Chapter 27
I blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.
No good, Jack was still there, still staring at me, still perfect in every way, and, yep, I do believe the fact still remained that he'd just told me, albeit in a roundabout way, that he loved me.
Shit. Now what?
"Love me?" I repeated once feeling began to gradually come back to my face. My tongue felt heavy and I was having difficulty getting enough oxygen into my lungs, my breaths coming in short sharp pants. I had a crisis on my hands and I desperately had to try and find some way to avert it, avert him! "But I'm horrible," was the first thing that came into my mind and I spoke it with such a sense of sincerity that I saw Jack smile slightly.
This was not, however, the time for him to be indulgent of me. Not to mention too many more of those beautiful lopsided smiles that I so adored and my already pretty pissy courage might fail me altogether.
"I'm not joking or fishing for compliments or anything," I rushed on, "you more than anyone should know how selfish and irrational I am, Jack! Are you sure there isn't someone else, someone nicer, for you to fall in love with?"
His faint smile was still there but I could see the understanding dawn in his eyes that this conversation wasn’t going to be the fairytale version he'd perhaps imagined. "Apparently not," he said dryly.
My chest started to ache as I tried to make sense of my emotions. Of course a flash of happiness such as I had never experienced before had erupted inside me at his confession but it had been immediately followed by a crushing sense of sadness as I realised I could never act upon what he'd told me. He had to make up with Matt and go to England, neither of which occurrences were compatible with him remaining in love with me.
I took a deep breath and set about comprehensively breaking both our hearts.
"Well that's a bit…inconvenient," I spluttered, thinking that was probably an understatement up there with saying the Titanic had sprung a bit of a leak.
"Inconvenient?" Jack's voice was the epitome of disbelief and I clenched my fists together hard so that my nails bit into my palms, wanting to distract myself from his incredulity at my cruelty.
"Yes, inconvenient," I snapped, providing an Oscar award winning portrayal of 'uncaring bitch'. "There couldn't be a worse time for you to say something like that and you know it."
Jack instantly recoiled, releasing me from against the counter and stepping back a couple of paces which, in terms of accessibility to him, was about equivalent to him leaping across to the other side of the Grand Canyon.
"I didn't plan this," he said stiffly. "And in terms of timing I can't foresee a time when it would be convenient," he stressed the last word, scorn fairly dripping from between his lips and, although riling him up had been my intention, I had to suppress a very strong urge to immediately apologise and throw myself into his arms. Now more than ever was the time for me to grow up and stay strong.
"Well maybe that says a lot about our situation," I blundered on quickly as my nose was tingling and I was getting a pressure headache that suggested a whole tsunami of tears was just waiting to be unleashed. "If you can't see a time when professions of love would be appropriate then maybe they shouldn't be made at all."
Pain like a whiplash shot through me as I said those words and, judging by his expression, Jack had just experienced a similar wounding.
It's for your own good! I wanted to yell. I'm doing this for you! But I knew he wouldn't understand even if I told him. He'd probably make the point that pets were sometimes put down 'for their own good' and that he'd take his chances along the hard road.
"Right," Jack spoke blandly and without emotion, his defence barriers, which I had worked so long and hard to pull down, flying up again as he gathered up his bags once more. "I guess that's it then."
"Jack-" I didn't know what I was going to say, but I didn't want him to leave like that, even at this stage I didn't want him thinking too badly of me. But I didn't really get the chance to worry about what I was going to say because he held up a hand to forestall me.
"Don't bother, Natalia," he said crisply, his use of my full name obviously a deliberate manifestation of the gulf I had opened up between us. "I get it, I'm going and you won't have to worry about me bothering you with inconvenient professions of love again."
And go he did, striding across to the door and exiting through it without another word or backward glance. I wondered whether there was some kind of record for time it takes to get a guy to run from you in disgust after telling you he loves you; if so, I was probably a contender to win it.
I didn't move for a couple of minutes after the door had slammed shut. His last words, his cold expression, the useless, bloody unnecessary pain I had caused him by starting this whole thing ran round and round my mind making me feel physically sick. The wave of nausea when it hit me was so strong I stumbled to the sink and retched into it, bringing up the few mouthfuls of cheese sandwich I’d had with Adam and then simply spitting out bitter bile when I had emptied my stomach.
I remained bent over the sink, clutching the edge of the counter, for a long while after my stomach had settled back down, breathing deeply and slowly. Eventually, however, I stirred and turned on the tap, washing my face and mouth with such force it was almost as if I was trying to wash the scum of the last few days off my skin. Once my face was pink and raw from the freezing water, I turned and, in a daze, set about putting the flat to rights, picking up the chairs and the overturned table and rearranging them as they had been before. Then I went across to where the phone lay in pieces on the floor and gathered up the shards of plastic and inner components of the receiver. Next I inspected the dent in the plaster from where the phone had made contact with the wall and briefly considered the effect it was going to have in our getting our bond back.
Our. What a great word and how little it meant to me at that moment. I looked around the flat, hugging myself tightly as all sorts of memories flooded back to me. I remembered helping Jack and Matt move in and seeing the small room and thinking fiercely that I only had to get through two more years of high school and then that room would be mine. I thought about all the visits I had made while I still lived in Bridunna, and how much I’d hated leaving because the boys always seemed to be having so much fun and I knew that home felt ridiculously empty without them.
Then came the memories of moving in, of loving feeling part of it all, part of their lives once more. I had Matt and Jack, I had Simone, and then I had Brad, life for those first six months really couldn't have been much better. I wondered now how I hadn't appreciated every minute of it. The frustrations at the boys’ slovenly ways or the hordes of their mates that had always appeared just when I wanted some peace and quiet seemed so inconsequential now.
Recollecting all the great and no so great moments we'd all shared in the flat I realised I wouldn’t even have been able to conceive the possibility then that, by the end of my first year of living with the boys, I would be standing alone having alienated them so thoroughly.
I was ready to cry as I sunk down onto the couch realising that, until Matt decided to forgive me, I was living alone. However, no wetness appeared on my cheeks. The clogged-up, painful feeling of tears building up behind my eyes was still present, but it was as if something was blocking the way for them to gush out. I desperately wanted to call my parents but I realised I didn't have any credit on my mobile and the home phone was destroyed. This added example of my isolation forced a little whimper out from between my lips and then, clutching a cushion to me, I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes against my lonely surroundings.
So Much to Learn Page 48