by Lily Morton
“Like you didn’t.”
“Ouch,” I reply, rubbing my chest again. “That was a low blow.”
He shrugs. “It’s the truth. I’m not sure why you’re looking so tragic. You didn’t want him, and now he’s gone from your life with no argument. What’s the problem? You can happily go back to shagging strangers and holding a torch for someone who will never return your feelings.”
“Jesus Christ, Zeb!”
“What?” he asks, leaning forward. “Too honest for you, Max? Felix was just a convenient hole for your dick. You and I both know it. You never cared about him. He can’t hold a candle to Ivo. He hasn’t got a fancy accent. He hasn’t bled with you. He’s not as good-looking as Ivo. They’re miles apart in class and beauty.”
“You shut the fuck up!” I shout, my temper snapping like an old elastic band and stunning me. “Just shut up,” I repeat and point my finger at him, noticing dimly that it’s shaking. “He’s a thousand times better than Ivo. He’s bright and so sharp and funny. And he’s not just an available hole, so you’d better shut your fucking mouth before I make you.”
He leans back in his chair, completely unconcerned by my outburst, and I stand over him panting and watching in disbelief as he flicks a piece of lint off his sleeve.
He looks up and says, “I must say that it’s good you’ve finally realised all of that.”
I shake my head and slump back on the sofa. “You said that on purpose?”
“Of course, and if you were in your right mind, you’d have known it too.” He shakes his head. “The problem you have, Max, is that what I said is exactly what Felix thinks you feel after your sterling performance…” He pauses. “Well, I was going to say after your performance at the wedding, but you haven’t exactly behaved well all through the relationship.” I wince, and he pats my hand. “I love Felix. He’s wonderful and every bit Ivo’s equal. The trouble is that you couldn’t see it in time.”
He’s right. Even though it makes me feel disloyal to Ivo, Felix is far better company. Ivo could be incredibly moody and temperamental, while Felix was like a breath of fresh spring air blowing through a house that had been shut up for too long. Irreverent and honest to a fault.
“And now it’s too late,” I say and slump into the sofa. My earlier spark has fled, and I feel heavy and old again.
“I’m almost glad,” he says, and I look up at him in question. “You need to see the truth even if it is too late, because it might set you free of Ivo.”
“And what truth is that?” I ask sharply.
“That you’re in love with Felix.”
Shock holds me silent for a second. Then I snap, “I am not.”
But my mind suddenly wavers. Is that what this awful feeling is? The heaviness when I wake up and realise that I won’t see him today, that I won’t hear his clear, posh voice and see that mad tumble of hair. I’ll never hold his thin body against mine and inhale his scent of oranges again or get that instant lift when I make him laugh and then feel like I’m suddenly ten feet tall. There’s just this awful greyness all the time.
“I can’t be,” I say stupidly. “I’m in love with Ivo.”
“Really?” he says, staring at me intently. “And when did you last talk to Ivo?”
“Maybe a few weeks ago. Never mind that,” I dismiss, but he carries on.
“And when was the last time you thought of him?”
I think hard. “I had a dream the other night about Afghanistan. We were hostages again and couldn’t get out.”
His eyes soften. “And that was the only time you’ve thought about him?” I nod, and he sighs. “You’re not in love with Ivo, Max.” The simple words bear the hallmark of a proclamation, and for the first time, I don’t automatically dismiss them.
“How do you know?”
“Because you never were. You thought you were. You probably do love him. But it’s not in the way that he loves Henry.”
I don’t even wince at the mention of Henry’s name, and I think that’s when the truth starts to sink in. I sit back. “Shit.”
He nods. “You’re very loyal, Max, and always forward-moving. You’ve had to be to survive in that job all these years. You don’t look back and analyse. You just charge forward like an elephant intent on one goal. You met Ivo when you were both very young, and you threw all your loyalty behind him like a dog with his owner. You misdiagnosed the feeling as love, and it’s become this huge immutable fact in your life. Max loves toast and jam. Max loves rugby. Max loves Ivo. But you don’t really, unless it’s the love you feel for a friend.” He smiles at me. “Or the love for a brother.”
