Page 88 of The Worst Guy Ever
I don’t want things to be weird. I know you’re his best friend and I won’t get in the middle of you two. But I still need you (not just to help me study for Biology!) so please don’t friend dump me. I hope we can still all hang out.
Can I tell you a secret? I think Luke is the one. Is that an insane thing to say? I love him so much. I know we’re so young, and there’s a lot of life ahead of us, but I’m certain he’s it for me.
Jesus, that hurts. Heather’s life wasn’t nearly long enough. She should still be here.
I see it so clearly. He and I will be old and grey and running the pub just like Annie and Derek. You’ll visit us as much as you can and bring your wife. She’ll be beautiful (obviously) but I hope you’ll look hard and find someone who makes you feel the way Luke makes me feel. Alive! You deserve all the good things in the world. I’m so lucky to have you both in my life.
Is she kidding? We were the lucky ones.
Love always,
H xxx
P.S. Choose someone who likes me too. I never want anything to come between us.
A fat tear plops onto the paper, and I dab it quickly before it makes her words bleed into the page. Imagine being that wise at fourteen? Knowing at such a young age that she’d met the love of her life. How did they have so much belief in each other, and what does it say about me that I never had anything close to that?
Would Heather and Hattie be friends? Heather got on with everyone she ever met, young or old. Hattie is much more cautious about who she lets into her life, but I like to think they’d have hit it off.
I have to wonder if I’d have even met Hattie if Heather was still with us. We live in the same town, we’re a similar age, even now it seems wild that we hadn’t met before Luke and Kara introduced us. How have I never spotted her across the street, or picked her face out in a crowd in a bar?
All this time, I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough, but she’s the first person I find in any room now. I need to see her, need to make her understand how I feel, even if I only half understand it myself.
Me:I’m sorry about standing you up. Let me take you out for dinner on Saturday and make it up to you?
Hottie:There’s no need to apologise.
Hottie:And there’s nothing to make up x
Me:Let’s go to London. You don’t even have to sit with me on the train if you’re worried about being seen together.
Hottie:No limo?
Me:Strictly for when you get married, sweetheart.
In the bathroom mirror, I hardly recognise the man I used to be, the man that wanted nothing more than casual sex and no strings fun. Staring back at me is a man who can’t get enough of the woman waiting for me out there, the woman who’s proved to be more than enough.
Heather’s advice from 19 years ago has been circling in my head all week.‘Look hard’. I don’t need to look anymore. Whether Hattie’s dishing out fire and ice, or docile in my arms at the end of a long night beneath my sheets, she’s the only woman I can see myself with now.
We’ve had a perfect day together, eating and drinking our way around London, stopping in parks to sit and people watch. She let me buy her a pair of earrings, dainty little studs she’s been twisting ever since, and now we’re capping off the night in a hip underground cocktail bar she’s recommended. The best part, every time I’ve reached for her hand, she’s let me take it. I can’t remember the last time I felt this alive, this excited, this hopeful.
When I leave the bathroom, I find another man in my seat, and all that hope comes crashing down. My gaze falls to Hattie’s phone in his hand, and I hang back, watching my worst nightmare unfold. She smiles at him, bright eyes roaming his face while he finishes typing. My stomach churns when he passes her phone back and kisses her cheek as he stands to leave.
Even when he’s gone, she doesn’t stop smiling. She sits back, takes another sip of her cocktail and casts a glance around the room. She seems to look everywhere except right at me until finally our eyes lock through a gap in the crowd that feels like it’s doubled since I left her side. Her smile falls, and my feet carry me, reluctantly, back to our table.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she says, shrugging defensively. “Waiting for you.”
I point my thumb towards the man she was just talking to, now back in a booth with his friends. “Did you just get some guy’s number when you’re out on a date with me?”
Hattie scoffs, folding her arms across her chest. “Don’t be a dick. It’s just a number. It’s not like I blew him in the toilets, and anyway, this isn’t a date.”
“Then what the fuck do you think this is?”
“For your information, he’s an old colleague and we haven’t caught up in years. I got his number for a job lead. But of course you would jump to conclusions and assume I was trying to fuck him.”
Oh shit.“Hattie, no, that’s not it. I’m sorry.”
