Page 32 of Someone Like You

“I’d do anything for you, Phil,” he said, wearing his heart on his sleeve like a heavy chain.

“But I won’t cause any harm to Abigail.” He silenced Phil with a gloomy look before he could argue.

“She was here first. She’s been by your side all along, faced the worst with you…

She’s earned more love and respect than me. ”

He received a nod, but it was a painfully contemptuous one.

“So this is what we’re doing here? Piling everything on a fucking scale to see who went through more shit for Phil? Wow. Doesn’t make me feel like a burden at all.” Phil rabidly kicked a chair, startling an old lady and her dog who were just strolling by. Ian felt that kick in his guts.

“Don’t twist my words,” he pleaded, but that didn’t placate Phil’s rage.

“I know what you’re saying. You’re saying she’s earned me more than you.”

“She has.”

“What I want doesn’t count?” There was impatience in Phil’s tone, but deeper than that, forced back behind it, something else was lurking. Something fragile and vulnerable and conflicted .

“And what is it that you want?” asked Ian. “A foot in two camps?”

Phil winced. “No.” Contrition tinged his expression. “Just to be honest with Abby, come what may.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’ll decide what to do with me.”

Abigail abandoning Phil was a circumstance Ian just couldn’t conceive. He barely knew her, but could tell how much they had in common, starting from an unsinkable determination to do what was best for him, and right now the best Ian could do for him was let him go.

“I don’t want to be anyone’s basketball practice , Handsome.”

Thunder roared in the distance. A car sped by, splashing dirty water on the pavement. Phill stood there, pale as a ghost, watching Ian with flattened brows.

“I never asked you to be! I’d never do anything behind Abby’s back!”

And that’s why I love you.

Ian caught himself off guard with that thought.

He’d never said it back.

It was too late. Saying it now wouldn’t do anyone any favour.

In another life…

“You know we can’t go on like this.”

Phil stood in his face, the anger still there, but now submerged by petrifying dread. He fisted the lapels of Ian’s jacket. “Why do I feel like this is a goodbye speech?”

This was the memory Ian would have to live with: Phil’s desperation and the grief in his beautiful eyes as their last goodbye shattered his heart.

Ian couldn’t hug him, couldn’t kiss him, couldn’t tell him he loved him, but he couldn’t not reach up to take his cheek into his hand one last time.

He caressed him fondly, soft skin and beard, the sharp cheekbone and the wrinkles fanning out of the corner of the eye.

That adorable crooked nose was going to haunt his dreams until his dying day.

“I’ve always known you’re too shrewd for your own good. ”

With tight lips, Phil nodded gravely, like he truly understood. “Maybe in another life fate was kinder to us.”

“It was kind enough to put you on my path. I’m not complainin’.”

“Can we at least… keep running together? Just running, no talking.”

“Like it was always supposed to be?”

“Yes.”

The hand Ian had on Phil’s hip twitched. “Better not make the same mistake twice.”

Surrender stripped the last vestige of hope out of Phil’s look and the fight out of his body.

“Not seeing you,” he said meekly, “isn’t gonna change how I feel.”

Ian felt his chest go cold, tighten, and crack. “You’ll get over it,” he soothed, but deep down he knew it was a white lie — one he was trying to sell to himself.

“No, I won’t.” Phil swallowed, a watery shimmer gathering in his eyes.

He hastily wiped it away with the cuff of his pullover, then stopped to stare at the wet stains in the fabric like it was some wondrous phenomenon.

“Well, look at this.” A cynical chuckle heaved out of him. “Didn’t think I still had it in me.”

The sight of Phil’s tears inflamed Ian’s protective instinct. He wrangled it back into its cage, reminding himself that he was the cause of those tears. It was his cue to go before his willpower toppled and left him with no defences and no rational thinking to hold him back.

“Go back inside, you’re shakin’.”

Reddened hazel eyes lifted on him like weapons. “It’s not the cold.”

Not a single fibre in Ian’s mind, body, and soul wanted to leave, but it was now or never. He needed to believe that it was for the best, for all of them. Phil would move on. One broken heart was better than three .

“Take care of yourself, old man,” he said, taking a step back, away from Phil and the raw emotion strewn across his pale face, but before he could take another step Phil grabbed his wrist. For a moment Ian thought, almost hoped , that Phil would try to stop him, but Phil just pulled at the elastic bracelet on his own wrist and transferred it to Ian, pushing it past the large hand.

The gesture etched a harrowing sorrow in Ian’s already crestfallen soul. He wanted to rip it off and give it back, because it burned like live embers on his skin, but Phil’s supplicant look paralysed him.

“Just keep it. Please.”

It fit a bit too snugly and looked comical buried in his dark hair, but if a pink plastic trinket was all he got to keep of Phil Hanson, then it’d be his most prized possession.

He accepted the gift without question, without even glancing up.

Phil stood there, frozen, and watched powerlessly as Ian brushed past him, hands jammed back into the jacket’s pockets, and walked away in the rain, never looking back.