Page 6 of Someone Like You

PHIL

T he small of his back and his knees ached when he got out of the shower. He did his best to stretch it out, with scarce results. His joints just weren’t used to that kind of exertion any more — or any exertion at all, for that matter.

Through the fogged mirror he could see the faint beginnings of a bruise surfacing in his left buttock.

The spot felt hot and tender and slightly swollen.

He should have applied some ice to it, but he was too tired to bother.

All he wanted was some cold grapefruit juice and his couch, but since the former was off-limits, he had to settle for orange.

As he limply leaned back into the cushions with the carton of juice, though, a strange epiphany hit him: he was physically tired, but his mind was uncharacteristically quiet. Clean .

His head fell back, eyes closing to relish the foreign sensation.

It was like catching a whiff of fresh air after being buried alive for months.

He felt better than he had in a long, long time.

This was definitely worth mentioning in his next session with Doctor Raji.

Maybe not all of it. Some details could be skipped, like the fact that he’d almost thrown fists with a stranger for something relatively stupid.

Doctor Raji would accuse him of self-sabotaging yet another chance to get out of his shell, and she would be absolutely right, so he wasn’t going to mention the annoying behemoth in their next session.

He chugged down half of the juice while scrolling on Instagram, watching his friends and family carrying on with their lives through a profusion of meaningless posts of beaches, drinks, dog walks…

He didn’t like any of them. He didn’t like them.

He envied them. Envied a time when he could take pleasure in those trivial everyday things that now felt like a chore.

He’d kill to be able to go out for dinner and see it as a treat.

As of now, the mere idea of doing any of the activities he saw in those posts sounded like a threat .

He’d gone his jog, though. Good enough. ‘Baby steps,’ Abby always told him, ‘you don’t need to climb mountains overnight.’

A glimpse of muscles swelling under damp black fabric flashed beneath his eyelids.

Phil’s eyes burst open as he almost choked on his own saliva.

He set the juice down, coughing so hard tears welled up in his eyes while desperately trying to catch his breath.

As soon as he managed to regain his composure, a sudden urge to do something — anything — took over him.

There was a cabinet in the small bathroom upstairs whose doors had been assembled upside-down: it’d been driving him crazy since they’d moved in, but he’d never found the willpower to fix it.

But that moment sounded like the perfect moment to finally tackle it.

He’d just finished adjusting the hinges when Abby walked in, hair frizzy from the humidity.

“Hey!” Her smile faltered when she saw the screwdriver in Phil’s hand, but then her attention moved to the cabinet and the smile expanded again, ten times wider. “You fixed it!” She was making it sound like he’d extinguished world hunger.

“It’s just a cabinet,” he said, tossing the screwdriver into the bag on the ground .

Abby looked like she wanted to argue, but she was smarter than that and just smacked a kiss on Phil’s cheek. “Thank you for your service.”

It wasn’t ‘just a cabinet’ and Phil knew it. It was the first productive thing, however insignificant, he’d done since the burnout, and that had to count for something. He couldn’t wait to tune into his next therapy session with bragging rights .

“How was your run?” Abby inquired.

This time Phil was able to block the glimpse of rippling pecs out of his mind before it could affect him.

“Good,” he said in a tone that he hoped would sound nonchalant. “I managed to go almost five miles straight and lived to tell the tale. Kinda.”

“Kinda?”

The nonchalance flew out of the window as Phil thought back to the incident. Twinkling blue eyes. That deep voice taunting him.

He shifted from foot to foot, crossing his arms. “I had a little mishap with this other runner. Nothing serious,” he quickly clarified, seeing Abby’s face fall, “but wait until you see the bruise on my ass.”

Abby giggled. “Did you have a Hallmark movie moment with some sexy knockout?”

A hot flare spread in Phil’s stomach. “You could definitely say that,” he heard himself reply. He had not intended to say that, but Abby didn’t notice his fumbling.

“Oh, really?” she teased. “Was she prettier than me?”

Phil snorted. “He definitely had bigger tits than you.”

