Page 34

DELILAH

It’s only a couple of days before I hear from him, but it feels like another four months.

Because seeing Jem again cemented something for me. That I love him.

I’m completely in love with him, to be precise.

I think I probably always have been. I’ve just been too immature to fully realise it.

I feel like I’ve grown up a lot recently, though. I just wish I knew how to prove that to him.

Not that it would necessarily change anything for him in terms of how he feels about me.

Even after I told him about what I’d been doing for the last few months, he didn’t seem to see it as anything special, from the way he reacted. Or, more to the point, didn’t react.

But, I guess, judging it against most grown-up people’s actions, it probably isn’t that special.

It’s leaps for me, though.

I’m proud of myself. And that’s what really matters.

And if I only ever get to be friends with him, then so be it. I’ll just have to accept that.

But if that is the case, I’m going to go down fighting – if you’ll excuse the innuendo.

To that end, I find myself standing outside the door to Jem’s flat in a 1930s red-brick mansion block in Marylebone at midday on Saturday, preparing myself for the worst, but hoping for the best.

Apparently, my brain appears to be too addled to think in anything other than comforting clichés right now.

I wait, with my heartbeat thumping in my ears, for him to open the door to me.

When he does, the sight of him literally takes my breath away. Seriously, I can barely drag a breath into my lungs, I’m suddenly so overwhelmed.

‘Hey,’ he says, giving me a strained-looking smile.

For one horrible moment, I wonder whether he’s changed his mind about seeing me.

‘Everything okay?’ I ask, aware of a tremble in my voice.

Keep it together, Delilah.

‘Yeah. Fine. I was just doing a bit of coding and forgot what time it was,’ Jem says distractedly. ‘Come in a sec.’

I nod and step into his flat, closing the door behind me.

Why am I feeling so disappointed? Did I really think he was going to bound up to the door and delightedly drag me inside and kiss me?

Only in my dreams, it seems.

I cross my arms and go to lean against the wall in the hall to wait for him as he disappears further into the flat.

‘Actually, do you mind if I finish what I was doing?’ he calls. ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes. The place doesn’t take bookings at lunchtime so we can go whenever we’re ready.’

‘Sure,’ I say, though it’s clear I don’t actually have a say in this.

Kicking off my shoes and hanging my coat on a peg on the wall, I walk in the direction he disappeared and find myself in a living-kitchen-diner. Jem is sitting at the counter, tapping away on a laptop.

‘Feel free to make yourself a cup of tea,’ he says, not looking up from the screen.

I nod, which of course he doesn’t see, then go to find mugs and teabags in his kitchen. I make two cups of tea and put one onto the counter next to him, then go and sit on a couch which is pushed up against the back wall, under a window that looks out over a park on the other side of the road.

I sip my tea and watch him as he works, finding I’m relieved to have a bit of time to pull myself together before I get his attention again. I don’t want to spin out and make a mess of this and scare him off.

After another minute or two of furious typing, he finally shuts his laptop and picks up his tea, walking over to where I’m sitting and joining me on the couch. The cushion dips as he sits down and I shift my position so I can turn to look at him comfortably.

He looks back at me, his gaze searching mine. There’s an unreadable expression on his face and it’s making me nervous.

Huh. I thought he’d want to go out straight away, not sit here and chat.

‘How was your week?’ he asks, then takes a sip of tea.

‘Fine. Nothing much to report,’ I say. ‘How about you?’

‘Yeah. Fine,’ he says. ‘Busy.’

Okay, if we’re just going to bat small talk back and forth, this could turn out to be excruciating. And I’m not having that.

I want the easy friendliness we had on the island back again. So much, it hurts.

So I decide just to dive straight in.

‘Bea tells me you’ve been in regular touch with her. I think she really appreciates it. It’s made it easier for her to forge ahead with what she really wants to do with her life.’

Jem seems a little taken aback at my segue into such a potentially controversial topic, but he recovers quickly and gives me a tight smile.

‘Yeah, well, she’s one of my best friends. I was never going to hold that against her. You’ve got to go with the flow sometimes, right? There’s no point getting upset about something that was never meant to be.’

