Page 41 of The Last Train Home
‘I know. I could see you working out whether you could push your feet off the ground before I caught up with you,’ he says.
I laugh loudly now. ‘Would you have broken into a run? Tackled me to the ground?’
‘No,’ he says softly. ‘But I’d have been devastated. That really would have been it for us.’
Us. A strange thing to say. We’re not an us. We’re just two people who met under awful circumstances and couldn’t make it work as friends, or as anything else. Although I did meet Sean through him, so I suppose Tom entering my life brought me that.
‘Tom,’ I start.
He downs the dregs of his first pint and moves the glass to the side, pulling his second towards him.
‘Why don’t you talk to Sean?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘He left, and I had a lot going on in my life. I messaged him a bit, but maybe he’s been too busy to reply. I assume you’re in contact with him, given what you said yesterday.’
I know he knows. Or rather, I know he’s worked it out, but he still wants me to say it.
So I tell him how it was only supposed to be a two-date thing, but the dates kept coming and we started to like each other. ‘We really get on,’ I tell him. I find myself justifying my decision to be with Sean. ‘He’s really nice.’
Tom smiles. ‘I’m pleased it’s working out for you both.’
‘We have fun together, and he loves me,’ I say. Tom’s head jerks a bit and I wonder if this is an oddly boastful thing to say, given I’m not sure where Tom and Samantha are at in the love department.
‘I wasn’t expecting …’ he says and then stops. ‘Doyoulovehim?’ he asks.
I pause. Why am I worried I’m going to hurt Tom? We were never a couple. We never got that far. I need to remind myself of that. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do love him.’
He doesn’t speak. Just sort of stares at me. ‘How long have you been together?’ he asks eventually.
‘Since early December.’
He lifts his pint glass to his lips, drinks, puts it back down again.
‘December,’ he mutters, as if trying to place what he was doing then or working out how it happened without him noticing. ‘Why didn’t you reply to any of my texts?’ he asks.
I should go. This was only meant to be a quick drink.
‘Oh, Tom. What do you want me to say?’
‘The truth,’ he says. ‘I was so sorry, and you didn’t want to hear it.’
‘No, I didn’t. I felt angry and humiliated. And you didn’t give me a reason why you did what you did. You left me standing there. Naked.’
‘I know,’ he says quietly. ‘And I’m so, so sorry. But it wasn’t meant to be like that, honestly. It’s pretty hard to keep going with it all, when I’m staring at a message telling me my life’s about to change. I couldn’t work out what to think, let alone what to say to you. I just had to stop. I had to … stop, Abbie. Do you think I wanted to get so close to doing – you know – what we were about to do and then simply walk away halfway through? Do you think I got off on that?’
‘I don’t know what you get off on, Tom. I really don’t. You baffle me.’
‘I baffle myself,’ he says into his raised glass. He drinks, puts it down. ‘I wanted you,’ he says, and I think an electrical current must be passing through my chair because every nerve in my body flickers to life. ‘You know that, right? Andyouwantedme,’ he says, when I don’t speak. He needs to stop now. This isn’t helpful. ‘And I fucked it up,’ he finishes.
‘Yes, you did,’ I respond and I feel a bit smug at that, and also a bit destroyed at the memory, despite the fact that I can’t even look at Tom while he’s talking about us having got so close to sleeping together.
‘It was for the best,’ he explains. ‘You and Inotsleeping together. It was the right thing to do.’
‘In hindsight … it was,’ I concur.
‘Also, I was a bit off my game after that message.’ He’s shooting for humour. I’m not sure he hit the target.
‘I’m not surprised.’ I’m aiming for humour too, because what else is there?
