In fact, not any day.
‘Noah, please… I’m not saying move back in together. I just mean start slow… see where it goes. We had almost twenty incredible years together. Surely that must mean something?’
‘It didn’t to you.’
She flinched like she’d been slapped and he felt a tug of regret, then pushed it to one side. No false hope.
‘I deserved that. But Noah, I can’t live with the guilt. It eats me up. Every. Single. Day. It’s the first feeling I get every morning, and the last feeling I get at night, and I can’t stand it. The guilt. The regret. The desperation to make it right, to have you back, to show you that I love you.’
‘No.’
‘Noah, I explained earlier, there were reasons that I did what I did…’
‘Anya, stop!’ His words were so sharp, they cut right through her argument. He took twenty pounds out of his wallet and placed it on the table for their drinks. ‘I’m going to go now because there’s nothing else to say. We’ll only start going over everything, re-litigating it all and doling out blame, and I think even your therapist would tell you that’s unhealthy. I wish the best for you, Anya, I truly do…’ He saw tears spring to her eyes when he said that. It was always the same. It wasn’t heartache that was the most upsetting thing to deal with. It was the kindness and sympathy that people showed when you were at your worst. That’s what broke down the walls that people put upto protect them from pain. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for and get the life you want to live.’ His tone was still calm, firm, quiet. ‘But it won’t be with me. I’m sorry.’
He wasn’t sorry for his response, but sorry because she’d come all this way and it had been a wasted trip.
On the way to the door, he gestured goodbye to a surprised Carlo, then just kept right on walking. If this were a romcom, he’d realise the error of his ways and rush to the airport five minutes before her flight took off to tell her he’d changed his mind and he loved her and they’d all live happily ever after. This wasn’t that. This was goodbye. Anya had pride and she had dignity, and most of all, she knew him well enough to believe that he wouldn’t change his mind. Something deep in his gut told him that this was probably the last time he’d ever see her or speak to her. And that was fine. He was good with that. If there was anyone he’d rush to at midnight, and beg to stay, it would be Cheska. Could he honestly let her go? She was someone very special to him, and he was letting her walk away.
Jesus, what a day. He had absolutely no idea what he wanted any more, but he just knew that there was somewhere else he needed to be right now.
He left the restaurant, got into his Jeep and began to drive.
It took half an hour to get through the rush-hour traffic, but he didn’t mind the drive. Gave him a chance to think, to try to process everything that had happened to him today, although there were two things that kept coming to the surface again and again. The first was Cheska’s ultimatum. What a blindsiding moment that had been and he still hadn’t even begun to process it. And the second thing? Tress’s potential relationship with Rex. He couldn’t let her get hurt again, but she, of course, had to make her own choices. He just had to be there in case this guy was another asshole who didn’t keep his promises.
His car seemed to know where it was going, because he’d paid barely a thought to pointing it in the right direction and yet now it was pulling into the street he’d intended to come to.
He picked up his phone to take it with him and realised it was out of charge. He had no idea how long it had been that way. Last time he’d looked at it was when he was going into the restaurant to meet Anya, and, as always, he’d switched it to silent so any calls wouldn’t piss off the other diners. His mind might have been slightly too occupied to check it when he left the building.
He put it in the glove compartment and jumped out of the car, making sure the Jeep was locked so none of the little toerags in the village could make off with his phone, his backpack or his laptop.
Crossing the pavement, he wasn’t surprised that the gate was locked. It had always been controlled by the local councillor who probably figured that nothing good ever happened in a park after dark.
He remembered telling Tress about this place when she was in labour, a year ago right now. At that moment, she couldn’t understand why Max hadn’t responded to her calls and texts telling him the baby was on the way and she was in the delivery suite. She’d had no idea it was because he was in the next building, his life ebbing out of him. Noah hadn’t told her because he didn’t want to risk her or the baby’s health, didn’t want to rob her of the joy of giving birth to her first child. Instead, he’d held her hand, told her anecdotes from the past.
He climbed over the gate, found his favourite bench, let his mind stray back to that night again, as he’d desperately tried to keep Tress’s spirits up. He’d told her how he and Max used to sneak into this park when they were kids, living in houses they could see from the gate he’d just jumped over. This had been their favourite hangout all through their childhood and teenage years and they were rarely out of it, so it was the place wherehe still felt closest to the past, to Max, to the life they’d all had before the crash.
‘My mum just treated Max like one of us,’ he’d told Tress that night. ‘She once pulled us all the way up the street by the backs of our jumpers because we got caught sneaking out of the house when he was sleeping over at ours.’
Tress had laughed, her fingers winding around Noah’s hand, ready to squeeze the life out of it when the next contraction came. ‘What age were you?’
Noah had shrugged. ‘Maybe eight? Nine?’
‘And where were you going? I presume it was at night-time?’
‘Yep, pitch-black. We were going to climb the fence into the park and play footie because we reckoned it would be brilliant to have the pitch all to ourselves.’
‘No, no, no,’ she’d chided him, playfully. ‘Let me see if I can correct you there. I bet it was Max who had the idea to do that, and you knew you wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it, so you went along with him, even though you were aware that there were very definite flaws in the plan.’
‘I’m not even going to ask how you know that.’
‘Because he hasn’t changed a bit,’ she’d said, her smile a curious mixture of happy and sad. ‘It’s one of the things about him that’s always scared me and thrilled me in equal measure. He’s fearless. Exhilarating. And I’ve never met anyone who loves life more or who’s so obsessed with living it to the fullest. But sometimes I worry he’ll go too far…’
Noah still hadn’t had the heart to tell her that ‘sometimes’ had already happened. His best friend their whole lives. His brother.
The pain of the memory momentarily brought him back to the present, to the bench in the park, and he put his head back, stared up at the sky, felt the warm salty water of his tears run down his cheeks. He’d said goodbye to Max later, full of shockand rage over what he’d found out that day, and the devastation that their selfish bastard actions had wreaked on all their lives.
Anya had been in surgery, where they were trying to save her life. Max was in a coma that would end with his death only a few hours later. Shocked, dazed, still wearing shoes that were stained with his wife’s blood, Noah had sat beside his bed, stared at the battered face of his best friend, and he spoke his truth.