“I hope not,” I say tartly. “Ivo and I have done far too many things together for that image to be at all comfortable.”
He shrugs. “It was just sex, but I think it confused everything. It made you attach the label of love to Ivo when in reality, it was just good sex with a man who wasn’t right for you.”
“And Felix is?”
He looks at me. “If you had the chance to see Felix and say one thing to him, what would it be?”
“I miss you,” I say instantly, the words impassioned and full of so much feeling.
I send mental feelers over my emotions, trying to parse what Zeb said. It’s the truth. I thought love had come to me early in life, slow and gentle like my feelings for Ivo, but in fact, it was just gratitude, loyalty and a friendship that confused me.
In reality, love came to me like a summer storm bursting over my head and leaving me dazed. And now I’m alone without him, and I miss him. That’s what the pain in my chest is, the greyness. It’s because I no longer have Felix here challenging me, making me laugh, and making me feel more alive than I have since the day I handed in my resignation at the paper.
In the month before the wedding, I’d found myself thinking far too much about him, and it had worried me. I thought that I’d exchanged one obsession for another, but the painful truth is that I found pure gold in Felix and threw it away as if it was a chip wrapper because I was obsessed with the one who got away. It never occurred to me that Ivo was meant to get away. That he had his own person who at least had the good sense to hold onto him.
“Oh fuck,” I groan and collapse back on the sofa. “How did I not know? This is so fucked up. I love someone who I made hate me. If this is what love feels like, then it’s bloody awful. Take it away.”
He chuckles. “I can’t do that,” he says. “And you wouldn’t really want me to. Maybe you never realised it before, because you’ve been moving so fast for years. You were like a human hurricane, and the only one in the eye of the storm with you was Ivo, so you never looked elsewhere. And then Felix came along and exploded all your ideas. It probably feels so intense because you’ve come to real love so late in life.”
“I’m not fucking eighty.”
He shrugs. “But you’re too old to adapt well to changing feelings. You never realised in all that time with Felix, but I saw it. I saw how soft you were with him. How fascinated you were by him. He was dancing along and drawing you with him but…” He hesitates.
I make a gesture. “You’ve come this far. Give me the truth.”
“The awful truth is that you fucked it up and you may not get another chance with Felix even if you want one,” he says quietly. He looks at me searchingly. “Do you want one? It might be too late to even try.”
Cold dread steals over me. It’s only now in this moment, after I acknowledged how much I love him, that I realise I might not be able to mend the trouble I caused.
“I do,” I say, and it’s a vow I’ve never made before.
With Ivo, I’d never seen the use of making such a promise, and now I realize it had made things safe for me. I could keep my heart protected, because I believed there was no chance for being happy. The irony is I could have been happy with Felix and the only person who broke that is me.
“Felix is very closed off to emotion,” Zeb says musingly. “Probably because of his upbringing. Like
you, he never intended for any of this to happen. I think you’re a shag that got very complicated for him. He just realised the truth before you did.”
“That’s because he’s infinitely braver than me,” I murmur, my heart clenching at the thought of him on that boat. So valiant and sparkly despite being all alone. I look up at Zeb. “I need to see him to tell him…” I hesitate. “Do you think he still feels the same?”
He sighs. “The truth is, I don’t know, Max. He doesn’t confide in me at the moment. I’m too close to the whole situation. If anyone will know, it’ll be his cousin Misha or his friend Charlie. He tells them things. Maybe go and see them. I’ve got Charlie’s address because Jesse lives with him.”
He stumbles over Jesse’s name, and I narrow my eyes. “Ah, the mysterious Jesse. You make him sound very edible.”
I watch in disbelief as he flushes. “Well, he is,” he says quietly and then slaps the arms of the chair. “But that’s neither here nor there. I’m with Patrick, and Jesse is far too young for me.”
