Page 104 of Commitment Issues
Chapter Forty-Three
Freddie
My heart turns over and I have to cling to the doorjamb to stop me from crumpling. Elliot, here in my family home, at the table with my mum.
“I have to talk to you.” He looks strained and the creases across his forehead are deeper than I’ve ever seen before. But I don’t understand why he’s here, why he isn’t with Gavin.
“Why don’t you take Elliot down to the beach, Freddie?”
“What? I—”
“Freddie?” Elliot says. “Please?”
I nod, sharp little jerks of my head, swing around and make my way back the way I’ve come. Elliot follows me, both of us in silence, along the garden to the old, buckled door I shoulder open, the door that’s never locked, and across to the pebble-strewn beach.
“I know what’s happened.” The words burst from him. “Gavin lied, everything he said was a lie.”
“Was it? What exactly do you think he said to me?” I watch him carefully, but his gaze is clear and never wavers as he looks into my eyes.
“I don’t know the fine detail, but I can guess.”
He pulls me down to sitting, on a heaped-up bank of pebbles, overcoming my weak resistance.
“I know about Paul, and what he did to you.”
I flinch, I can’t help it. “Who—?”
“Cosmo mentioned him, but that’s all. It was your mum who told me about him.”
“She shouldn’t have—”
“I wish you’d told me.”
“It’s not really the kind of thing that comes up in conversation. How I got shafted, and not in a good way.”
“I’m not him, Freddie, and never will be. You have to believe that. Gavin and I, we’re never getting back together. Never. It’s lies and rubbish, every single word. He knows there’s no way back for us. Gavin’s many things, but he’s not stupid. I know he cornered you in the bookshop — although God alone knows why he was there, he never opened a book from one year’s end to the other. He saw an opportunity to plunge in the knife and twist it, and that’s exactly what he’s done. Don’t let him win, Freddie, don’t let him prise us apart. Please don’t let him do that to us.”
To us. The words reach into my chest, and wrap themselves around my heart. But haven’t I been here before, when I vowed never to again?
I want to believe him, it would be so easy to believe in Elliot… but the casual lies, the assurances that everything’s fine before the slap in the face, the punch in the gut, and the kicking away of my legs from beneath me. But Elliot’s not like that, he’s not like Paul, but then I didn’t think Paul was like Paul, either, until it was too late.
I tear my gaze away and look out to sea, away from those blue, imploring eyes, eyes that have gazed into mine with so much tenderness.
“Sweetheart,” he says, and I crumple inside.
Sweetheart. That simple, old-fashioned term of endearment that he’s whispered against my skin as we’ve lain together in the warmth of the bed, sated, full and satisfied, entwined in each other.
“Don’t call me that,” I say, but there’s no conviction in my voice.
“Why not? That’s what you are and always will be to me, Freddie Jacobs.”
I’m falling apart inside, but I can’t give in, not this easily.
What Gavin said, it was vicious and designed to wound, but… Elliot’s distance, his vagueness, his pulling away from me. Didn’t what Gavin say explain that? Elliot away, and not able to get in touch, or not wanting to… In spite of what he says, isn’t this history repeating itself? Isn’t this everything I vowed never to be involved with again? The details are different but isn’t it the same old story?
I turn to face him because I have to know, even if it rips my heart to pieces to be thrown up in the air for the gulls to fight over. I have to know the truth.
“Those five days when you were in Oslo, he told me you were in Barcelona, at your apartment putting everything right between you.”
