It took thirteen unanswered calls in two days but eventually Rowan agreed to see me – or rather, agreed to give me back my possessions. The perk of never having lived together, I discovered, was that we didn’t have to dismantle a washing machine straight down the middle or argue over exactly who it was that insisted on the larger television screen when it came to footing the bill. The sad part of me wondered whether this – this niggle of knowing that maybe he and I would arrive here – was why we’d never closed the gap between our homes. Marriage, though, that would have been fine … I thought as I folded another of his shirts into a neat square and set it on top of the third box I’d packed. I dropped the box on the back seat of my car and tried to focus on the relieved part instead: relief that there were only three boxes of his things; relief that he said he only had one box and a carrier bag to give back to me; relief that soon, this would all just be …
I sighed and slammed the car door closed. ‘Over.’
Rowan didn’t help me with the heavy lifting when I arrived outside of his building and unloaded the back of the car. Maybe he hadn’t seen me. But he was fast enough to open the front door before I’d even had time to ring the bell. He stacked one box on top of another and squatted to pick them up, then he flashed a thin smile.
‘Kettle’s on.’ He turned and walked into the flat, so I grabbed the last box and followed.
So we’ll be talking, then. I made a show of looking around. ‘The boys aren’t here?’
‘They said they’d give us some space. Didn’t want to get caught up in …’ He waved away the end of the sentence, but then added, ‘Whatever.’ He pulled milk from the fridge and cups from the cupboard, and I noticed that while he made a drink in ‘his mug’ – a pitch-black ceramic that grew the Batman logo when hot water collided with it – he wasn’t making a drink in the one I’d always used. He handed me the drink awkwardly, with the handle angled between us. ‘I packed your mug.’
Shots fired. I nodded and accepted the tea. My mug – or rather, what used to be my mug – was a white ceramic with a photo-booth picture of me kissing Rowan’s cheek on the side. And I suddenly felt the need to brace for impact. What else will be in those boxes? I sipped my drink, even though it was too hot. ‘Should we sit?’ I didn’t wait for an answer, only took myself to the armchair in the corner of the room and set my cup on the floor, a safe distance from my feet.
‘Edi, we really don’t need to make a thing about this.’
I frowned. ‘Don’t we?’
‘We’re done, aren’t we? You’re gay now and we’re done. That’s that.’
‘Don’t be a dick about it, Rowan.’ The words came out of my mouth, but I felt a strong sense of Lily, Betty, Cora. ‘This doesn’t have to be the world’s worst or first break-up. And I’m not gay, I’m … Do you know what, actually, it’s none of your business what I am at the moment, and you’d be doing yourself a favour if you remembered who wanted—’
‘Christ, are you actually about to blame the break on me, again?’
It knocked me. Have I blamed you too much? I wondered, but I tried to shake the thought away before I could buy it. ‘Remind you that the break that was your idea, you mean? I don’t remember being in a rush to suggest you sleep with other women.’
He snorted. ‘No, but weirdly enough it didn’t take you long to.’
‘Well, maybe you should have thought through the possibility that someone else in the world might want to have sex with me apart from you.’ I spoke plainly, didn’t raise my voice or rush. But I wanted the truth out there, neatly wrapped with a bow for him to pull apart with his friends over beers – or with a counsellor when he finally worked through his issues with his parents. ‘It didn’t even occur to you, did it,’ I added, when he let the silence stretch out, ‘that someone else might want me?’
He shook his head. ‘Who are you these days?’
‘Edi, still. Who are you?’
‘You don’t think you’ve changed, at all, in the last few months?’
My stomach rumbled with nerves, but I swallowed hard and pulled in a breath. ‘How is this about me all of a sudden?’
‘You’re the one who finished things!’ He was shouting now. ‘I thought we were happy.’
‘Then why did we need to sleep with other people?’
His shoulders dropped. ‘You wanted that as well, Edi, don’t make out you didn’t.’
But I didn’t; did I? I couldn’t work out whether it was a question for Rowan or myself. Still, if I’d been in the right relationship I would have been able to ask the question aloud, voice the concerns, share the—
‘Are you saying you didn’t?’ he rushed in when I didn’t answer.
Lily and Betty were the only friends who knew I was coming for this visit. I’d needed their moral support – ‘Don’t you dare let him make this a you problem’ – and worldly wisdom – ‘Closure is overrated, anyway!’ – and I tried to hang on to every piece of advice – ‘Remember, babes, this is your chance to clear the air as well as his’ – and every offer of help – ‘I haven’t slapped an ex-boyfriend in … I don’t even know how long’ – and then I pulled in a belly breath.
‘No, Rowan. I don’t think I wanted it at all. I think I was happy and I think I thought you were, too, even in the early weeks of it all. But no, I didn’t want to see you out with other girls. I didn’t want to know you were lying about where you were and who you were with and …’ He parted his lips as though to interrupt me but I held an index finger up to pause him. ‘You can’t ask questions you’re not ready for the answers to.’ He recognised the phrase and closed his mouth slowly. ‘No, when I agreed to get married and spend the rest of our lives together, it didn’t cross my mind once that you wouldn’t be enough for me. Or that I wouldn’t – you know, that I wouldn’t be – for you.’