My heart starts to race as I consider asking him the thing that’s been on my mind constantly for the last four months. I really want to know the answer, but then I also don’t, especially if it’s not what I want to hear.

But I have to. It’s important I know where I stand, so I can get on with my life, one way or the other.

Better to get it over and done with now, while we’re in the privacy of his flat, instead of in front of a bunch of strangers in a restaurant, I figure.

I take a breath, open my mouth, shut it, then give myself an internal shake and before I lose my nerve, I ask, ‘Are you still in love with her?’

He looks at me for a beat and I stare back at him, trying to work out what the expression on his face means. Every nerve in my body is jumping in anticipation.

Finally, he shakes his head, frowns and says, ‘No. I don’t think I ever was. I idealised her, I think. But I put her so high on a pedestal, I couldn’t touch her.’

Sweet relief rushes through me from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes.

I can’t help the widest grin from breaking across my face. ‘But you could touch me?’

He grins back. ‘Yes. I very much wanted to touch you. A little too much, some might say, for someone who was set on not having a relationship at that point.’

I swallow past a tightness that’s forming in my throat.

‘I think the idea of loving Bea was safe because we were probably never going to actually get together, only in my imagination,’ Jem says, seemingly unaware of how his confession is affecting me.

‘Whereas you – you were danger personified. You made me feel things. Things I didn’t want to feel.

Things I couldn’t put a name to. I was fascinated by you, but scared of you as well.

I think, in my mind, you weren’t a safe bet.

I thought you’d get bored with someone as straight as me and leave.

And I couldn’t bear the idea of being left by another person I love.

I know that probably sounds ridiculous, but after losing my dad so suddenly, then my mum so slowly, I’m scared of the idea of loving someone else in case I lose them too. ’

I nod, still fighting with the tightness in my throat. ‘That’s not ridiculous. That’s being human.’

‘Yeah. I guess,’ he says, giving me a sad smile that nearly breaks my heart.

‘I know I put up a good front,’ I say quietly, ‘but I’ve never felt completely secure either, especially after my parents divorced.

But before that too, because for as long as I can remember, they were always at each other’s throats, each threatening to leave the other on a regular basis, in front of Bea and me too.

I thought at one point, I’d be relieved if they split up, but when it actually happened, it changed everything, and not in a good way.

It turned our whole lives upside down and pulled Bea and me further apart.

So, I guess I’ve always felt a bit… lost and kind of alone, but I learnt how to pretend to everyone that it didn’t bother me, when actually, it really, really did. ’

‘Yeah. I know exactly how that feels,’ he says with such emotion in his voice, it stops me in my tracks.

And it suddenly hits me that of course he knows what that feels like.

His parents relied on him to keep them all going for so long, he’s never felt safe to show his real feelings either.

Never felt that security that I crave too.

He’s always been alone, dealing with very serious things, being the adult in the room because no one else has been in good-enough health to do it.

Oh my God. How utterly na?ve have I been about what he’s had to go through? At least I’ve had Bea. He’s had no one.

He still has no one.

My memory jumps back to his expression when he talked about how his mum doesn’t recognise him any more, and my heart gives a painful throb.

It strikes me how his life and mine have been so very different.

There’s no wonder he’s been so scathing of my behaviour in the past. He just saw me swanning around, flitting from one thing to the next, seemingly without a care in the world, when at the end of the day, he had to go and visit someone he loved who barely recognised him or acknowledged his presence.

It’s been a long time since someone looked after him .

‘Jem?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘Okay.’

‘I love you.’ I swallow past the lump forming in my throat and rush on, before I lose my nerve.

‘I think about you all the time. And I miss you. So much, it physically hurts.’ I tap my chest, over my heart.

‘Right here. And I don’t expect you to say that back to me,’ I go on, before he has chance to reply.

‘I know you’ve got more important things to worry about right now and I’m not your type and I’m, let’s face it, a bit of a nightmare, but I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re amazing and I’ll always be there for you, even if it’s just as a friend – if that’s what you want.

I don’t want you to be lonely any more. It breaks my heart to think that you are. ’

I’m aware that my hand holding my cup of tea is shaking and slopping tea onto my lap. Jem notices too, because he takes the cup from me and turns to put it onto the table next to him, along with his own.