Page 19 of Stars Shine In Your Eyes

Her chest ached just from having him bring up the whole sorry scenario again. She really didn’t like thinking about it. And she really didn’t want to talk about it. “Thanks for the apology, but—”

“No, please, hear me out. I’m not telling you this to make excuses, but I do want you to know more about what happened. Why I did what I did. And I also want you to know that it was a wake-up call for me.” His expression was serious enough that she decided that she would hear him out, even if talking about it was painful.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“Right. Good.” Now he stalled, but she waited, letting the silence build. Finally, he said, “I have to go back from that year. My father—he was a driver on the Tube. A really cool job for your father to have when you’re a little boy. I was a hero at school. But there are parts of the job that are hard. People who hurt themselves by accident, or deliberately, on the tracks. No one really thinks about what the driver sees. No one thinks about what he goes through when he’s unable to save someone. Or worse, thinking back to whether he could’ve stopped in time if he had done something differently.” He swallowed. “He saw and experienced things that traumatized him.”

She’d never thought about the dark side of being a Tube driver. “How did your father deal with all that?”

“He volunteers to help with PTSD over at the Transport for London offices now. But back then, when I was seventeen, he was in the thick of it. Still driving. And one day, a child fell on the tracks.” He closed his eyes, going silent for a moment. “He couldn’t save her. I was the first person to find out what happened. I found him at home, with a bottle of whiskey, sobbing. I can still hear him crying out, asking why. Begging for forgiveness.

“He saw me there, in the doorway. It was terrifying. I’d never seen my father be anything but strong and infallible. I put my arms around him, and he cried. And I knew that his passion, driving these trains, trains that he had loved since he was a boy—I knew it would never be the same for him. That he could never find that joy again. Other people had died on his watch, but never a child. He was almost incoherent, but I could make out him saying, what if it had been one of us when we were children? What if they had had to call him and my mother and say that we were gone?”

He picked up his cup of tea and took a drink. She said, “If this is too hard, you don’t have to talk about it.” She wanted to reach out, put a hand over his, but they didn’t know each other well, and she didn’t want to overstep.

“No, it’s something I need to say. I’ve never talked to anybody about this before, but you deserve to know the full truth behind why I was such an arsehole to you. As I said, it won’t excuse what I did, but hopefully the story will make you realize my behavior had nothing to do with you.”

He collected his thoughts for a moment before continuing. “I applied for the exchange program not long after that. I didn’t know how to process what my father had been through, his grief, or what lingered beyond. Because he was diagnosed with PTSD after that, and I felt so helpless, like I hadn’t done enough to help him that afternoon, and I still didn’t know how to help him. I’d always wanted to go to America, and this was my chance to escape. Escape the pain and the darkness that seemed to hover over our house during that period. Over our family. All that year, I was running, running from feeling anything. That’s why I hooked up with the group that I did. The parties, the alcohol—it all helped to numb my feelings and give me something to focus on. I don’t think any of us were actually friends, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to think about my dad, not being able to help, being useless to him when he’d done so much for me and the rest of us. And so that night, at the prom, I’d been drinking, as usual. But more even than before, because I knew I was headed back to the UK soon. And I was afraid of the state that I’d find my father in, if he’d recovered at all. My mother said he was doing a lot better, but she hadn’t been there in those first moments. She hadn’t heard him crying out, lost and on his knees, begging for forgiveness.” He glanced over at her. “I know he wouldn’t mind me telling you this now, because I’ve heard him tell this story many, many times to try to help people who have been in the same situation, to let them know they’re not alone.”

He lifted his teacup to take a sip, but it was empty. “Hell, I need something stronger for this. I’ll be right back.”

He headed down the stairs, and she put a hand over her heart. His poor father. And poor Malcolm too. He’d been a teenager who had wanted so badly to take his father’s pain away, but he hadn’t known how. No one could have done that for his father. Likely only therapy and time would’ve done it. For some reason, her mind flicked back to Emily Soames and the books she’d recommended for grief. Emily’s grief was deep and painful, but it was also straightforward. What Malcolm’s father had been through was complicated. Trauma, shock, grief, and self-blame. What an awful combination.

