Page 11 of Unless It's You
Because if not wanting to have kids makes me not girlfriend material, then fine.
Thinking of the messy breakup reminds me I’m right to never let a man get close to me again. I’d even found myself considering marriage and children. Thinking that maybe something was wrong with me for not wanting kids. Wondering if I should try to get used to the idea.
I got out just in time.
Ethan’s face pops up in my mind, an unwanted invasion. Even a simple kiss (or two, or ten) a long time ago is screwing with my job. Relationships are just not worth it.
Reese
I guess we’ll find out on Monday
Evelyn is—was—an uncontrollable force. Her stories of traveling and exploring the world are what made me want to be like her. She was her own person. No one ever changed that. And as far as I know, she didn’t regret one thing in her life.
But it’s that adventurous attitude and no-regrets lifestyle that makes me nervous about her estate.
What were you up to, Aunt Evelyn?
6
ETHAN
Ican’t fucking do it.
I’m standing in front of Mum’s flat. Frozen. Unable to follow through. Unable to face what’s literally right in front of me. I can picture what’s inside: an outdated kitchen with chipped black-and-white tiled floor, a beat-up sofa and mismatched loveseat, an old coffee table with a wobbly leg, and a dusty hallway leading to her bedroom and the tiny room that’d been mine. It’s still shocking she’d managed to hold on to the same flat for that long.
Oh, right, because of the money I sent the landlord each month. A growl rumbles in my throat.
The only thing in the flat that doesn’t scream desperation is a bookshelf in the corner, stacked with new and old romance novels, some of them from me, but she’d also go to library sales and hunt for good deals.
There’s a key in my pocket. The landlord left it for me when I came up to Newcastle to deal with her cremation—no funeral, no memorial, just her ashes delivered to a mausoleum in an overgrown cemetery—and it feels like it’s burning a hole in my jeans.
Why did I think this time would be different? I’ve come uphere a half dozen times since she died. Each time, I freeze up and can’t go in. It’s as if when I saw her last—when she refused to let me in—some kind of spell was placed on me. I can’t do it. Even though I must, especially with the new thirty-day timeline.
“Fuck me.” I back away and spin, trotting down the steps from her second-floor flat, my backpack shifting on my shoulders. Scuffed white paint peels off the walls on the stairwell, depressing gray cement glaring from the holes. There’s trash on the steps. An old yellowing sock. A fast-food wrapper. Crumpled beer can. This place should be condemned. Who does the landlord think will buy Mum’s flat?
And what’ll happen if I don’t empty it? He’ll toss everything and keep the deposit, if there even was one from so long ago. Fine. Who cares?
But shouldn’t I want to keep something to remember her by? Is there anything in there I should save? But Ben’s parents took more pictures of me in my teenage years than Mum did. Robin and Simon handed me a box when I graduated university with Ben, before I moved to London to play rugby after getting drafted as an outside center with the London Stingers. Mum handed me nothing.
Rugby was the first thing in our lives that I was better at than Ben. I had to work so hard at university, having fallen behind at school due to my rubbish home situation. Rugby was the only reason I got into the same university as him. All of that came easily to my best mate. School, university, women, jobs, everything that followed. But he’s never made me feel bad about any of it, and he was my biggest fan when I was playing pro.
Finally out of the decrepit building, I pull out my mobile and respond to Ben’s text from half an hour ago asking me what I’m up to tonight, hoping to distract myself from the way my throat is being squeezed by Mum’s ghost, as tight as the inside of a scrum.
Me
Hey, mate. Up in Newcastle
Ben
Again? What for?
I consider coming clean about my issues with Mum’s flat. Explain why I keep coming up here and not getting my shite dealt with. But for this—I want to try to handle it on my own. Not always lean so heavily on Ben and his parents. So I tell a half truth.
Me
Tying up some loose ends with the flat
Ben
