Page 11 of Someone Like You

“Some days are harder than others, some are better. It’s just that my idea of better doesn’t coincide with Abby’s idea.

” Phil blew out some air through his nose, as if squeezed from the inside.

“Wherever she goes, she’s the life of the party,” he said.

“She thrives when she’s surrounded by people and activity .

I’m pretty much the opposite. She respects it — always has —, she just…

doesn’t get it. An d this means that whenever I seek isolation, she worries it’s getting bad again and I might do something stupid, when all I need is just… a breather.”

Ian understood the sentiment down to the very bottom of his soul, but could also understand Abigail’s apprehension.

“She cares about you.”

“I know,” Phil cut him off. He rubbed the side of his neck, head hanging helplessly.

“I’ve been such a dick to her so many times and she’s still—” His cracking voice forced him to stop and take a breath.

Ian felt for him. He’d have never imagined that so much strength and so much fragility could coexist in the same person.

“She’s engaged to someone who’s a ghost of the man she said yes to.

” Phil’s eyes were vacantly fixed on the table, lost somewhere distant.

“I wish she would just… move on without me.”

Ian could read between the lines: ‘She deserves better, but I’m not selfless enough to leave her.’

It took an awful lot of guts to admit that, if just implicitly.

That wasn’t something you could say in the face of the woman you loved, not when she was so determined to stand by you no matter what.

Abigail was a rare kind of person: loyal through and through, and not out of guilt or responsibility, as Phil believed.

“I’ve known that woman for two hours,” Ian stated, “and can tell that she loves you to the moon and back.”

“Yeah, and because of that she’s stuck with a loser who hasn’t touched her in over a year.”

Abby’s laugh resonated in the flat, muffled and distant.

A laugh full of joy that didn’t belong to someone who was unhappy with their life.

And yet the sound of it shrouded Phil with sadness, adding further weight to the invisible burden hunching his shoulders.

Ian didn’t know how they’d got to this level of intimacy, but Phil baring his most vulnerable side to him toppled something inside him.

Seeing Phil like this ignited a fierce instinct he’d ever felt before — not for humans, anyway.

An urge to comfort. To embrace and protect .

He poured himself some wine, hoping it’d wash away the bittersweet constriction in his chest. “Have you considered,” he said after a swig, “that you might be more important than sex to her?”

Phil’s sombre expression said that, yes, he’d considered it, and it wasn’t a consolation. The very opposite, in fact.

“This is not what she signed up for.”

“And yet she’s still here, meaning she accepted the update to the terms and conditions.”

Phil reached for his glass, stared sourly at the Pepsi swirling inside it. “I can’t become her husband when the best I’ve been to her in the last two years is a lousy friend.”

“That’s more than a lot of husbands out there can say.”

Phil ducked his head with a silent laugh. “You’re a skilled rhetorician.” The gaze that lifted on Ian was a pinch less burdened and brimming with that haunting softness again. “Ever contemplated being a writer?”

The only thing Ian was contemplating at the moment was so foolish and forbidden he felt ashamed of himself.

“Nah.” He turned to the wine again, draining the whole glass, but it didn’t make any difference. “I’m just good at yappin’.”

Phil smiled. “That’s what I thought.”

Ian couldn’t bear to look at him. Phil didn’t miss the change in his mood and scrutinised him with a deep crease between his brows, mutely asking what was wrong. Ian was saved by Abby’s return.

“Sorry, it was my mum.” A halo of sunshine spread in the room as Abigail came in. She laid the tiramisù on the table, then took some small plates out of a cupboard behind her “Everything alright here?”

“Peachy,” said Phil with his eyes still glued into Ian’s. He, too, had the look of a deer caught in the headlights, and though the conversation resumed smoothly, Phil’s question still lingered in the air, floating around Ian, begging to be answered.

But Ian didn’t have one, didn’t know why he felt responsible for a man who wasn’t his to care for.

‘But I know it’s happening, and it tortures me. ’

He chased the quote out of his head before the rest of the poem unfolded and made things worse.

An hour later, on the way home, he couldn’t remember what the tiramisù tasted like or what they’d talked about while they ate it. He’d sat there, chatting, conversing, but he hadn’t really been there.

He’d been trapped in his head with thoughts that had no business existing, too weak to ignore them, too stunned to fight them, riddled with guilt and shame that couldn’t fully overshadow the unnamable warmth dwelling in his chest.

There was a new text notification on his phone when he got home from an unknown number.

When he opened it, his heart sank. Kibble ran to him, meowing sweetly, and demanded to be picked up.

With Kibble nestled over his shoulder, he leaned back against the door and reread the text twice, elation and remorse battling in his conscience.

Everything he couldn’t admit he wanted, handed out to him on a silver platter with a blessing .

He felt dirty — a dirty, selfish opportunist, because he barely had any hesitation when he texted back: ‘I’ve got this.’