Page 4

I woke up curled up in the sheets, a dull ache in my backside. My arse hurt. My arms hurt. Every inch of my skin felt sore and abused.

I couldn’t even blame anyone else, because it was all self-inflicted. Me. My brain. My incredibly bad ideas.

Then the reality hit me square in the face, something that made me sit up straight, patting down the mattress next to me like I couldn’t actually trust my eyesight.

My eyes were fine. And the room was empty.

I should have panicked, shouted his name and called him on my phone. I had his number saved, of course, but I could’ve dialled it from memory. I knew that number by heart. Always had.

Through some kind of weird avoidance at grasping reality mixed with my usual self-preservation instinct, I got up, changed the sensor in my arm, pricked my finger as backup and dosed up my insulin pump, watching my hands shake as I fitted it.

I was fine. I was in control.

Lying to myself like this was my usual way of coping with my penchant for doing things before thinking of the consequences. It was different at work, where risk taking was part of my job description. I was good at it. Calculating the pros and cons, the risk factors against the potential gain. Finance was a complicated puzzle, and I was a professional and skilled problem solver. I mathed the math, and my math always mathed up, whatever the situation. Life? A completely different equation.

Real life was where I messed up, and then I would go to Juliet, and she would sort it all out. It helped that she was my boss. Yes. You can laugh now. I had been shagging my boss from day one of my employment with the company that paid my overinflated wages. There was no policy against it, and Juliet wasn’t a bad boss. She was fair, and…she was lovely. She adored me almost as much as I adored her. She understood me in a way that nobody had before, and she got me. She tried, and she tried hard. Her voice rang through my frazzled brain, a calming mantra. Just talk it out, Bash. Say all the words.

I had no words, because whilst I had messed up in the past, this one was a whole new…

Shit. Double shit. Triple-fucking-shit on a stick.

I managed to get myself together and find clothes in my upturned bag. I even packed it, haphazardly throwing my belongings in there like I was running away. I wasn’t. Adulthood was weighing on my shoulders, but I did know how to behave. We had to check out and catch flights home, yet the truth was right there slapping me square in the face.

I’d cheated on my fiancée. With my best friend. I had to laugh out loud because that brutal, monstrous fact was simply ridiculous. This was a whole new low, and I wasn’t like this. I didn’t… I hadn’t… Fuck.

Fuck, I wished I was home but not in the pristine flat I shared with Juliet. I longed for my childhood bedroom, a cup of tea from my mum in the familiar stained teapot and a reassuring hug from my dad. Comfort in a space where I didn’t always fuck up. I’d taken Jake there. My parents loved him. Everyone loved Jake, even Juliet. She’d sometimes say she’d have married him if he wasn’t gay and she’d had to settle for good old Bash instead. One of her usual jokes. I always loved that about her. That she loved Jake as much as I did.

Crap.

I left my bags and skulked down to the breakfast room, having realised I had less than twenty minutes to eat before service ended. Then we had to get on the tram right outside the hotel to get to the airport. Normal things that normal people did, but I didn’t feel normal. Not anymore.

Being me was no joke, despite being the person who tried to joke about everything.

I was Bastien Dewaert. I was a good person. Somewhere deep down, I really was. I didn’t hurt people, not on purpose. I needed to apologise, explain and…

Fuck. Double and Triple fuck. Quad-fucking-tastic.

Jake was sitting between Will and Kieron, who both looked up and greeted me with shit-eating grins. Jake didn’t even blink, just took another sip of coffee as I walked off in search of my own caffeine and food.

Coffee and nutrition acquired, I placed my plate and cup on the table, sat down and tried to breathe.

“Head all right?” Oliver asked. “That is one hell of a shiner.”

“You look like shit, Bash,” Anil said, I think. I wasn’t looking, concentrating instead on cutting off a piece of bacon and sticking it in my mouth, followed by a forkful of egg. Protein was good. I knew far too well what I looked like .

“Jakey here hasn’t said a word. I think you might have finished him off.”

I blushed, and cringed, even though I had no idea what they were on about.

“Shouldn’t have had those last shots, mate.” Backslaps. Laughter. I wasn’t laughing.

I wanted to grab Jake and leave. I wanted him in a room, alone, so I could do the word thing. Spill all the truths and feelings and anxieties and bloody needs and wants and…and…

I was scared. I was so frightened of everything around me right now and knowing it was all my doing.

