Page 13 of Forever Not Yours

“Do I need to ring Jake?” she asked softly. “Or are you going to tell me what is going on so you can get all that tension out of your shoulders. I can see you, Bash. Read you like a bloody book. What did you do?”

What did Inotdo? Same as always, I drank, pissed people off, hurt the ones I loved, and then I went back to work like it didn’t matter. I masked everything with bravado, smiled that shit-eating grin of mine and carried on as if I didn’t care. But I did. I just pretended not to. It was easier that way.

“I can’t do this, Jules.”

“What part of this can’t you do?”

All the questions. I was so tired of them. I didn’t need questions. I needed peace. For someone to take it all away from me and just let me… I couldn’t even ask for what I needed, because I didn’t know. Didn’t understand it. Just. Everything. Anything. Nothing.

“Bastien.” She shuffled onto the sofa, sat up straighter. “We’ve invested almost sixty grand in this wedding. We have a hundred people coming to watch us get married. Sit-down dinner. Dance. We’ve hired a band. A fucking five-tier cake. But you know what? None of that matters if you have a good reason for not being able to ‘do this’.” She did quotation marks with her fingers.

Juliet didn’t get angry. She got stern, solid. But she looked frazzled. I didn’t blame her.

“Open your fucking mouth before I blow a fuse here. What is it you can’t do?”

“I don’t know,” I said weakly.

Because I was weak. A liar. A cheater. An idiot.

She made that blowing noise, the one where she shrugged and coughed at the same time. Where she put herself together.

“I’m going to—” she started, but I cut her off.

“I love you.” Weak. Bad. Truth and lies in one pot. “I do. You’ve beenso good for me.”

“I love you too,” she said. “Which is why we’re getting married. Why we’re trying to buy a house in bloody Essex and trying for a baby. And why you’re pissing me off right now. I know you’re hungover, and I kind of don’t want to know what else you’ve done. Seriously, Bash, you’re scaring me a little here.”

No shit, Jules.I was shit scared myself. Because truths weighed more than lies, and I had a feeling mine were about to betray me. That or I would burst into tears like a toddler and beg Juliet to sort me out.

I needed her to sort me out. Anything but the alternative. I couldn’t face the alternative.

“What did you do?” she asked, not softly this time, leaning closer, her eyes piercing into my skull.

“I got drunk. Did a load of stupid shit. Walked into a lamppost, lost my watch and got hypo at the end.” All of that was true.

“And?” she prompted. Yes. I wasn’t done, and she knew it. The way I was wringing my hands and panting was totally giving me away. “Jake’s got your watch. He told me.”

Oh. I’d forgotten about that.

“I’m not a good person, Jules,” I spluttered out as my heart was racing. “I’m not good. I’m awful and horrible and do despicable things.”

“I know that already. But what, exactly, did you do?” Her voice was steady, strong.Shewas strong.

Stronger than I would ever be.

“Do you want me to give you options? Or can you for once be a grown-up and speak to me? Am I wasting my savings and my life here? Should I just cut my losses right now and walk away? This flat—I’ll cancel the contract tomorrow, I don’t fucking care, but just don’t lie to me. I can’t bear it. Can’t bear your stupid lies. So tell me the truth, Bash. Now.”

That was the moment when everything started to unravel. Everything. All my previous fuck-ups were paled to insignificance because this was the worst one of all. The biggest mistake. The one where my life imploded.

“I let Jake fuck me,” I whispered. Then I took a breath, and another one, and I waited for her to speak.

But she didn’t. And that was even worse.

The taxi ride home was awful, regret pouring out of me with every breath that left my lungs. I wanted to roll back the hours and erase the past. Yes, all self-inflicted, and the lookon Bastien’s face as I left—that had been on me. I should have stopped, said no, not done a bloody thing I would never be able to undo. Bastien did stupid things, yes. He sometimes went off the rails, but he was a straight dude. He’d always had girlfriends, one after the other. He wasn’t into dudes. That was my prerogative, and one I didn’t talk about. Bastien didn’t ask. He’d once held up my phone, the screen displaying one of the dating sites, and he’d raised an eyebrow, given me a chance to tell him, but I’d winked in panic-ridden shock, and that had been it. Mostly, we skirted around the subject with professional ease. Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. I didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, who talked about who they fucked? I certainly didn’t. Not with my colleagues, not with my parents and definitely not with Bastien.

Which made no sense since he was my closest friend. The guy who knew me inside and out. Apart from…

Shit. I fucked him and then abandoned him. And he was getting married in two weeks.

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