“I’ve done something…I’ve made someone feel like shit.”
“Go on…”
“And they didn’t deserve it.”
“Mmm…and who are we talking about?”
“Don’t go too far.”
Ian raises his hands. “Okay, that’s fine. I won’t push it.”
“Good. Because you won’t get another word out of me.”
He stands up, looking at me.
“You can always make things up to them.”
“Maybe it’s better to just leave it as it is.”
“It depends how much you care about this person.”
“I don’t care about them, they’re…no one,” I say through my teeth.
“Okay, whatever you say,” he says, heading towards the exit, before turning to me again. “By the way, if youdodecide to be a man about this, you still remember where she lives – right?”
Shit.
* * *
I drivealong the road that leads up to her house about ten times, maybe more. I go past it, turn around, then pass it again. Her car is there, parked in the driveway. The lights are on, but I can’t see what’s going on inside. I park a few houses down and wait. I wait for logic to come back to me, for my brain to start working again, to tell me that stepping onto that driveway will take me twenty steps backwards.
I had no right to treat her like that. To have sex with her and then leave, like the worst kind of arsehole. That wasn’t what I went to the café for, but when I see her…I lose control. And it isn’t a good thing: it’s a fucking nightmare. A huge problem that I have to solve as soon as possible.
Someone knocks on the car window, making me jump. I wind the window down and say hi, as if I weren’t lurking a few houses away from his own.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. Straight to the point.
“I…er…I was…”
“I warned you. It didn’t take you long, I thought you were tougher than that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
“I’m not.”
He walks around to the other side of the car, then opens the passenger door and sits down next to me. “So…let’s imagine you’re not here, three houses away from mine because you don’t have the balls to get caught…”
“Let’s say that…” I say.
“And let’s say that you haven’t been a huge bastard to my mum…”
I swallow loudly, but don’t respond to him.
“And let’s say that she hasn’t spent the whole night on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, and that I didn’t find an empty ice cream tub on the coffee table. And I’m talking akiloof ice cream.”
I stay silent.