“Mmm, interesting.”

“More like infuriating .”

Abby’s expression turned from amused to apprehensive. “Please, tell me you didn’t pick up a fight.”

Phil stifled a groan. He’d recently developed anger issues — a common side effect of Seroxat, he’d been told —, which had just added to the list of reasons why he tended to avoid social situations.

“You have no idea how badly I wanted to,” he admitted .

Abby brought a hand to her forehead with a mournful sigh. “ Phil …”

That old pang of guilt Phil had been living with for months jabbed his chest again. He didn’t deserve someone who cared about him as much as Abby did.

“What if I told you,” he promptly added, “that we had a good laugh about it over a coffee?”

“Really?”

“Yep. There’s this lovely café by the park, La Dolce Vita . We should go some time.”

But Abby wasn’t listening. She had brought her hands to her mouth and looked like she was about to cry. “I can’t believe you actually interacted with someone! Any chance you’ll be seeing this guy again?”

Phil swallowed. The flare in his stomach was back, hotter than before.

No, he didn’t want to see Ian Galloway again, not even from afar.

But Abby looked so proud of him, and so hopeful, that Phil figured it couldn’t hurt to indulge her.

He’d been a terrible boyfriend in the last year, barely present mentally, even less physically, and Abby had been nothing but a supportive angel to him, sticking with him through all his shit without ever asking for anything in return.

If he could give her just a crumb of solace, he would.

“Could be,” he said with a shrug. Good answer: vague, noncommittal. Worked for everyone. It was definitely worth the light Phil saw spreading across Abby’s features.

“I know this is hard for you, okay?” Abby took his face between her hands, the pads of her thumbs stroking his jaw.

“I don’t want to force you, but… Maybe don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?

” She looked up at him with those Bambi eyes of hers.

“Promise me you’ll be nice if you run into this guy again. ”

There wasn’t much Phil could do to resist that pleading look. If he wasn’t willing to try for himself, he had to do it for Abby.

“Sure.” He tilted his head impishly. “I’ll buy him flowers and take him out for dinner. ”

“Phil!”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed, startling himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed .

Abby looked shocked, too, but in a good way. She held up her little finger in front of him with an encouraging smile. “Pinky promise?”

And at this point it just came naturally to Phil to hook his own little finger around hers and promise that, starting tomorrow, he was going to try and be a better version of himself.

* * *

Holding up the promise was easier than expected, because through the whole week Phil didn’t even need to make an effort.

He went out every morning around 9, ran his five miles, popped into La Dolce Vita to grab a quick decaf espresso, then rushed home feeling galvanised and regenerated. No Scottish beefcakes in sight.

When, on Wednesday, Abby asked if he’d seen Ian again, an innocent lie rolled out of Phil’s mouth before he could stop it.

“Yeah, we’re starting to hit it off. He’s not as bad as I thought.”

“See?” Abby beamed. “I told you things would be looking up!”

Phil had trouble falling asleep that night, harrowed by his own insincerity.

He wanted to believe it was for the best, that there was nothing wrong with wanting to make it less distressing for Abby to leave for her business trips, but Thursday came and another little lie slipped — ‘Yeah, Ian showed me a new route today’ — and another one on Friday — ‘I’m keeping up just fine with his pace’ — and on Saturday morning Phil woke up feeling like crap after a night of restless tossing and turning, that old impression that something was missing stronger and more debilitating than ever.

When he went to the bathroom, he cringed at the state of himself: puffy eyes, dark circles around them, worse than usual. He let the water run until it was ice-cold and washed his face several times, hoping it would take away some of that ghastly air he had. Predictably, it didn’t do much .

Abby was in the master bathroom, buried neck deep in mint-scented bubbles that filled up the tub to the brim. She had a towel around her head and her eyes closed, but one eye cracked open when she sensed Phil’s presence.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

A foot lifted out of the water and dragged sultrily along the border of the tub. “Wanna join?”

‘No,’ Phil thought way before his automatic response to that kind of question kicked in and he apologised one more time for not being in the right mood for that .