I let it go, planning to revisit it when he least expects it. “Okay,” I say peacefully, and he smiles with what looks like relief.
“Go and see Charlie and ask how Felix is and whether he still cares for you. From the way Felix talks about him, Charlie will tell you the truth, but kindly.” He pauses. “But you might have left it too late, Max. I don’t think Felix is the type of man who’s happy playing second fiddle to someone else, and he doesn’t forgive things easily. You’ve left it a long time to suddenly pop up and want him back.”
“I wanted to see him,” I mutter. “Every day I picked up my phone to call him, but then I thought about what you said in Cornwall and that maybe he was better off without me, so I put the phone down again.”
Zeb bites his lip. “He’s been different this week. Almost brighter. Be careful this time with him. Listen to what he says, and if he doesn’t want you back, you must accept it. You’ve done enough damage.”
I did go to find Felix only to realise that Zeb was right. I was too late, and he was involved with someone. But I still tried. I went to his boat and waited for him. I told myself that this new man was just a fling, and if Felix saw me, those hazel eyes would light up with that shy pleasure that so belied his snarky persona. The look that he seemed to direct only at me.
I was determined to split him up from this man who didn’t deserve him, who wouldn’t appreciate what he’d got. I was that much of a bastard.
But then I saw that this unworthy stranger might be good for Felix. He looked well. Happy and healthy. Zeb’s words rang in my ears, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sweep into Felix’s life again and upset everything when he was moving forward. I had nothing to offer him. I was a jaded ex-journalist with more scars than I’d ever acknowledged who hid them behind bluster and booze. Why would someone as vital as Felix want me when this new man could obviously give him more?
The stilted conversation that followed bore no resemblance to any of the sparkling ones we’d had when we’d been together. Those had been lively and snarky, like drinking champagne when the bubbles burst cold on your skin. Instead, I stumbled through an apology, and he tried his best to look interested. It had killed me to see that look on his face, so I’d walked away and picked up a bottle of vodka at the corner shop and a man in a club later. I don’t think I was sober for months after that.
However, no matter how many men I buried myself in, I couldn’t replace Felix. And deep inside, I never gave up the tiny hope that rested in my heart that I could get him back. Somehow and at some point, we would find a way back to each other because that much feeling and love can’t be wrong.
It’s why I hang around when anyone else would have been driven away—first, by his anger, and then by his disinterest and the knowledge that other men are with him. They get to fuck him and laugh with him, and all I have are the memories and the zing I still get from being near him in a group. It’s made more painful by the knowledge that I could have had all of Felix and more, if I’d only opened my eyes in time.
My phone rings and I try to shake off the horrible memories. I groan when I see the name on display. He has impeccable timing.
Clicking to connect, I say, “Zeb?”
“Max,” he says, concern deep in his voice. “Are you okay? Felix said he’d run you over.”
“Did you think he’d finally snapped?”
“I wouldn’t have put it past him, but then I really thought about it.”
“And you realised he’d be much more vicious in the way he ended me,” I say.
He gives a startled bark of laughter. He pauses and then says, “So, he told me he’s staying with you because you have a concussion. Are you okay? Do you want me to come down? I can stay with you and—”
“No,” I interrupt. “No, Felix is going to stay with me.”
There’s an even longer pause. “Max.” It's his long-suffering voice. The one he used when he was landed with a young boy as a stepbrother who was going to look up to him for the rest of his life. And I feel a sudden deep love for the man who has always been my role model for how to behave honourably in life. Maybe if I’d paid closer attention to what Zeb would have done, I’d never have lost Felix. There’s a painful melancholic truth in that. “Max, you can’t do this,” Zeb says. “Don’t make it worse for yourself. It’s—”
“This is my chance,” I interrupt, my voice too loud in the quiet room. “This is my chance to get him back, and if he had to run me over to get that chance, then I’m happy.”
He sighs heavily. “I live for the day you get back together, and you become his problem again, do you know that?”
