Page 53 of After Felix
He looks up and says, “I must say that it’s good you’ve finally realised all of that.”
I shake my head and slump back on the sofa. “You said that on purpose?”
“Of course, and if you were in your right mind, you’d have known it too.” He shakes his head. “The problem you have, Max, is that what I said is exactly what Felix thinks you feel after your sterling performance…” He pauses. “Well, I was going to say after your performance at the wedding, but you haven’t exactly behaved well all through the relationship.” I wince, and he pats my hand. “I love Felix. He’s wonderful and every bit Ivo’s equal. The trouble is that you couldn’t see it in time.”
He’s right. Even though it makes me feel disloyal to Ivo, Felix is far better company. Ivo could be incredibly moody and temperamental, while Felix was like a breath of fresh spring air blowing through a house that had been shut up for too long. Irreverent and honest to a fault.
“And now it’s too late,” I say and slump into the sofa. My earlier spark has fled, and I feel heavy and old again.
“I’m almost glad,” he says, and I look up at him in question. “You need to see the truth even if it is too late, because it might set you free of Ivo.”
“And what truth is that?” I ask sharply.
“That you’re in love with Felix.”
Shock holds me silent for a second. Then I snap, “I am not.”
But my mind suddenly wavers. Isthatwhat this awful feeling is? The heaviness when I wake up and realise that I won’t see him today, that I won’t hear his clear, posh voice and see that mad tumble of hair. I’ll never hold his thin body against mine and inhale his scent of oranges again or get that instant lift when I make him laugh and then feel like I’m suddenly ten feet tall. There’s just this awful greyness all the time.
“I can’t be,” I say stupidly. “I’m in love with Ivo.”
“Really?” he says, staring at me intently. “And when did you last talk to Ivo?”
“Maybe a few weeks ago. Never mind that,” I dismiss, but he carries on.
“And when was the last time you thought of him?”
I think hard. “I had a dream the other night about Afghanistan. We were hostages again and couldn’t get out.”
His eyes soften. “And that was the only time you’ve thought about him?” I nod, and he sighs. “You’re not in love with Ivo, Max.” The simple words bear the hallmark of a proclamation, and for the first time, I don’t automatically dismiss them.
“How do you know?”
“Because you never were. Youthoughtyou were. You probably do love him. But it’s not in the way that he loves Henry.”
I don’t even wince at the mention of Henry’s name, and I think that’s when the truth starts to sink in. I sit back. “Shit.”
He nods. “You’re very loyal, Max, and always forward-moving. You’ve had to be to survive in that job all these years. You don’t look back and analyse. You just charge forward like an elephant intent on one goal. You met Ivo when you were both very young, and you threw all your loyalty behind him like a dog with his owner. You misdiagnosed the feeling as love, and it’s become this huge immutable fact in your life. Max loves toast and jam. Max loves rugby. Max loves Ivo. But you don’t really, unless it’s the love you feel for a friend.” He smiles at me. “Or the love for a brother.”
“I hope not,” I say tartly. “Ivo and I have done far too many things together for that image to be at all comfortable.”
He shrugs. “It was just sex, but I think it confused everything. It madeyou attach the label of love to Ivo when in reality, it was just good sex with a man who wasn’t right for you.”
“And Felix is?”
He looks at me. “If you had the chance to see Felix and say one thing to him, what would it be?”
“I miss you,” I say instantly, the words impassioned and full of so much feeling.
I send mental feelers over my emotions, trying to parse what Zeb said. It’s the truth. I thought love had come to me early in life, slow and gentle like my feelings for Ivo, but in fact, it was just gratitude, loyalty and a friendship that confused me.
In reality, love came to me like a summer storm bursting over my head and leaving me dazed. And now I’m alone without him, and I miss him. That’s what the pain in my chest is, the greyness. It’s because I no longer have Felix here challenging me, making me laugh, and making me feel more alive than I have since the day I handed in my resignation at the paper.
In the month before the wedding, I’d found myself thinking far too much about him, and it had worried me. I thought that I’d exchanged one obsession for another, but the painful truth is that I found pure gold in Felix and threw it away as if it was a chip wrapper because I was obsessed with the one who got away. It never occurred to me that Ivo wasmeantto get away. That he had his own person who at least had the good sense to hold onto him.
“Oh fuck,” I groan and collapse back on the sofa. “How did I not know? This is so fucked up. I love someone who I made hate me. If this is what love feels like, then it’s bloody awful. Take it away.”
He chuckles. “I can’t do that,” he says. “And you wouldn’t really want me to. Maybe you never realised it before, because you’ve been moving so fast for years. You were like a human hurricane, and the only one in the eye of the storm with you was Ivo, so you never looked elsewhere. And then Felix came along and exploded all your ideas. It probably feels so intense because you’ve come to real love so late in life.”
