Page 9 of The Best Book Boyfriend
Next I head into the garden to film myself spray painting. These things were so much easier when I had Adam to stand there and hold the camera for me. Now it’s all tripods and lighting faff. Once I’ve set it all up, I venture into the shed and discover I’ve only got black and gold paint, leftovers from a garden furniture project Adam and I did together.
There aren’t so many reminders of him around the house anymore. I spent months surrounded by the stuff he didn’t care enough to take until one weekend I snapped. In under an hour, I boxed everything up and left it on his mum’s doorstep.
Still, sometimes things like this stop me in my tracks. I hate it. I hate how much I think of him, but most of all I hate that I don’t hatehimeven though I probably should.
I’m ashamed that I didn’t see it coming. I was so preoccupied with growing my business that I hadn’t realised I’d stopped making him happy. I’ve been left wondering when he changed, when did we stop sharing the same dreams, how did we veer so far off track?
Maybe I was the one who had changed. Maybe it was all my fault. So many questions, and I’ve had no answers. Has he been with her in our house? How long was it going on? Where is he now? Is he OK? You can’t love someone for twelve years and suddenly not wonder about them when they leave.
My parents were furious. My brother threatened to drive home from Manchester to beat the shit out of him. Adam’s parents were as confused and upset as I was, and we kept ringing each other hoping for answers, but they couldn’t explain it either.
I started making excuses for him, wondering if he was having a breakdown, some sort of mental health crisis that would make him act this way. What if he’s got a brain tumour making him act all out of character. I saw that on Grey’s Anatomy once, some guy touched a bear because of a massive glioma in his head.
Not long after him leaving, his mum told me he’d left his job at the insurance firm because employee relationships were forbidden. I should have been pleased, but he’d worked bloody hard at that job, climbing his way up from an apprenticeship. Surely only an idiot would sacrifice their career for a fling? Which can only mean it meant more than that.
It took me weeks to realise how much he had taken. Most of his clothes, his Xbox, his toiletries, the toastie maker. The bloody toastie maker. He must have been planning it for a while because the suitcase he took with him that day could never have carried all that stuff.
No, he hadn’t had a breakdown, he really had just left me, and what’s worse is that he’d planned it.
So there’s no way in hell I’m painting these frames in colours he chose.
Chapter 5
Kara
Onthewaytoour nearest DIY superstore, I listen toRomComrades,my favourite book podcast, in the car. It’s hosted by two friends Jessie and Laney who share my deep love of romance novels and romantic comedies. Listening to them is a bit like having your mates talk your ear off, and they always have great recommendations.
Today they’re discussing their favourite books for the Strangers to Lovers trope, and it reminds me of my meeting with Luke yesterday.As if I could forget about it.
“I’m obsessed with the insta-lust trope,” Laney says. “I don’t know if I necessarily believe in love at first sight, at least it’s never happened to me, but that idea that you could walk into a room, lock eyes with a total hottie, and fall instantly in lust is one that hooks me every time.”
“For me, strangers to lovers books have to have that,” Jessie agrees. “That instant connection. That feeling that the characters’ worlds will implode if they don’t speak to each other right away. Otherwise it veers too quickly into friends to lovers. I need him to be marching over and demanding she leaves with him. The more forward, the better. If he walks out of that bar with her over his shoulder, I’ll be screaming.”
They’ve got a point. In a book, I’d be absolutely frothing at a scene where a hot guy approached a woman and asked her what she was reading. Yet somehow, yesterday with Luke was like an emotional rollercoaster.
I went from annoyed that he’d interrupted me, to pissed that he’d made such massive and incorrect judgments about romance, then impressed that he brought me another coffee, and then, what… excited maybe? I definitely liked him challenging me to give him a recommendation. And then weirdly guilty, even though I know I did nothing wrong. Maybe that’s why Adam is on my mind so much. Adam didn’t like me talking to other men. So I never did.
Heartache always smacks me in the face when I walk into this place. We must have spent hundreds of hours roaming these aisles. We loved weekends, popping in here bright and early for supplies, then heading back to turn a run down hovel into our beautiful home.
I half expect to see him, but I have those moments less and less these days. At first I could barely leave the house for fear I’d see him and his new woman, but unbelievably, it’s never happened. I don’t even know if he’s still living in the area.
We were just twenty-two when we bought our house. After school, I turned my Saturday job into a full-time one, and Adam got an apprenticeship with an insurance company. We were hoping to go travelling, but then he got made permanent, and I got a bit of inheritance from my lovely grandad, so our travel fund became a house fund. We were on a mission, scrimping, and turning down plans with our friends. Adam even moved in with me at Mum and Dad’s so we could save as much as possible.
It was the first house we saw and even though it was absolutely grim, it was love at first sight. The two bedroom semi-detached house had been empty for over a year. Every room had peeling wallpaper and nicotine stains. The carpets were so threadbare I couldn’t make out the pattern, and the rest of the house had a mix of bare floorboards and torn linoleum. I kind of got the feeling someone had died there, but I didn’t want to ask, and the estate agent wasn’t forthcoming with those sorts of details.
Still, we knew it had potential. We’d spend our evenings in my childhood bedroom watching home renovation shows and DIY tutorials. We felt confident that we could turn this house into something amazing, so we put in an offer way under asking price, thinking that would start negotiations. When the estate agent called to tell us our offer had been accepted, we were in the freezer aisle in Tesco. We both pressed our ears to the phone to hear the news, then shrieked and jumped up and down right there by the potato waffles.
My very first Instagram post was me holding our keys by the front door, and then we got to work. We ripped out all the old flooring, stripped the walls, and did our bedroom up first, so we at least had a nice, relaxing place to sleep after busting our arses all day.
It still hurts to think of it now. Choosing new bedding, our mattress, tumbling onto it, unable to keep our hands off each other, finally free to be as naughty and loud as we wanted to be. I miss the way he used to touch me. I didn’t realise the last time would be the last.
Hattie binned all that bedding a few weeks after he left. She just turned up one day, ran me a bath, and changed the sheets. I cried for hours, devastated to lose the smell from Adam’s shampoo on his pillow, but she said it was important that I sleep in bedding he’d never touched. I could see the logic, and now whenever I put on the bedding she chose for me, I do feel very loved, so I suppose her magic worked.
There are too many memories here. There’s the aisle where we chose our first drill, oh and there’s the steamer we used to strip the walls. Those are the screws we built our kitchen cabinets with.Fuck this. I do what I always do when I’m having a wobble. I ring my mum.
“Hiya, love,” she answers, sounding a little out of breath. I bet she’s out for one of her walks. “You alright? I’m just climbing Colton Hill.”Bingo.
“Hi Mum, yeah I’m OK. Just in B&Q getting spray paint.”
