Page 77 of Glitterland
Niall held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry. I just think it’s a shitty thing to do to someone.”
“No shittier than what I’ve already done.”
“Actually, I think it is. And you’re better than that, Ash. I know you are.”
“I’m not.” I shook my head. “Maybe once, but not anymore. Deal with it or don’t. But, if you’re going to try to be my friend again, stop pretending I’m someone I’m not.”
There was a long silence.
“That’s fucking unfair, you know.” I shrugged. “It’s the way it is.”
“Why are you trying to push me away? Was Darian not enough for one night?”
He was right, of course. Whatever the broken things we had scattered across the years, Niall knew me. And tonight I was wielding his kindness like a blade to my skin.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Wow. Progress.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed. “So what now?”
“I don’t know. Back to the dinner, I guess. And, after the wedding, I might go home and watchNotting Hill. While crying manly tears and eating handful after handful of wasabi peas.” The worst of it was, even I couldn’t tell if I was joking.
“Want company?”
“No.” My response was instinctive. But then I thought about it. “Actually. Yes. All right.”
He grinned. “You know, you’re shockingly sentimental, sometimes.”
I shrugged. “All cynics are.”
***
Later
I stood on the Mathematical Bridge watching the moonlight curl over the dark waters of the Cam and tried not to think where Darian might be.
***
Later
I walked cobbled streets, ankle-deep in shadows, trying to find the courage to return to our room, but there was only an emptiness, as unchanging as my tearless eyes.
***
Later
I took a ludicrously expensive room in a hotel on Thompson’s Lane. A lavish glass-walled box overlooking a gleaming toy city. Somewhere beneath the spires and gables, Darian Taylor was hating me.
I lay, fully dressed, on top of the bed and watched broken pieces of light skittering across the ceiling. I simply couldn’t face his disappointment. The damage I knew I’d done. I’d ruined Darian, just like I’d ruined Niall. It was better this way, for both of us. Darian would get on with his life, and I would drag myself through the ashes of mine.
When Niall had left me, it had felt so inevitable.I can’t bear it, he’d said.I can’t bear you. I’d known for a long time how futile it was. He might as well have tried to love a parasite. I’d picked up the knife because I’d understood, at last, that there was no changing. No going back. And going on had seemed not only unbearable, but pointless. My whole life, an exercise in treading water simply not to drown.
And yet here I was, having made the same mistake all over again. I should have learned, even if I was incapable of anything else. But Darian had slipped past me somehow, like light through fractured glass. For some bright, fleeting moments, he had made me happy, and all I had done was hurt him.
***
Later
