‘I liked that last song you played,’ I said, clearing my throat a little too loudly.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Mmm, I think it was my favourite.’
There was a pause before Luca replied. ‘Really?’
‘What?’ I asked, half-laughing up at his dubious expression. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
Luca shook his head, some unspoken thought burying itself into thevthat had appeared on his forehead. ‘Nothing, it’s just – out of all of my songs that’s probably the most depressing.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t think it was depressing. It was honest. Raw. It was kind of beautiful, actually.’
‘Beautiful,’ Luca mused quietly to himself, both elbows leaning on the mint-green railings as we came to a stop.
‘Did you write it about Rachel?’
I heard his breath catch sharp and fast at the back of his throat and his head snapped to look at me, a flash of surprise across his face at the sound of her name. And something else. Something darker. Gone was the loose-hipped, carefree guy I’d been dancing with not ten minutes earlier. He’d been replaced by this tense version of Luca who couldn’t quite meet my gaze, the muscles in his forearms rippling beneath his t-shirt.
‘Jasmine might have mentioned her,’ I admitted guiltily, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
Luca’s jaw clenched, his knuckles turning white around the railings.
We stood in silence for a long time, nothing but the sound of the waves lapping at the pebbles on the beach below, theair thick with salt and words unspoken. That stomach-twisting feeling of having said the wrong thing squirmed inside of me, causing my feet to scuff noisily against the pavement.
‘Yes,’ Luca said eventually. He was still staring determinedly at the horizon, the sky now so dark that it was almost impossible to tell where it ended and the ocean began. ‘Yes, I wrote it about Rachel,’ he repeated, faltering ever so slightly when he said her name. ‘And someone else.’
My heart sped up in my chest but I asked a different question to the one I really wanted to ask. ‘Did it help?’
I hated the hope in my voice, lingering pathetically in the still, warm air between us. Luca didn’t answer for a while and I wondered if he’d heard it too. And realised that I wasn’t asking just for him, but also for me. My eagerness to find some secret solution, some miracle cure that would stop this constant ache in my heart, made my eyes drop to the floor. Eventually Luca let out a long breath, as if he was letting go of something, blood rushing back to his fingers as he loosened his grip on the railings.
‘Did it help me forget that the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with was having an affair with her boss for the better part of our entire relationship? No,’ he answered simply, a small apologetic shrug of his shoulders like he knew I was hoping for a different answer. ‘But there’s something powerful about being able to confine all that crap into a three-minute song and then walk away. That’s why I play it last. It gives me somewhere to channel all those emotions – to acknowledge them, to grieve them, but then leave them all on the stage. They would have totally consumed me by now otherwise.’
‘People haven’t always been there for you, but music has.’
Luca nodded. ‘Something like that.’
His hand fell to his side, his fingers brushing against mineonce more. But this time neither of us moved away. We stood there, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the ink-black sea, our index fingers slowly intertwining as my breath escaped in giant white puffs. The air heavy with expectation, silent except for the sound of the waves lapping at the shore below.
‘You’re not wearing your ring.’ It was more of a statement than a question, Luca’s voice drifting on the still night air. But when we turned to each other, I saw his eyes scanning my face, searching for an answer. I looked down at my hand in his, our fingers interlinked, his thumb over mine. The intimacy of it surprised me, seeing our woven hands cast their shadow on the pavement behind us. It was only then that I saw my ring finger was bare. Nothing but the faint indentation to prove I’d ever previously worn it. I felt the world shift for a second, as though the earth was rotating faster than normal, trying to snatch something away from me that I was desperately clinging on to. Panic bubbled up inside me, the weight of it crushing my airway like a hand tightening around my throat. I snatched my hand free, what had previously felt so right suddenly feeling very, very wrong.
‘Sorry, should I not have—?’ Luca frowned, his voice trailing off as he shoved his hand deep into the pocket of his jeans. I felt an unexpected pang of guilt for making his shoulders sag that way, but the guilt I felt for forgetting my ring, tonight of all nights, overshadowed it completely.
‘I – I must have left it at home,’ I stammered, but my brain was working overtime, retracing my steps. I was definitely wearing it yesterday. One of the tiny claw feet had snagged on the hem of my jumper as I was leaving work, pulling a thread loose. Did I take it off before showering this morning? Was it lying forgotten in the little china dish on my bedside table? Or had it fallen off somewhere, lost forever? A sharp pain shot through my chest at the thought, and I gasped, some nonsensicalpart of my brain telling me to clamp my hand over my heart or it might very well break in two.
This was what always happened. Every single time I tried to pretend for one second that I was moving forwards. It was like quicksand pooling around my ankles; the more I tried to take a step forward, the deeper it pulled me down. I wanted nothing more than to run back home right that second, in the tatty old ankle boots that Joe had bought me for my 25thbirthday. The ones that had had a tiny stone stuck in between the grooves of the right sole for as long as I could remember.
‘Jenny,’ Luca said softly. So softly that it made me feel worse. I didn’t deserve his kindness, or his sympathy, or whatever enormous thing he was trying to convey with just that breath of a word. He took a step towards me, but I ducked away before his outstretched hand could reach me.
‘I have to go,’ I said quickly, biting the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste the metallic tang of blood.
‘Oh. Right. Well, at least let me walk you—’
‘No need, I can walk myself.’ I was already striding away from him, towards a taxi that had just pulled into a lay-by next to the pier.
‘Jenny!’ Luca called after me, his voice travelling over my shoulder in the wind. I was running now, my lungs burning for oxygen as I sprinted as fast as my legs would carry me towards the waiting car. I yanked the back door open, trying not to look at my ringless finger under the dim glow of the streetlight, and hurled myself into the back seat. I clamped my eyes tightly shut, the blood pounding in my ears not enough to silence the petrifying thought that my forgotten ring, on tonight of all nights, was somehow symbolic. That it meant something.
‘Itdoesn’tmean anything,’ I whispered furiously to myself. ‘I just forgot to put it on, that’s all.’
