Page 113 of Falling for You

Tanya’s face scrunches up with worry, and I laugh. ‘Tanya, I’m joking, you can keep it.’

‘What is all this?’ she says, looking around at my boxes.I’ve been super organised and labelled them ‘keep’, ‘sell’, ‘bin’. She is eyeing my ‘sell’ box suspiciously.

‘If you want anything in there, take it,’ I say. ‘Now is your last chance.’

‘You can’t sell this!’ Penny cries in outrage, as she pulls out a particularly garish jumper I knitted last year. It’s made out of pink, glittery wool with a black cat sat on an orange pumpkin on the front.

‘Why not?’

‘Annie, you love this jumper!’ Penny says, waving it in my face. ‘Why would you sell it? What’s going on? I’m worried about you.’ She turns to Tanya. ‘We need an intervention.’

Tanya nods. ‘I’ll get the biscuits.’

‘What, no!’ I say, grabbing Tanya’s arm. ‘Nothing is going on, I’mfine. I’m just trying to … you know, get my life in order.’

‘By selling your favourite clothes and taking a corporate job and giving up your dreams?’ Penny shoots back.

‘You sound like Nate,’ I mutter under my breath, turning back to my piles of books. I keep my back firmly to them both, even though I can feel them exchanging worried glances. We haven’t spoken about Nate since Saturday night. Even then, I only told them the headlines of what happened. He wasn’t seeing other girls, I fucked up, it’s over.

‘Have you heard from him?’ Tanya says gently.

‘Nope,’ I say. ‘And I won’t. He’s gone. But I’ve decided it’s a good thing,’ I hear myself add, apparently making that decision as soon as I voice it.

‘Why?’ Penny sinks back onto my bed.

‘Well, like … was he ever real?’ I shrug.

Tanya and Penny glance at each other.

‘We … we did meet him, Annie,’ Tanya says nervously.

I roll my eyes. ‘No, I mean, he was too perfect! All the romance and chance meetings, the perfect dates and great, easy conversation and the instant connection … that’s not real, is it? Nobody has a relationship like that in real life.’

I’m saying it like it’s a fact, but I can see the doubt on their faces.

‘Annie,’ Tanya says eventually. ‘You deserve all of those things.’

‘And you will have them,’ Penny adds, her voice stern.

I wave them both off. ‘He was a fantasy, the whole thing was a fantasy. And it’s fine.’ I force myself to smile brightly at them both. ‘Really, everything is great.’ I keep my smile for as long as I can, until it starts to burn at my cheeks. ‘Oh, fuck it,’ I say, letting my smile drop. ‘Tanya. Get the biscuits. I need it.’

Tanya immediately springs forward and darts out of the room into the kitchen. Penny reaches out and grabs my hand.

‘You’re the best person I know, Annie. You do know that, right?’

I smile, my throat starting to ache. ‘You won’t say that when I live in yours and Mike’s spare room for the rest of my life.’

‘We don’t have a spare room,’ she says earnestly. ‘But you can live under the stairs for as long as you like.’

And as I look back at Penny with her serious green eyes, I know she means it.

CHAPTER FORTY

Nate

I drum my fingers on the side of the plastic chair, eyeing Stevie as he saunters over to me, holding two Costa coffee cups, expertly dodging the swarms of people rushing for their flights.

‘Here you are,’ he says. ‘I got us a scone to share, too. Have you even had one of these since you’ve been here?’