Page 84 of The Day After Christmas
It was a kind of relief.
‘I’ll go,’ said Sophie. ‘James, can you take Felicity home?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
Sophie turned to go, then turned back to the table, downed the last of her half pint, and grimaced. ‘What a crappy day,’ she said.
‘Way to put it mildly,’ said Felicity. ‘Good luck, Soph. And thanks.’
CHAPTER 41
To this day Felicity will never know why she did it.
But that night when they got back to the house, she tried to blow things up. Not physically of course, that would be weird. And illegal. No, instead, Felicity did her damn best to put a torch to everything she’d built with James and he very nearly let her.
It started innocently enough.
‘I don’t deserve you,’ she said, as they were moving around the kitchen, making cups of tea, grabbing sofa snacks, pouring drinks, the cats roaming round their legs, rubbing against them, hoping for an early dinner or a late lunch or whatever time it was.
‘Why are you saying it in that voice?’ said James, pouring boiling water over teabags.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s not your usual voice. You sound… weird…’
‘Do I?’ said Felicity distantly, a bag of supermarket-brand Doritos in her hand. They had both ditched their wedding gear in favour of pyjamas and had planned an evening of movies and tortilla chips in an effort to block out the horrors of the day. But Felicity just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
‘You know you do.’
Felicity waved a hand. ‘I was just thinking how lucky I am, that’s all. I don’t deserve to be with someone as amazing as you.’
‘Erm, I’ll be the judge of that, thanks very much,’ said James, with a grin. He stirred the tea, added milk, spooned the teabags into the bin. Turned to look at her with that piercing stare.
Felicity gave a weak smile and leant back against the counter. ‘It’s just…’
James’s eyes widened and she could see the muscle in his jaw clenching. She cursed herself for what she was about to say, but somehow she couldn’t stop.
‘What?’
‘All that pain, you know? All that trauma. It’s astonishing how much two people can hurt each other.’
‘Where are you going with this, exactly?’
Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Well, I can’t help thinking I should let you go now, and get it over with.’
What the hell is wrong with you?said the voice in her head.
‘I’m sorry?’ said James, frowning.
‘To avoid the inevitable heartbreak when you eventually figure out that I’m a total deadbeat,’ she said, staring at the floor so she didn’t see his face crumpling in pain.
James’s voice was gruff now. Raspy. ‘Is that a joke? Itsoundslike a Felicity Brooks joke but it doesn’tlooklike a Felicity Brooks joke if that makes sense?’
She didn’t smile even then. Where once her head had been full of him, her thoughts were now black and despairing. Even now, only eighteen months in, she couldn’t bear to think about how she would (or wouldn’t) cope if the man she loved was taken from her, at the altar or anywhere else. Perhaps it would be better just to end it now before it became totally impossible to extricate herself without causing permanent harm.
She crossed her arms. ‘When I was a kid, right, this random relationships expert came into our school and told us about how sleeping with someone is like putting two bits of cardboard together to make it corrugated or whatever the word is. For some reason I never forgot it.’
‘What are you going on about?’ He smiled, hoicking himself up onto the counter opposite her.
