Page 51 of Behind Frenemy Lines

But none of that had been anything I could have fixed. The grief weighing me down was less for him than for the Kriya of the past—who’d tried so hard, and loved him so much. That was all over. It felt like I should have more to show for it than I did.

“I did my best for you,” I said. “I invested so much in our relationship. Everything I had.”

Tom shrugged his shoulders, as if he were trying to throw off the burden of what I’d said.

“But that’s what made it so hard,” he said. “It always felt like I had to be grateful. I couldn’t tell you I wasn’t happy. You were always so busy and stressed about work. And then Lexi came along…”

“And you tripped and fell into her DMs,” I suggested.

Tom elected not to take notice of this. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I was confused, and then I got the new job, and—everything was moving so fast. It’s not that I didn’t care about you.”

“OK, Tom.” I felt worn out and sad, suddenly done with thisconversation. It wasn’t going to take us anywhere new. I didn’t have a relationship with him anymore.

“I don’t need to hear it,” I said. And then I saw Charles.

He was standing at the entrance, looking around the room. Our eyes met. His forehead smoothed out. I smiled.

Tom glanced over his shoulder, to see what I was looking at. “You’re here with someone?”

I wondered what Alexis had told him about what I was doing here with Charles, if anything. I’d told her we were just friends, but I imagined she’d had other things to discuss with Tom. And of course, he’d seen me embracing poor Charles.

“It’s not really any of your business, is it?” I said.

“OK. I set myself up for that,” said Tom. “I hope he does right by you, that’s all.”

“All right, Tom,” I said tolerantly.

Charles was looking at his phone. He lowered it as I came over, but not before I’d caught sight of the screen.

“Are you checking your emails?” I said incredulously. I did a Sunday night scroll of my inbox ahead of getting back to work on Monday morning, but this was a little extreme. So far as I knew, Charles wasn’t working on anything urgent enough that he’d have to have his work phone on him the weekend of his cousin’s wedding where he was best man.

Charles looked shamefaced. “Bad habit.” He put the phone away. “Are you all right to leave?”

“Ready when you are.” I looked back at the room. Loretta had ditched Alexis: She was with Hayley, taking pictures with a group of costumed guests. It would have been polite to go say a proper goodbye, but it seemed a shame to interrupt them when they were having fun. Besides, I’d already had my moment with Loretta. “Have you settled the problem with Loretta’s parents’ room?”

“The hotel’s giving them a voucher for afternoon tea. Seems to have done the trick,” said Charles. “Who were you talking to?”

I blinked. “That was Tom. My ex.”

“Oh. I’m not great at faces. Today’s been good for that,” said Charles reflectively. “Everyone’s a different shape, because of the cosplay. Everything OK?”

“Yeah.” But I could feel Charles’s eyes on me. He wouldn’t probe if I didn’t want to talk about it, but I felt I owed him a little more than that.

“I feel like I sallied forth to slay a dragon and it turned out to be a lizard,” I said. I thought of the geckos of my childhood that used to skitter out of dark corners of the house at moments best calculated to terrify the humans in occupation. “And then he escaped and left his tail behind.”

“I can’t say I understood any of that,” said Charles, after a moment. “But I gather you had the best of it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I did.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Charles

Didn’t see Kriyafor a couple of days after Loretta’s wedding. She was working from home. Landlord coming to look at her boiler, or something like that.

Hard not to suspect she was avoiding me. Maybe just as well. Lay awake for ages the night after the wedding, staring at the ceiling.

Bad idea to bring Kriya to the wedding. She had that disastrous encounter with her ex. Even more disastrously, for me, there was that kiss.

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