Page 78 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
When my breathing finally returned to normal, I cleared my throat. ‘I think my engagement ended because... I fell slowly and deeply and madly in love with the one man I wasn’t supposed to... my fiancé,’ I said, almost in a whisper.
‘Oh, darling,’ Mum said in a soft voice. She began to stroke my hair, just like she used to do when I was a girl.
‘I thought Matt was the safe guy. I thought there would be limits on how much I could love him. But the more I got to know him, the more our lives intertwined, the more I just... kept falling deeper and deeper in love with him,’ I said. ‘It snuck up on me. And then I loved him so much that I couldn’t imagine life without him. And that terrified me. I was so scared of how much I loved him that I began to pull back. I don’t think I really knew I was doing it.’
I sniffled then sighed.
‘He called off the wedding because he thinks I don’t love him enough. But the truth is, I was trying to hide the fact, maybe from him, I think mainly from myself, that I loved him too much.’
I bit my lip to stop myself crying again. Mum didn’t jump in to fill the silence.
‘Why did you bring up the curse after I got engaged to Matt?’ I asked. I knew my thoughts were careering in a way that wasn’t close to linear. But I needed to keep asking all the questions.
‘I only mentioned it a few times as a joke. To try to cheer you up when there were hiccups during the wedding planning,’ Mumsaid. ‘You have many strengths, but a relaxed approach to event planning isn’t one of them.’
Even though my body was emotionally short-circuiting, I laughed. And then Mum did too. And soon we were both hysterical. We both tried to speak but we couldn’t get anything out between guffaws. I hadn’t laughed this hard since... well, I couldn’t remember. I’d probably last laughed like this with Matt. He was always able to make me laugh, belly laugh, even when I was at my most wound-up.
‘You’re right, Becs. You weren’t imagining it, I probably did start to bring up the curse over the last few weeks,’ Mum said when we’d both caught our breath. ‘You kept mentioning it whenever we talked about wedding plans. And I started to wonder if everything was okay with you and Matt. So maybe I used it as a way to see if you wanted to talk about whatever you were feeling. I wanted you to know that if you changed your mind about him or about the wedding then it wouldn’t be a big deal. That plenty of women in your family hadn’t made it down the aisle either, me included.’
She sighed and then reached for my hand, the one with no ring on it anymore, and pulled it to her chest.
‘I should have just asked you straight out if you were okay, if everything was okay,’ she said.
I finally looked up at her through my puffy eyes.
‘Oh god, Mum, you’re in pain,’ I said. I sprang out of bed, grabbed the packet of painkillers and her glass of water. ‘You need to take this.’
‘I’m okay,’ she said, but I knew she wasn’t.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I said, and pushed a tablet into her hand. I looked down at the packet of Endone in my hand. If I took one, would I stop feeling all the feelings that were swooshing around me? In spite of myself, I smiled. No, not feeling hadn’t worked out that well for me.
I put the packet back on the bedside table. Life wasn’t so bad that I had to steal my mum’s prescription meds. And anyway – it was time for me to feel some things.
Chapter 33
I fell asleep next to Mum and woke up later than I normally did. When I finally came to and checked the time on my phone, I realised that if I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late to meet Alex.
We’d planned to meet at Parkrun. I think partly because something in the daylight and so wholesome felt like neutral ground. But also, Alex’s life was one of routine, even in the midst of an emotional maelstrom.
We both ran around the lake, Alex at the front and me in the middle of the pack, then walked in companionable silence to the market. As we ordered coffees at Padre, I wondered how it was possible for so much to change over so few weeks. Again. We carried our long blacks to our table and sat down.
‘It’s a no, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ I paused for a moment and took a sip of my coffee, even though it was still scalding. ‘I’m sorry for making things weird yesterday, for giving you the impression that there was hope for us. But I was doing the thing that I do when I get scared – I run towards the person who won’t hurt me.’
‘Ouch,’ he said, with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘That I came here and messed everything up for you.’
‘Have you signed your new job contract?’ I asked.
‘No, but I’m going to,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, they have labs all over the world – I’ll leave Melbourne.’
‘ATG aren’t going to commercialise your work, they’re going to mothball it,’ I said.
‘Shit,’ he said. His face morphed from sadness to despondency. That I wasn’t in love with him had bruised him. This news had broken his heart. ‘I knew that was a possibility, but I thought—’