He looked winded, so I let him have quiet in the seconds after. There was a box at the far end of the living room with a Tesco’s Bag for Life next to it and I suspected they were my worldly belongings; my adult life and then some. I hadn’t wanted to sleep with other people. But I’d arrived at a point where it was okay that he – we – had. He needed something he wasn’t getting and maybe he didn’t go the right way about it but … I sighed. But it was okay. I opened my mouth to say that, though, and Rowan beat me to the punch.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You are?’
He nodded, sniffed. ‘I don’t know why I suggested it.’
‘Because maybe things weren’t as okay as you think they were?’
‘But they were fine,’ he protested. Like an angry child, he dropped his fists against his knees and repeated himself. ‘Everything was fine.’
I crossed the room and sat next to him. Unprompted, he grabbed my hand and I squeezed his.
‘Rowan, don’t you want more than fine?’ He looked up at me and pulled his forehead together, as though I’d given him a tricky spelling to sound out. I kissed the side of his forehead, then, like Molly, Cora, Lily had kissed mine so many times. ‘If you’re going to be with someone for the rest of your life, don’t you want something a bit better than fine?’
‘Our parents have done fine on—’
‘God,’ I interrupted, ‘don’t get me started on my parents or yours.’
He laughed. ‘Yours have done okay.’
‘They have. And I do honestly think they’re more than fine, now. But they probably haven’t always been.’ He opened his mouth to interrupt me again, but I pressed on. ‘And I know we could have powered through and made it to the other side of whatever this is. Then, somewhere on the other side, we would have been fine. But how many women did you sleep with on this – whatever we’re calling it?’
‘Edi, what does that have to do wi—’
‘Give me an estimate,’ I cut him off. ‘The nearest hundred.’ I tried to sound light-hearted but from his drooped expression it was clear that he was struggling. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
He sniffed again and shook his head this time. ‘Christ, I’m just sorry.’
‘My God, do you think Betty knows how many men she’s slept with?’
‘I’m not Betty.’ He sounded offended by the comparison.
‘No.’ I squeezed his hand again. ‘But you are kind of one of my best friends.’
‘Even now?’
The girls had taken it in turns to coach me through how this conversation could go – or even, should go. They’d told me in fifty different ways why Rowan and I didn’t need to be friends and they’d given a hundred and one examples of former couples who weren’t. But when someone has been in your life forever, can you really cut them out? ‘Yes,’ Lily had said, and Cora and Faith had nodded.
But Betty, surprisingly, had been swayed. ‘I get it,’ she weighed in, ‘I couldn’t cut any of you out.’
When it was phrased that way, Molly had agreed, too. ‘I’m a big believer in keeping ex-boyfriends around,’ she’d said.
Cora tapped her hand. ‘And that’s an issue for another day.’ We’d shared a laugh, then, and shared some history and shared an understanding that yes, sometimes people mess up …
‘Even now,’ I answered him.
But you can’t hold it against them forever.
‘What happens now then?’ He looked wounded and my heart hurt. Most of my adult life had been spent fixing whatever it was that turned his face sad. Now, though, things needed to be different.
‘Now, I’m going to take my stuff and I’m going to call the girls and I’m not going to lie, Rowan, I might get a little drunk.’ He half-laughed. ‘And you’re going to move your boxes into the bedroom, and ignore them for maybe two months, but in the interim you’ll call the boys, and you’ll get a little drunk, too.’
‘When will I see you?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But if things can still be fine th—’
I pressed my finger against his lips to shush him. ‘Fine looks a little different now.’
He kissed my finger, then moved it away. ‘Look, maybe this is what we need, you know? Like, maybe in the future, distant future even, maybe when we’re grown-ups, we’ll drift back to each other and we’ll end up the kind of fine that our pa— no, sorry, your parents are.’ He laughed.
‘We are grown-ups,’ I said softly, as though maybe he hadn’t noticed, but he smiled.
‘I see.’ He stared at our fingers, that were just about still clutching, and he was quiet for what felt like an especially long time. ‘In which case …’ He caught my attention with a squeeze and then he gifted my hand back. ‘Someone should tell Monty, because that kid …’
I laughed. ‘He’s not so bad.’
Rowan stood. ‘Try living with him.’
I took it as my cue to leave and I stood too, but I felt the weight of the break-up in my belly. I’d been strong and clear and Lily-minded. But I reminded myself that familiar comforts were allowed, too. ‘If I hug you,’ I said, but didn’t look at him, ‘I’m hugging you as a friend. Is that entirely clear beca—’
He pulled me to him and squashed the rest of my sentence. ‘Edi Parcell, best friend of mine.’ He sounded as though he was talking through half-laughs, but I could feel the judder of tears in his chest. ‘Bloody love you.’
I squeezed back and pressed my reply into his shirt. ‘Bloody love you.’