Page 73 of The Book Swap

“I was fucking reversing in there,” I shout, getting out and slamming the door behind me at the same time as I hear theirs open. “That was my space.” Spinning around, I walk toward the driver, who slams their own door shut and turns toward me.

My heart thumps in my chest.

“This can’t be happening.” I’m laughing without humor as I take in the man looking down at me, hair disheveled, dark bags and his eyes wide as they dart back and forth. So different from the way he looked at the library, but still, without question, James. “Of course you’re the type of person to take someone’s parking space at a hospital.” I shout the last word as he stands opposite me, running a hand through his hair. Seeing him like this, out of context, he looks different. I’m not sure I’ve ever realized how tall he is. How much broader he’s become since school. At the library, I was too angry to notice. On the bus I did everything I could to get away as fast as possible. This time he’s in front of me, all six foot of him, his jeans slung low, and a navy hoodie pulled over a gray T-shirt.

He holds his hands up, the palms grazed with dark blood. As he does so his jumper lifts for a moment, exposing the skin of his torso. I look away.

“Please don’t,” he says. “There are other spaces. I don’t have time for this.” He turns and walks off toward the hospital and I run after him.

“Move your car. My sister’s in there.”

“Oh my God, Erin,” he shouts, spinning around and glaring at me. “There you go again—making it all about you. Forming a judgment without taking just one second to find out what’s actually going on.”

I stop, stumbling backward. He’s never raised his voice at me before. Never looked at me this way. His nostrils flared and eyes bulging.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t bother to ask me why I’m at the hospital. Just jump right on in with your accusations, just like you did back at school.”

“I had good reason to accuse you then.”

“You never asked me why,” he shouts. “Didn’t give me even a second to explain myself.”

I don’t know how to respond to the James who won’t say sorry. Behind us, someone’s beeping their horn, trying to get past my car.

James pats his jeans, moving a hand to his back pocket and pulling out an envelope, holding it up in front of me.

“This is what I wrote to you the day I found your mum. It tells you everything. How eight of them pushed me to the ground. How they all got their dicks out and were about to piss on me. How telling them about your mum gave me one whole minute to get away. It’s all in here. My dad found it and...” He looks over toward the hospital, swallowing. “This is the apology you wouldn’t let me give. And now, instead of just taking this one, it’s like you expect them all the time. You expect a lifetime’s worth of apologies in all of their different forms. You even think I should move my car for you.”

“I—”

“There’s no point in me apologizing,” he says, throwing his arms out. People are getting out of their cars. Shouting over to us to move. James keeps going. “You don’t forgive people.” He lowers his voice. “It was all over the margins of those books.”

My ears start ringing and I try to refocus because he’s still talking. “Not Gatsby, not Estella, not Sal and Dean. The second they did something you didn’t approve of, that was it. Written off for good.”

My chest rises and falls. If he’s going to go there, then so will I.

“You can talk,” I say back. “Nothing anyone did in those books was good enough for you. They could be working four jobs, be millionaires, be pursuing their lifelong ambition, and you judged them for it. Made them sound like failures. Sometimes just one small achievement is enough. Just making it through the day is enough. After what happened, that was all I could do. Is it any wonder I couldn’t forgive you? I trusted you more than almost anyone, and you broke it.”

He blinks, licking his lips.

“And now it’s happened again. You lied about your name.” Tears sting my eyes as I finally tell him the truth. How I wasn’t just angry because he hurt me, but because he was one of the only people who I thought never would. “You tricked me.”

He sighs. “I was never trying to trick you, Erin.” He looks down at his feet and back up, running a hand through his hair before fixing his eyes on mine. “I was trying to keep you.”

A jolt of electricity races through me as an explosion of car horns sounds through the car park. James looks at me for a moment longer, before placing the letter in my hand and running toward the hospital.

Shaking, I mutter apologies to the drivers and climb back in, driving slowly forward just as a car ahead of me reverses out of their space.

I go in nose first, not willing to risk losing it, and then I kill the engine, clutching the wheel with both hands, the letter still gripped in one. I read my name on the front, immediately recognizing the handwriting from all our exchanges. Staring at it, I think about what he just said. That he told them so he could escape. It was never about destroying me. It was about protecting himself. I put the letter inside the glove box, and pull out my phone.

Georgia’s messaged me.

Georgia: Meet me at the maternity ward.

I scan the words, wondering what they mean. She’s only six months. It’s too soon to be having the baby. I want to ask her, but I know not to. I just have to be there.

Locking the car, I open the map on my phone, searching for the maternity ward, as a woman comes running down the car park.

---