Page 82 of Love in Tune

He’d long since drunk her out of her leftover Christmas spirit supplies. ‘There’s some wine left?’

‘Just fold the letter up and put it away,’ Hal said, ignoring her offer of wine and visibly pulling himself together. ‘Where’s my shirt? I should go.’

‘Hal, please. You don’t have to leave so quickly,’ Honey said, picking up his shirt from the floor and handing it to him.

‘I think we both know that I do,’ he said sourly, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders and pushing his arms roughly into the sleeves.

‘It’s okay. Honestly, it is,’ Honey said, feeling everything but okay.

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ he said, sounding bone weary. ‘Of course it isn’t. Okay is the last thing this is. It’s fucked up and you know it. I shouldn’t be here.’

Honey cast around for the right thing to say. He was right. It was fucked up and crazy, but what did he mean by he shouldn’t be here? Was he already regretting tonight? Was he still in love with his ex-girlfriend? It was a huge, tangled mess, the kind of mess that Honey had no clue how to clean up. She watched him prepare to leave, feeling his emotional detachment and wishing she could turn the clock back.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly.

‘What do you have to be sorry for?’

She shrugged, agonised. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then don’t be sorry,’ Hal said, monotone and low. ‘For what it is worth, I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that I’ve dragged you into my shit.’

‘Don’t say you’re sorry either,’ she said urgently, laying her hand on his bicep and massaging because she needed to touch him, to offer him some sort of physical comfort in the absence of a hug. Hal was not a man given to hugging. She was grateful that he didn’t shrug her hand off. He let her touch him briefly, and then he laid his hand over hers to still the movement.

‘I’m monumentally fucking sorry that you’ve been dragged so far into my shit that you’ll never get clean again. Trust me Honey, no one spends time around me and comes out of it wearing rose-tinted glasses anymore.’

For a few seconds he bumped his fingers over her knuckles, like a mountain rescue worker warming up someone they’d found wandering on a remote moor.

‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘The fact is that you’re a nice girl, and I’m not a very nice man. I emotionally manipulated you into asking me over here tonight, played the only card I had, the poor lonely drunk on his birthday. I’m not proud of it, and if I do it again, slam the door in my stupid, sorry face, okay?’

‘What if I want you to?’ Honey couldn’t hide the thick sound of tears in her throat. ‘What if I like you best of all in those moments when, for whatever reason, you let me in?’

He was fully dressed now and in the jumpy, agitated state of a cheating husband keen to flee the bed of his lover. It left her at a loss, not knowing how to feel or react. Too many emotions knocked around in her chest, fighting for sovereignty. She was angry; with him for leaving, with herself for being needy enough to want him to stay, with Imogen for writing the letter and laying out a bridge for Hal to cross or not cross. She was wistful; already missing the skyrocket feeling of being in his arms. And she was hurting; for herself, yes, but she was also hurting for him. Hal cut a lonesome figure as he stood.

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ He shrugged apologetically.

And with that, anger won out, because it offered her the most protection from his awkward discomfort.

‘How about you say what you’re really thinking, Hal? Or shall I save you the bother? You’re grateful and all that for dinner and a birthday fumble on the sofa, but now you’ve had a better offer so you’ll be on your way.’

Her outburst earned her nothing but his silence. He seemed about to say something, and then he said nothing at all and walked out of her flat, closing the door softly behind him.

Hal lay flat on his back, welcoming the numbness afforded to him by the whisky he’d drunk straight from the bottle as soon as he’d crossed his own threshold. He’d always known that life would catch up with him sooner or later, but he hadn’t counted on it crashing back in and flattening Honey as well as himself. Bloody Imogen. She’d been his everything, and her letter had caused him all kinds of pain. How could she do this now? How could she come back and lay out their future in a few simple words.Hire a chef. Did she even know him at all? Didn’t she understand how excruciating it would be for him to own a restaurant and not run his own kitchen? She’d clearly assumed him incapable of taking it on himself, and maybe he was, but was that her decision to make? He didn’t want to trade on his past reputation for the sake of hanging on to a lifestyle that no longer had any meaning to him. Life in general had precious little meaning, but these last few days he’d allowed a few chinks of light into the darkness. He’d found moments of hope teaching Skinny Steve in the kitchens at the home, he’d found moments of laughter listening to Honey regale her haphazard life through his door, and tonight on Honey’s sofa he’d felt like a whole man again for the first time in a long time. And then, the letter. Listening to the woman he’d just had sex with read a letter from the woman he’d planned to marry had screwed him up on just about every level. He hated himself for letting Honey read it to him. It had been selfish and unkind, yet he’d allowed it to happen because he’d been desperate to hear it. His needs over hers. An orgasm in exchange for a clerical favour. It hadn’t been a fair deal.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The following morning came with indecent haste, and Honey had never felt more ill-prepared to lead her troops into battle. It was with tired eyes and a sore heart that she opened her door at a little after half past seven in the morning. It came as a shock to find Hal leaning against the wall outside her door. She’d assumed she wouldn’t see him again for days.

‘What are you doing lurking around in the hallway?’

‘I told you I’d be there today to help feed the protesters. That hasn’t changed.’

It was just about the only thing that hadn’t.

‘We can manage without you,’ Honey said, even though they patently, clearly could not.

‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll have mutiny on your hands if you leave Skinny Steve in charge of the kitchen,’ he said, then dropped his voice. ‘There’s no need for us to be awkward around each other. We’re adults, not school kids.’

So that was how he was going to play it. Achingly cool, terribly sophisticated, it happens every day kind of thing. Well she’d never be able to do that.

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