Page 60 of Love at First Sight

But they do. Consequences do exist.

I take a step back. ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m already missing the feel of Cal’s skin on mine, his breath so close to my mouth. Tears prick at my eyes. It’s dramatic, but I can’t help it. ‘Shit,’ I say, dabbing at them with my fingertips, wiping them away.

‘Sorry.’ Cal looks concerned. ‘I thought …’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Me too, it’s just …’

We’re not making any sense. I pick up my coffee mug – when did I even put that down? I bring it to my lips. It’s only lukewarm now, but I drink it anyway, just to have something to do with my body as my brain whirrs so frantically it might fall out of my ear.

‘Things with Ali are over,’ Cal says, after a minute of silence. ‘I would never try anything if it wasn’t. I hope you know that.’

‘I can’t betray her.’ I’m practically at the other end of the kitchen now. ‘I would never do anything to jeopardise what she is to me.’

‘You’re not,’ Cal counters. ‘Okay? It’s over. Me and Ali, it should never have got as far as it did. I was so fucking desperate to find somebody that what should have been a bit of fun got too serious – and for her, too. I’m not her guy, Jessie, any more than she’s the woman for me. I just fucking wish I’d held out longer. I would have. If I’d known you were around the corner, I never would have dated Ali. I should have waited for you. But I didn’t knowyou were coming. And then I couldn’t even bring myself to end it with her, because I lived in hope that I’d get to see you, every time I was at the house.’

‘It’s a mess,’ I say, sadly. ‘I wish you’d waited for me too. But it doesn’t work like that, does it?’

‘We can’t let this slip by,’ he protests. ‘I’m not going to let it.’

He comes to me, pulling me in close, holding me, and I allow it for just a second before pushing him away, because if I don’t push him away now, I never will.

‘We missed our chance,’ I say. ‘We don’t get to do this now. I don’t want to.’

I feel awful, but I know that if I tell Cal the truth, he’ll try to find a loophole – reason his way out of Ali’s ultimatum so that we can be together. And as much as I want him, I want Ali and Henry more. I choose them. If it has to be a choice, I choose my family. Hasn’t Dad taught me that much? If you sacrifice your family for love, you have to know your love can always leave. Just look at Simone.

No. Ali and Henry are the safer bet. They’ll never break my heart. And so, I am firm.

‘I don’t want this,’ I reinforce. ‘Maybe before, but not now. I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Ali, but I’m not sloppy seconds.’

‘Sloppy seconds?’ Cal says. ‘You’re not the second choice, Jessie, I swear—’

I hold up a hand.

‘I’m not interested,’ I say, definitively, sounding way more confident than I feel. ‘I really appreciate you drivingme here, and you’re a very nice man, but there’s nothing here, and there won’t ever be. In fact, now you and Ali are done and Stray Kids is opening, I don’t suppose I’ll see you at all, and that’s as it should be. So, shall I see you out?’

Cal looks at me, jaw slack and eyes wide.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he says, and I don’t know if he means that he doesn’t believe I don’t want him, or he doesn’t believe I’m being so cruel. I don’t hang around to find out. Instead, I walk out of the kitchen and open the front door, because I can’t have him here, it hurts too much. I have never met anyone like Cal, somebody so kind and funny and open and encouraging. I shouldn’t have to make this choice. But I do, and it breaks my heart.

The image of Cal walking past me and pausing on the doorstep like I might change my mind will haunt me, because I almost do. I almost tell him to wait, that I’m sorry, that I’m crazy and don’t know why I said all that.

But he doesn’t turn around, because I don’t say any of that. Instead, I close the door behind him as fast as I can, and then let myself cry once again. By the time I stop, the birds are singing and it is light out.

23

‘I know you’re worried about me,’ Dad says the next afternoon, over coffee at the café with the pavement seating I like to think of as my little secret, in the back streets of Stokey. ‘And I just want you to know,’ Dad continues, ‘that you really don’t have to be.’

‘Of course I’m worried about you,’ I say. ‘I love you! And I’m here for you, okay?’

‘Yes,’ Dad says, ‘I know. I appreciate you saying that, butyouseem … tired, darling. Lacklustre. Like worrying about me is sucking the life out of you.’

I wave a hand. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘No, it’s not that. I didn’t sleep very well. Funny dreams. Weird ones. Late night, too.’ I leave out the bit about the dreams featuring Cal, because Dad doesn’t even really know the Cal story. He’s been absent for that bit. But yeah, after Cal left he was in my dream, on the other side of the road, and couldn’t hear me when I called him. In my dream I felt desperate to reach him and woke up horribly sad that I couldn’t.

‘Hmmm,’ Dad muses. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so,’ I retort, and then change the subject. ‘So. Simone …’

‘Simone,’ Dad repeats. ‘You know, on some level I knewthis would happen. I’ve been waiting for it ever since I met her. I knew she’d ditch me if something better came along, so I pushed for the engagement, the wedding, just wanting her to promise she wouldn’t leave me. What a fool I’ve been, eh?’

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