“Thank you.” I sniff. “How brotherly.”
“Okay, if you’re still set on this crazy idea, what do you want me to do?”
Ten minutes later, I set my phone back on the table and lie back to finish plotting. My arm hurts, but I’ve planned and plotted through worse injuries than this.
I have a sudden memory of me and Ivo trapped in a cell, words being spat at us as we huddled together for warmth. Sweat breaks out over my body, but then I hear a distant clatter of dishes from downstairs in the kitchen. Felix. He’s here in my house with me. I’m not alone. Taking several deep breaths, I’m able to push the awful memory away,
I don’t know when I slip into sleep, but I fall deeply, waking only to memories of Felix’s hand in my hair in the night and his soft questions.
When I wake up next, it’s to a knock on the door and Felix’s messy head appearing.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” he says. “Want a hand with anything?”
I sit up with a groan, feeling every inch of my years and probably someone else’s too. “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’d love it if you could go out and purchase me a new body.”
He laughs. “Please can I buy Matthew McConaughey’s?”
“What has he got that I haven’t?” I ask, pulling myself up.
“Well, at the moment a fully functioning body,” he says, eyeing me.
“I’d like to be Matthew. He looks like his exes never run him over with their cars.”
He snorts. For a second, his eyes light up and fully focus on me. I never get to see him like this anymore, and I look at him greedily. He reads something in my expression, because the light in his eyes fades away like the last spangles of colour from a firework. And then we’re back to being awkward again.
I give an unobtrusive sigh and get ponderously to my feet. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I say. When he makes as if to come and help me, I give him a horrified stare. “Please do not help me,” I say faintly. “I’m more than capable of taking a piss by myself.”
“Your loss,” he says, turning to leave. He pauses by the door. “Oh, your housekeeper said breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes. I sort of got the impression that you wouldn’t be ignoring her?”
I shudder. “Never,” I say fervently. “It was less trouble to ignore Hitler. That woman is bloody scar
y.”
“I noticed that,” he says solemnly. “Luckily, she found out that I’m your ex, so she’s treating me like I’m made of glass and likely to break at any second.”
“Probably expects you to collapse in a heap, sobbing from your recollections of our brief time together,” I say before I can think. To my relief, he just laughs.
“She’s treating me as if we’re comrades in some war I wasn’t aware of fighting.”
I shudder. “God help me if the two of you were ever to combine forces.”
“Maybe you should consider that in the timing of your ablutions,” he advises me, and then with a wave of his hand he’s gone.
I used to be able to exist on very little sleep and could be fully awake as soon as I opened my eyes. It’s a talent that saved my life many times, but I’m a slow riser nowadays. Once I left journalism, my early morning rush became a lot more leisurely, almost like a tortoise pottering along. However, today I’m very aware Felix is downstairs, so I rush through my early morning routine as if I’ve got the scoop of the century.
And even though this morning it feels like he ran over every bit of my body, I take the stairs with a smile on my face, listening to Mrs Finch’s laughter as he says something that’s undoubtedly either scandalous or sharply snarky or a mixture of the two.
When I come into the dining room, I find the two of them laughing together. They turn their faces to me, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that they’ve been laughing at me.
“Oh, great,” I say. “You’ve joined together. How lovely for the fate of the world.”
“It’s not the world you should be concerned about, Mr Travers,” my housekeeper sniffs. “Now, I’m off to get your breakfast. Hopefully, you can manage to eat it without destroying another area of the house and creating work for me.” She looks at Felix. “Gunpowder,” she says and exits the room.
“What is the gunpowder reference? Were you friends with Guy Fawkes in your early years?”
“Haha,” I say sourly, enjoying his laugh when it comes. “I’m not quite that old. No, I experimented with something in my study, and it had rather a startling effect.” I stare at him and shrug. “It only blew a couple of the windows out, but Mrs Finch won’t let me forget about it. The woman has the memory of an elephant.”