Page 94 of Take My Breath Away
I’ve sent Perry a text to say I’ll see him at home, and will be coming back with a takeaway. I don’t want him to cook, not tonight.
“Perry?” I call out as I let myself in and make my way to the kitchen. It’s always been his favourite room in the house and nine times out of ten it’s where I’m likely to find him, and I do so again.
On the threshold of the kitchen, I watch him at the table. He’s wearing a pair of jeans, loose and comfortable looking, and an oversized sweatshirt, but they can’t disguise the fact that he’s lost some weight. He doesn’t exactly look skinny but he’s starting to head that way. The bitter taste of bile coats the back of my throat and I know it for what it is. Guilt. He’s like this because of me.
Perry’s not heard me call out, he doesn’t even know I’m standing here, he’s so intent on whatever it is he’s looking at on his laptop. Headphones are clamped to his head, further cutting him off.
I study him the way I’ve studied him so many times and there’s that guilt again, burning in the back of my throat.
He looks tired and strained and his pale skin’s even paler than usual and even from this distance it makes the freckles scattered over his nose darker. All this, in just a few days, since I froze on him, since I closed down. Pain explodes behind my eyes, and I suck in a breath and hiss as I clamp my eyes closed for a second. When I open them, with the echo of the pain beating the inside of my skull, he’s still not seen me.
Whatever it is he’s looking at, he’s not happy. A deep frown crinkles his brow as he scrolls. He stops and leans forward, taking a closer look at whatever’s caught his attention before he shakes his head and moves on. I take a couple of steps into the kitchen and he must spot the movement from the corner of his eye because his head snaps up and he looks at me wide-eyed and blank, before he takes off the headphones and closes the lid of the laptop with what sounds like a hard thud.
“Thai. From the place down the road. Your favourite.” I hold up the white plastic bag before I deposit it on the counter. He pushes himself up from the table.
“Lovely, thanks. I’ll just get some plates.”
This is what it’s come to. There’s no kiss, no cuddle. There’s no idle chitchat about our days. There’s no touch or smile or any of those things we did just days ago. There’s no — anything, other than two people in a room.
“Don’t you want to go and have a shower before we eat?” Perry asks me. It’s what I always do but this time I shake my head.
“No, it can wait.”
He doesn’t comment further as he sets out all the little tubs and trays in the middle of the table for us to dig into.
We sit opposite each other, the laid out food a barrier between us. Sampling pieces of this and that I’m wondering if, like me, he can’t taste a thing.
“What’s happened, James? What’s gone wrong all of a sudden?”
My fork drops from my hand, clattering against the plate.
“Perry, I’m so sorry. Christ, I am so, so sorry.” The voice I can barely believe is mine, is weak and rasping. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, although I’ll be damned if I know how it should.
“What is it you’re sorry about, James? What is it, precisely, you’ve got to be sorry about?”
There’s an edge to his voice, hard and uncompromising and his eyes, always so warm and soft, are cold and stony. It’s a side of him I’ve not seen before, but it’s the only one I deserve. Not a muscle moves, as he stares and waits for me to answer.
“I—I can’t do it,” I whisper. Pain once more explodes in my skull, and I press my fingers to my temples.
“What is it you can’t do?”
He’s not giving me any quarter, but why the hell should he?
“Us. A settled life. A—a proper relationship. I thought I could, Perry. Honestly, I thought I could. I thought I’d changed, that something had shifted and clicked into place. Because I wanted that, I—I wanted that so much…” My words stumble to a halt as Perry continues to stare at me, still stony-eyed, still cold, over the plates heaped with the food we’ve hardly touched.
He jumps to his feet, the movement sudden and jerky, and I rear back. He’s piling the plates and tubs on top of each other, squashing them down hard. Food oozes out and slops over the sides. Slamming his foot hard on the peddle of the bin, the top swings open and he dumps it all, everything, into the bin. Spinning around, he glares at me.
“So what’s happened to change your mind? Or can I guess?”
I get up. My legs are heavy and slow, and all I can do is stand and clutch the back of the chair as we stare at each other across the chasm that’s cracked open between us.
“I promised you something I had no right to, because I’m not the kind of man who should make promises like that.”
“And what kind of man is that, James?”
I wince as my name falls hard from his tongue.
“A man who promises fidelity. A man who promises not to break your heart. A man who promises to—”