Malcolm came up with a bottle of clear liquid and two glasses. “This is a botanical gin. A friend of mine in the Surrey Hills distills it.” He poured them each a glass, a rather hefty one by her measure. He threw his head back and downed his gin in one swallow, then refilled his glass. “When that girl I was dating—Lord, I can’t even remember her name.”

“Brianna Sterling,” Josie said. He might have forgotten Brianna, but Josie never would. Not the girl who’d christened her Worm.

“Right. When Brianna dared me to kiss you… I knew it was wrong. Not because there was anything wrong at all with kissing you,” he clarified, “but because we didn’t know each other. And she and I were dating. Teenagers daring each other to do things is always stupid. I knew it. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, telling me that I was raised better than that. That I was raised better than my behavior had indicated that whole year. But I didn’t say no. Instead, I let my whole twisted-up teenage self walk up to you outside and pull you into my arms without even asking if it was okay to kiss you.”

He let out a harsh breath. “I’m sorry, Josie. Truly sorry. Especially about what I said after, when she came out, when she pretended that she had caught us kissing, when she acted like she hadn’t orchestrated the whole thing, and when I said those horrible words.” He didn’t have to say them now for her to hear them.

I was just screwing around with her, Brie. Do you think I would actually want to make out with some random sophomore? You know I have higher standards than that.

“I won’t ask you to forgive me. I don’t think I deserve it. But I can say I’m sorry anyway.”

Jose was on the verge of tears. It was so emotional to have the boy who had done that to her sitting in front of her now, bringing it all up again. But she didn’t need to cry this time. Didn’t need to go dashing off in a flood of tears the way she had before. She was a grown woman, and she had recovered from that horrible night. Still, his words helped ease the old scar.

“Worse things have happened to people,” she said softly.

“I know, but you still didn’t deserve to be treated that way.” He took another drink from his glass. “The next morning when I woke up, I knew that I was finally done with it all. Done with the partying. Done with the drinking. Done with acting like a dick. I want you to know I’ve never done anything like that again, never said anything like that to anyone or treated anybody’s feelings as callously as I did yours. And though I’m sure some of my exes might disagree,” he added with a wry smile, “I never intend to hurt anybody.”

She let out a massive sigh. “Thanks for letting me know. It does help a little to know what you were going through and what made you act that way.” She shook her head, taking a sip of gin, which burned all the way down. “I’m not going to lie. I did feel pretty bad for a while after that. But I got over it a long time ago.” She thought about it and realized that even then, books had helped her. “I felt the falseness in your words somehow. And it made no sense for you to act that way. The story didn’t make sense, so when I stopped feeling humiliated, I was able to realize that what you did could have been done to anyone.” She made a face. “But Brianna really did have it in for me.”

“If you ask me,” Malcolm said, “she was jealous of you.”

Shock gently punched her in the stomach. “Jealous? Brianna? Of me?”

“Sure. You were so smart. Focused. Maybe it wasn’t cool to love books, but you didn’t need other people’s adoration the way she did. I think that’s why she targeted you.”

She very much liked his interpretation of what had happened. She grinned at him suddenly. “You know what my company’s called?”

He shook his head.

“The Bookworm. I have Brianna to thank for that.”

He chuckled. “I lost touch with that crowd years ago, but I’ll wager you’ve made more of your life than any of the cool kids.” He paused and then said, “I noticed, you know. You always seemed so happy, and the way you’d walk around with a book all the time—I found it charming. So I’m even more sorry I did that awful thing.”

“Truthfully, it doesn’t matter. And I think now that we’ve cleared the air, why don’t we both agree to move on? We’re not kids anymore. And it’s water under the bridge.” Which seemed like the perfect phrase, given that they were floating on a river with one of London’s bridges visible from where they sat.

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