out the words exchanged between them. I can still hear him call her babe.

Babe is a word men use when they forget the name of the girl they’re fucking. Babe isn’t the name you use to refer to the love of your life.

If I weren’t so sickeningly jealous, I’d feel bad for his girlfriend for being with a man who so clearly doesn’t love her. And it makes me wonder why Auden is even with her at all. But then I remind myself that I had my chance with him and I fucked it up so epically that it would be hypocritical of me to pass judgement over their relationship.

Maybe they’re not in love, but I bet she makes him happier than I ever did.

“Want some coffee?” Auden asks from where he sits in the leather armchair that he seems to have claimed as his own.

I nod and watch him walk into the kitchen, my gaze not faltering as he sets about making us a latte each from my integrated coffee machine. My stomach flips as I breathe in the sight of him. Faded sweatpants that have seen better days hang low on his hips and a white t-shirt with NASA branding clings to his biceps that have grown significantly since I saw him last.

My mouth runs dry.Why must he be so beautiful?

I look at his face in profile, at the sharp lines of his cheekbones to the slight crookedness of his nose to the gentle wave of his chestnut brown hair. Then he turns and I’m too slow to look away.

“Wipe your mouth, Summer-Raine.” He grins, bringing the coffee back over to the living area and setting a cup down in front of me. “You’re drooling.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I scowl, but wipe my hand across my mouth anyway.

He chuckles. “Sure, you don’t.”

His lips tilt into a cocky smirk, taking a seat in his chair, and I wonder if it affects Cara as much as it does me whenever he looks at her like that. Part of me hopes he’s never looked at her like that at all, but the rest of me knows that’s just wishful thinking. Of course he’s looked at her like that. She’s his girlfriend. I’m sure he even looks at her like she’s his entire universe the way he used to do with me.

“You always think so loud,” he says, leaning forward to study me with his elbows resting on his parted knees. Every so often, he raises his coffee cup to his lips and I watch his throat bob each time he swallows. I still remember what it felt like to kiss him there.

“Do I?” I shrug and force myself to stop looking at him.

“You always have done.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I turn and look out the window at the setting sun. The sky is beautiful tonight. It’s like a watercolour painting of bleeding reds, purples and oranges, with birds flying like little black silhouettes that have been stencilled straight onto it.

“Sunsets always remind me of you.”

I freeze as I’m assaulted by images of the two of us wrapped up in each other as we watched the sun sink over the sea on my balcony.

“Do you remember, Summer-Raine?” he whispers. “Do you remember watching the sunsets with me?”

I can’t breathe.

I can feel him watching me, but I don’t turn to look at him. I don’t want him to see how his words have undone me or the pain on my face from hearing him talk about the only time in my life that I have ever been happy.

The memories hurt so much.

“I remember.”

He falls silent, but I can still feel the burn of his gaze on the side of my face. For the last two weeks, we’ve managed to avoid the subject of us. We haven’t tried to reminisce about old times or brought up the fact that once upon a time we were young and desperately in love. Not until now.

And all of a sudden, I feel a shift in the atmosphere.

“Why did you do it, Summer-Raine?”

There it is.

The question I’ve always hoped I’d never have to answer. The question I ask myself every night when I climb into a cold bed and try to imagine the feeling of his arms around me to help me go to sleep.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

He doesn’t have to say anything more for me to understand what he’s asking, but he does anyway. “Did our relationship not mean as much to you as it did to me? Did you not love me anymore? Did you ever even love me at all?” I can hear the hurt and desperation in his voice, his need for me to answer his questions, but I can’t. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

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