Page 43 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
I considered getting into my pyjamas, but that felt too intimate even if I put on my fluffiest flannel ones. Instead, I pulled on a pair of Matt’s tracksuit bottoms and an old college hoodie.
I curled up on my side of the bed and closed my eyes, hopeful that when I woke up I’d discover that it had all been a bad dream. I heard footsteps coming into my bedroom.
‘Oi!’ I said. ‘You can’t come in here.’
‘I have to come in here. My job is to make sure you’re breathing.’
He plonked himself down on the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, which most days was piled high with clothes thatweren’t dirty enough to wash but not clean enough for the cupboard. Matt must have tidied as he’d packed.
‘You’re bad for my respiratory system. The last time I struggled to breathe was the night of the ball. The night you dumped me,’ I said. Evidently the adrenaline was acting like a truth serum on me; first, I’d outed my relationship with Alex to my colleagues, and then I’d started oversharing every thought I had aloud.
He stared at me with an expression that was the closest his face could come to perplexed.
‘It wasn’t an allergic reaction, though,’ I said. ‘Well, maybe I had an allergic reaction to your behaviour. But medically speaking, I had a panic attack. It was the only time in my adult life I lost control of my anxiety.’
‘The night of the ball?’ he asked. He leaned forwards, and I could see his gaze drifting off, as if he was trying to piece something together.
‘Anyway, all I want to do is go to sleep,’ I replied, kicking myself for opening up a conversation I absolutely didn’t want to be having. ‘Please, let me just fall into unconscious oblivion.’
‘What do you think happened that night, the night of the ball?’ he asked slowly, as if he was toying with a new concept, a new rabbit hole to go down.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t have enough energy to engage in one of our verbal sparring matches.
‘Rebecca, I need to know why you’re treating me like I’m the devil incarnate,’ he said.
I felt my hackles rise and a flame of irritation build. He was the human equivalent of bellows, breathing oxygen into the embers of resentment from times past. ‘You want to know why I’m mad at you?’ I asked, clenching my hands into a ball to stop them trembling. ‘I’m mad because when I was with you, I did the one thing I’d promised myself I’d never do. I made a ridiculousdecision based entirely on emotion. And then you put yourself andyourcareer first without a second thought. You announced you were going to America as if what had happened between us meant precisely nothing. And then I never saw you again. I’d only just pieced myself back together and then you cracked me apart again... you broke my heart.’
I watched his expression change from my horizontal position. He had the audacity to contort his face to look shocked. As if I’d put his perfectly imperfect nose out of joint.
‘But . . . that’s not what happened,’ he said.
‘No. That is whathappened,’ I said. My voice rose at the end of the sentence. But it was a statement, not a question.
There was a cough in our bedroom doorway. Alex and I turned to find Matt standing there, his eyes flitting between us.
Chapter 21
THEN
It was the seventh week of Trinity term, and I was sitting with Alex on a rooftop. We were swigging champagne – well, incredibly cheap, soapy-tasting cava – from a bottle as we watched the sun still blazing over the dreaming spires.
That morning, Alex had got the call, the one he’d been working towards for the last three years. He now had a post-doc all lined up. All the long hours in the lab, the endless papers read, the epic thesis written – they’d all paid off. I felt proud, but also devastated and forlorn. In a week’s time, Alex was moving to London. I was moving home.
I turned to Alex to see if he looked satisfied, but his expression gave nothing away.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said, then attempted a smile.
‘It’s just you look so sad... and you’re on a roof.’
His smile widened. ‘I’m celebrating,’ he said.
‘Are you still flat about America?’ I asked. He hadn’t said anything when he’d been knocked back by Harvard, but I suspected the rejection had hurt more than he’d let on.
‘I’m flat because... I don’t want you to go,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
I stared at him. ‘But... you said we were going to do it differently. We were going to be together for just the summer. We promised that it wouldn’t get...’ I flapped my hands around as if there was a universal hand signal for falling head over heels in love with someone.