Fuck-up was my middle name, but this was on an epic scale, even for me. People who were getting married to people they loved did not do things like this. People who were normal and sane looked after themselves, and most of all, they looked after the people they cared for. They thought before they spoke, and they didn’t…

I couldn’t even think the thoughts. Couldn’t acknowledge it to myself. I never had. There was so much wrong with me already; I simply didn’t need to explain that part of myself as well. I’d never been very good at…well, anything really.

“Can’t wait for that conference in August then, Bash? You’ll need to come now. We’ll have a blast.”

That was Oliver again. August. I racked my brain—financial think tank in Berlin, and beer. Someone asked if Oktoberfest was on then, and I shrugged, no energy to explain it would still be summer and the clue was in the name. Anyway, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. Not me. Not ever again.

I swallowed a mouthful of eggs and drained my cup, tried to breathe as I stared at Jake.

“We have a flight to catch,” I said, hoping my voice would hold for the entire sentence. It did. Just barely.

He looked away.

“Yeah, need to get back to the missus, eh? Soon you’ll be a married man, and all this fun will be over.” Laughter. Lots of it.

This wasn’t fun.

Nothing was.

How we made it to the airport was a mystery. He had the tickets. I had my bag and an enormous lump of lead in my chest. An overwhelming need to cry .

I could still feel him, everywhere. Bruises, and not just those from the bathtub or the lamppost that had left a shiny kiss under my eye.

His stubble had scratched invisible blistering sores on my skin. His kisses burned where I remembered them.

“You said this wasn’t your first time,” he suddenly said as we sat at our gate, our flight number blinking reassuringly from a screen. London Heathrow. Home.

I needed to be home.

“Bastien?”

I shook my head. Enough of an answer. All I could muster. All the earlier bravado of telling him everything? Now gone. I couldn't say a word.

I could feel his breathing, his disappointment like a heavy cloak on my shoulders. He needed answers. He no doubt had more questions—ones I couldn’t answer because I honestly struggled to explain it myself. Now more than ever, I needed Juliet. I needed her to talk me down from the panic that was building. I needed her to calm me, because right now Jake was nothing but a loud, white, buzzing noise that I couldn’t silence.

It was called guilt. And guilt was a fucking beast.

So I kept my mouth shut, boarded the plane and took the window seat. Leaning my head against the window, I pulled my hood over my head and pretended to sleep.

We didn’t make eye contact again until we were outside arrivals at Heathrow, and he muttered something about a taxi. I shook my head, desperate to escape this awful tension between us. I needed space, and I got it, as he walked away before I could get my mouth working and left me standing there, shivering despite the warm June evening.

I was getting married in two weeks.

I should have been blissfully happy. Instead, I threw up in a corner next to a lift and wiped my mouth, tears stinging my cheeks as I set off for the Tube and home. Wherever the hell that was.

By the time I got my key in the door, I had fully lost my marbles. Now this was why I was marrying Juliet, because she didn’t behave like other women. She didn’t do the whole kiss and hug and how was your day? thing. No. She took one look at me and crossed her arms.

Curls everywhere. Long gorgeous red hair and a tracksuit that hugged every curve, she was a stunning woman, and impressive. She ran marathons, did Judo at a national level…and ran a major financial company. She also crocheted and read books and somehow slept at night.

I needed to learn how to crochet. She said it calmed the soul. Sadly, my soul had buggered off years ago and been replaced by a bubbling cocktail of something that ran on insulin and chaos.

Mostly chaos.

“Sit down,” she commanded in a voice that meant business. She nodded towards the living room yet disappeared into the kitchen. Seconds later, she returned with a plate of sliced peppers, a pot of hummus and a glass of water. I drank it in one go.

“Don’t lie to me, because I’ll get the truth out of Jake anyway, although I’m a bit concerned, given I haven’t heard from him since last night. I’ll ring him later, but anyway, you have mischief and thunder written all over your face alongside that bruise. And guilt. So make it good. Your fuck-up this time had better be worthwhile.”

She was expecting fun stories. Light-hearted banter and laughter. I had none of those to give.

“We should have gone to Paris,” I said quietly.

“Told you so,” she agreed. “But you were adamant you wanted a lads’ weekend and not a fancy cultural experience.”

“You had a very cultural experience last time we were in Paris, I recall.”

