Page 76 of A Merry Irish Christmas
‘Juanita isn’t here,’ Greg said, as if reading her mind.
That was something at least. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I just had to talk to you. Please? You’re not answering my calls and?—’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ she said stiffly. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘I know you must hate me. But I just had to tell you how sorry I am. Can we just talk for a moment, please?’
Mary sighed wearily. ‘I just want to get my stuff and go. That’s all I’m here for.’
‘I’ve already boxed it all up,’ he said, nodding to a large moving carton by the door. ‘I’ll take it down for you if you want to go. But can you please just stay and talk for a moment?’
Mary sighed defeatedly. ‘Fine.’ She unwound her scarf and sank down on the sofa. Greg took the armchair opposite.
‘I’m really sorry, Mary.’ He leaned towards her earnestly, hands clasped on his knees. ‘I never meant to hurt you. I know I handled it really badly. But Ita turning up like that… It was a shock.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘I should have… I don’t know. Told her to leave, broken up with you properly. I just couldn’t think straight.’
‘Because you were so happy,’ she said, surprised at the bitterness in her voice.
He sighed, hanging his head. ‘I was. I can’t deny it. But I was also torn apart because I knew I was hurting you. I just couldn’t help myself.’
She nodded. ‘Because you’re in love with Juanita. I get it. Honestly, Greg, you don’t need to explain it to me.’
He heaved a sigh. ‘But I want you to know that what we had –it was real. I meant it. I honestly thought we had a future together. I did love you, Mary. Truly.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Just not enough.’ Not as much as he’d loved Juanita.
‘No. I’m sorry.’
He was obviously in an agony of guilt, and she felt a pang of pity for him. But she realised that was all she felt now. ‘I loved you too, Greg,’ she said slowly, picking at the cushion of the sofa. ‘But maybe not enough either.’ She’d realised in just a few short days that it was possible to feel so much more – that it was effortless when you were with the right person and you didn’t have to try or work at it. If she was honest with herself, maybe he’d never been a main character in her story either. He’d been the one before the one.
‘So… you’re not heartbroken?’ He looked up at her hopefully through his lashes.
She smiled sadly. ‘No. Not over you.’
Greg took her moving box down in the lift and helped her get a cab. On the street, she handed him his keys and they said goodbye. As the cab pulled away and she watched Greg walk back into his building, Mary felt deflated. But what she’d said to Greg was true. She wasn’t heartbroken – not over him – and she wondered if she’d ever been truly in love with him. She saw now that it had been about the fact of him as much as who he was. He’d been part of the excitement of her new life here, her New York boyfriend, along with her job and her apartment and her new friends. He was so wrapped up in all that, it was hard to separate out her feelings for him. But he’d only been a piece of that, not the whole of it, and when you took that piece out, the rest still held together.
As they neared her apartment, something in her peripheral vision caught Mary’s eye and she turned to the window. Herbreath caught as she found herself looking at a giant billboard advertising theSpider-Manseries, a life-size image of Evan in an action pose atop a skyscraper. She couldn’t see his face, of course, but she knew it was him behind the mask, his body in the skintight suit, and she felt a stab of yearning. Great, she thought wearily. So now she had a Spider-Man fetish.Thanks a bunch, Evan.
26
‘So, Evan’s girlfriend wants him back,’ her mother said that night when Mary FaceTimed her. She gave a frustrated sigh. ‘You know she cheated on him?’ she said indignantly.
‘Yes, I know. I think everyone knows that.’
‘It’s a disgrace. A lovely man like that.’
Mary smiled. ‘You don’t even know him, Mum.’
‘I do so! Haven’t I spoken to him on this thing?’
‘You’re right, though. He is a lovely man.’
‘Do you think he’ll take her back?’
