Page 1 of My Kind of Trouble
Chapter 1
Noa
‘We need to talk’ has to be one of the most foreboding conversation starters known to man. And right now, Noa was living in the aftermath of it.
If there was an opt-out clause you could take once they were spoken, she would have eagerly done so.
But, unfortunately, no such luck.
‘Noa, I don’t think this is working. We’re not the same people we used to be, but that’s okay, you know? We’ve both grown, as we should do, but we’ve grown in completely different directions, and I think we bothknow it,’ Lucas had replied to her simple question of ‘Shall we start that new documentary on Netflix?’ Noa then choked on her forkful of spaghetti she now wished she hadn’t gone to the effort of making.
Sitting crossed legged on their sofa, she tried to remember to breathe as her mind scrambled to get a grip on what the hell was going on. The thin layer of dust that covered their living room side table felt like it taunted her in that moment, because hadn’t that been his job this week?Figures.
Her eyes narrowed into slits at the offending particles that felt far more significant than they probably were.
She fixated on anything but the fact that her boyfriend was currently giving her his best breakup speech.
Had she entered some form of alternate reality? Should she search the flat for hidden cameras? Because this could not be happening.
Slowly putting her fork down, she turned to stare at him like he had grown two heads, blinking rapidly, like it would allow her to clear the nightmare and be transported back to before Lucas had opened his mouth to speak those words.
However, it seemed that this was, in fact, happening, and there was no way that he could take the words back.
Lucas looked completely unruffled, like he’d had all the time to prepare for this, and that hurt. His curly blonde hair remained in exactly the same style he’d had since they were twenty-two years old—short on the sides and shaggy ringlets on top. His face was clean-shaven, and the bridge of his nose was slightly crooked from an old rugby injury he’d experienced when they were at university.
Physically, everything about him looked so familiar and yet, at the same time, she didn’t recognise the man in front of her.
Noa struggled to find an appropriate response as she stared at him, her brain short-circuiting. Instead, she just sat there, mouth gaping like a goldfish.
‘Don’t look at me like that Noa, you know I’m only saying what we’re both thinking but have been too scared to put a voice to for months. We can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair on either of us. We deserve to be the best versions of ourselves, and you know as well as I do, that we’re not doing that right now. I’m just sorry that I had to be the one to say it.’
She had gone mute. Simply no words came to her mind, something that often happened when she was faced with confrontation. Avoidance of difficult conversations had always been her preferred method of managing these kinds of situations. But it seemed, despite her best efforts, that she had been unable to outrun her relationship problems, as here they were, having clearly caught up with her. Brushing them under the carpet to handle later was no longer an option, and Lucas was not messing around.
But had things really been that bad?
This all felt like it was coming out of nowhere. Okay, yes, she knew they had both been distant lately, often more interested in their own lives as opposed to prioritising the one they were creating together. There were times they argued because Lucas had seemed unsupportive or uninterested in her dreams, or because he accused her of expecting too much. And, yes, she knew she was in her own head a lot and he found her anxiety and the constant reassurance she needed sometimes hard to handle. Well, actually, the word he had used was ‘exhausting.’ But those weren’t reasons enough to break up, were they?
They just needed to talk things through. They could work it out. You don’t throw away six years of a relationship just likethat. They could form a plan to fix what was broken, and it would all be okay. She needed it all to be okay.
Being plunged into the unknown had always been overwhelming to Noa in a way that she found difficult to navigate. And not in a this-is-a-rather-annoying-inconvenience way, but in a bury-yourself-under-the-covers-and-hide-from-the-world-for-weeks way. It was why she liked to plan every aspect of her life, as a way of avoiding this exact scenario. So, she needed to get a grip on the situation before her life spiralled in a way she was not ready for.
Her fluffy tortoiseshell cat, Tinkerbell—or Tinks as she liked to call her—brushed through her legs, moving in a figure of eight as if in silent support, encouraging her to deal with this head-on.
God, adulting was hard sometimes.
‘We—we can fix this. I—I can try harder. Let’s just take a minute to figure this out and not jump into anything without thinking it through.’
‘I’m not jumping, Noa. This has been coming for a long time. We aren’t each other’s people and I’m tired of trying to force us to be. I think one day you will realise that and probably thank me. Don’t get too worked up over this, I promise it is the right decision.’
She tried her hardest not to scoff at his words. The audacity.
Why did he always think he could dictate how she should or would feel? Like her emotions were an inconvenience for him to manage in order to make his own life easier. He’d always made her feel that way and she hated it.
She thought her expression was still vacant, but whatever Lucas saw on it softened his tone as he began to talk to her like a scared animal he didn’t want to spook.
‘Noa…’ he whispered.
But that snapped her out of it. She had too often felt like a burden to those around her.
