‘OLIVER,’ SHE SAYS, her eyes full of pain. ‘I know you’ve been let down in the past, hurt, but you can’t control what other people think or say. Not the press, and not Slay. All you can do is control how you react,’ she says, making all kinds of sense. But I’m crazy in love with her—sense left the building days ago. This isn’t going the way I’d planned. We should be kissing through happy tears by now, back in bed or flying to Male, the capital, to go engagement-ring shopping...
I know on an intellectual level that what she says is rational, but I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to keep a lid on this kind of exposure, to distance myself from Slay and the type of publicity he invites. Only now it feels worse, because I love her. I’m vulnerable because she’s under attack. What hurts her kills me, especially when I’m the one responsible for that pain. This is why I’ve always avoided this feeling—fear, loss of control, failing Neve.
My mouth feels dry. She doesn’t love me back. Or she doesn’t think me capable of the emotion. I’ve finally worked up the courage to be open about my feelings for her and she doesn’t share them.
She tugs the neck of the T-shirt, covering her exposed, sun-bronzed shoulder from my view. That drives a stake through my heart and the romantic morning I had planned, ripe with fresh starts and possibilities. Now only the usual shit-storm Slay Coterill leaves in his wake remains.
No, this mess is of my creation. If I’d been honest from the start, if I’d done what Neve said and put to rest Slay and how I’ve allowed fear to hog-tie me, none of this would matter.
‘So, you’re saying no...is that it?’ I ask, waves of dread rolling through me.
‘It’s not that.’ She looks away. ‘It’s just... I don’t think we should rush into anything foolhardy,’ she explains, immune to my stillness. ‘Isn’t it better to let Slay’s latest marital implosion blow over and focus on your deal with the Japanese?’ Her expression grows decidedly shady, something that raises every hair on my strung-taut body.
My anger is self-directed, my secret past proving that I’ve inherited Slay’s weakness of character.
Neve must sense my brittle tension. She looks up, her eyes pleading. ‘You’ve avoided commitment all these years. I just want you to be sure you’re ready. This...this was just a holiday fantasy.’ Her words are a whisper, cautious and edgy. Pain lances me as if I’ve been speared through.
‘So you only want the fantasy?’ I knew this was too good to be true, that I wasn’t good enough. I knew I couldn’t truly have her. ‘You don’t want me?’ Betrayal sours my tongue, even as my blood runs cold with the knowledge I’ve done this by keeping secrets and keeping a distance.
‘Oliver, I’m not saying that... But you’ve never had a relationship that’s lasted longer than a week.’
I can’t look away from her eyes, which seem to communicate something different from the words she’s using to destroy me.
‘I’m just protecting myself from the inevitable.’ She presses her hand to her chest, as if she too feels pain. ‘Because of course this will end, and I’ll just be good old friend-Neve again.’
‘I understand that you want to protect yourself.’ I’ve been trying to protect her from me for our entire friendship. I’m not a safe bet. My track record, my genes, the skeletons littering my closet... She’d be mad to make me the person responsible for her happiness. ‘I want to protect you too—from gossip and from Slay.’
‘But a rushed proposal doesn’t do that, don’t you see? You’re just reacting to what’s going on around you—this latest Slay scandal. Our physical connection is amazing, but shouldn’t we see if we work in the real world first?’
Pressure builds in my head. She believes me incapable of more than sex, more than a superficial, hollow relationship. Just like the kind in which Slay specialises.
‘So, you don’t think I can do more than fuck?’ I turn away, pace to the window and stare blindly through the mosquito nets while impotence and rejection crush me.
‘I don’t mean that. I just...’ She growls in frustration, and in my peripheral vision I see her bury her face in her hands.
Icy calm settles over me, extinguishing the flames, razing us as a couple to the ground. ‘No, it’s okay. You’re right. I’m no good at commitment, but I am good at fucking.’ I spin to face her, my breath sawing through my lungs. ‘You had your orgasms, but anything more... Hell, who are we kidding? I’m my father’s son after all.’
She pales, her eyes huge. ‘I’m not saying that. You’re putting words into my mouth.’ She deflates on a defeated sigh. ‘Perhaps we were better off as friends.’ The last is a hushed murmur, as if she fears the power of those words. With good cause, because they can end this, and what then? Is there anything left to return to?