Juliet smirked at that. The French wine and losing her fancy handbag on the Metro were still sore points. But Edinburgh or Paris, the outcome would still have been the same. I would still have… Ugh. Fuck.

“It’s bad, isn’t it? You look awful.”

She could always read me. So could our dog Flossie. Yeah. Laugh all you want, I’d bought her for Juliet’s birthday and named her in front of all of our friends, who agreed it was apt because she was a small mongrel and looked like a rag of used dental floss. White, brown and messy. A bit like me. I suppose that’s why I’d chosen her. Juliet had threatened to kill me. The last thing she’d wanted was a pet. Who the fuck was going to walk that thing?

I walked her. I fed her. On occasion, Juliet patted her on the head, for show, rolling her eyes at my stupidity, but she’d kept her, because she loved me. Because she cared. Because she was a good and decent human being. A woman who loved me.

I made a weird noise like I was choking.

“Do I need to ring Jake?” she asked softly. “Or are you going to tell me what is going on so you can get all that tension out of your shoulders. I can see you, Bash. Read you like a bloody book. What did you do?”

What did I not do? Same as always, I drank, pissed people off, hurt the ones I loved, and then I went back to work like it didn’t matter. I masked everything with bravado, smiled that shit-eating grin of mine and carried on as if I didn’t care. But I did. I just pretended not to. It was easier that way.

“I can’t do this, Jules.”

“What part of this can’t you do?”

All the questions. I was so tired of them. I didn’t need questions. I needed peace. For someone to take it all away from me and just let me… I couldn’t even as k for what I needed, because I didn’t know. Didn’t understand it. Just. Everything. Anything. Nothing.

“Bastien.” She shuffled onto the sofa, sat up straighter. “We’ve invested almost sixty grand in this wedding. We have a hundred people coming to watch us get married. Sit-down dinner. Dance. We’ve hired a band. A fucking five-tier cake. But you know what? None of that matters if you have a good reason for not being able to ‘ do this’ .” She did quotation marks with her fingers.

Juliet didn’t get angry. She got stern, solid. But she looked frazzled. I didn’t blame her.

“Open your fucking mouth before I blow a fuse here. What is it you can’t do?”

“I don’t know,” I said weakly.

Because I was weak. A liar. A cheater. An idiot.

She made that blowing noise, the one where she shrugged and coughed at the same time. Where she put herself together.

“I’m going to—” she started, but I cut her off.

“I love you.” Weak. Bad. Truth and lies in one pot. “I do. You’ve been so good for me.”

“I love you too,” she said. “Which is why we’re getting married. Why we’re trying to buy a house in bloody Essex and trying for a baby. And why you’re pissing me off right now. I know you’re hungover, and I kind of don’t want to know what else you’ve done. Seriously, Bash, you’re scaring me a little here.”

No shit, Jules. I was shit scared myself. Because truths weighed more than lies, and I had a feeling mine were about to betray me. That or I would burst into tears like a toddler and beg Juliet to sort me out.

I needed her to sort me out. Anything but the alternative. I couldn’t face the alternative.

“What did you do?” she asked, not softly this time, leaning closer, her eyes piercing into my skull.

“I got drunk. Did a load of stupid shit. Walked into a lamppost, lost my watch and got hypo at the end.” All of that was true.

“And?” she prompted. Yes. I wasn’t done, and she knew it. The way I was wringing my hands and panting was totally giving me away. “Jake’s got your watch. He told me.”

Oh. I’d forgotten about that .

“I’m not a good person, Jules,” I spluttered out as my heart was racing. “I’m not good. I’m awful and horrible and do despicable things.”

“I know that already. But what, exactly, did you do?” Her voice was steady, strong. She was strong.

Stronger than I would ever be.

“Do you want me to give you options? Or can you for once be a grown-up and speak to me? Am I wasting my savings and my life here? Should I just cut my losses right now and walk away? This flat—I’ll cancel the contract tomorrow, I don’t fucking care, but just don’t lie to me. I can’t bear it. Can’t bear your stupid lies. So tell me the truth, Bash. Now.”

That was the moment when everything started to unravel. Everything. All my previous fuck-ups were paled to insignificance because this was the worst one of all. The biggest mistake. The one where my life imploded.

“I let Jake fuck me,” I whispered. Then I took a breath, and another one, and I waited for her to speak.

But she didn’t. And that was even worse.