‘Olly,’ she pleads, returning to the shortened version of my name I associate with her friendship and nothing more. ‘I’ve seen new things about you this week, things I didn’t know before. Wonderful things. But I’ve also witnessed how you feel about yourself when Slay is around. How this proposal seems to have arisen out of your fear that you’re like him and can’t commit. But I don’t want to be just a quick fix.’
Uncontrollable need blasts through me. Need to destroy this once and for all to make this feeling of splintering apart stop. Because she’s right. We’ve destroyed what we had and for what? So we could get our rocks off? So I could confirm what I already knew? That love is a mug’s game, designed to weaken. And that I’ll never be able to shake the association with Slay.
‘It’s okay, Neve. You’re right. I would have screwed this up eventually. You know it. I know it. Hell, even Slay knows it. He tried to warn me the other night.’
She sits on the bed as if this conversation is taking a toll on her ability to stand. ‘What do you mean?’
I scrub a hand over my face, wishing I could walk out of the doors and keep on walking. But every coffin needs a final nail and, if I hammer it in good and strong, I can retreat to lick my wounds safe in the knowledge I won’t see Neve’s disappointment ever again. ‘His comment about sharing wasn’t about threesomes. It was a warning. A reminder to me that we’re more alike than I care to admit.’
‘Stop saying that. It’s only true if you let it become true.’
I nod, my grin sickening. ‘It’s already true. The night I learned the lessons of love from Slay, the night of the strip club, I went home alone while he stayed on to party.’ My mind sounds an alarm. Once I tell her this, she’ll look at me the way Slay did that night, with a slimy smile—part fury, part triumph—as if I’d played right into his hands and I was finally a son he could relate to and be proud of.
‘I was drunk, furious with myself for being foolish enough to go to him for advice, humiliated and belittled. My heart was shredded, confused, uncertain what to believe but sick that what Slay told me might be true. When I slammed into the kitchen, in search of more beer to numb the pain and stupidity I felt, Slay’s third wife, Aubrey, was there.’
The growing horror in her eyes should warn me off. But I’m too far gone, and ruining this for good is the only way to protect me from the pain of knowing I’ve lost her faith.
‘She came on to me, right there in the kitchen of my father’s house,’ I continue. ‘She was only a few years older than me, perhaps twenty-three. When she kissed me, I felt appalled, disgusted and euphoric all at once. It was as if I could exact revenge on Slay for a lifetime of being a shitty role model. For subjecting my teenage years to a string of stepmothers barely older than me. For caring more about fame and his rock-and-roll lifestyle than his only son. And most of all for kicking me when I was down, as if my feelings meant nothing.’
My fists clench at my sides and I stare deep into Neve’s eyes.
‘I kissed her back. Angry.’ My words fall into the distasteful silence of the room. ‘I knew it was wrong, we both did, but she didn’t stop, and neither did I. I hated my life so much in that moment that hating myself for my actions seemed inconsequential.’
Neve shifts, her hands jerking in my direction as if to touch me, but I still her with a single quelling look. I need to finish the whole tale, because if she didn’t want me before she’ll definitely reject me after. At least then I’ll know where I stand.
‘After we’d finished, when I came to my senses, my head spinning drunk, I ran to the bathroom and threw up my disgust into the toilet until I could barely move. But the damage was already done. She’d wanted out of the marriage anyway, so she told Slay we’d slept together as a parting gesture.’ A humourless snort blasts free. ‘He wasn’t even angry. He simply shrugged, as if I’d finally become what he expected.’
My stomach roils. ‘I left that night, sickened by the fact that I’d become just like him, and burning from the humiliation that I might have been used in some sort of sick marital game.’
The filthy feeling returns now, coating me in its oily grasp. I stare hard at Neve, hating the unspoken judgment blaring from her hurt stare.
‘That’s what Slay meant by “sharing”. His reminder to me that the apple never falls far from the tree, and that sex is just another form of currency.’ But for a while, with her, I’d believed it could be different...
‘So, don’t worry,’ I finish. ‘You’ve made your feelings perfectly clear and, as you now know, you’re right about me. I’m not good enough for you. I never was.’
I turn my back on her, swish the curtains aside and leave.