It was meant to be easier out here: that was why he’d come. He’d thought he would suddenly feel a whole lot better than he had when he’d walked away from Lara in the park at London Fields. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel better on land. Being on the water didn’t help either. Which meant he had only one idea left, and he’d been putting that off for as long as he could.
Even as he was walking up the steps to Mormor’s apartment, after she buzzed him in from the street, he knew that he was walking into a nightmare. There was no way she was going to look at his miserable face—and there was no way that his face wasn’t miserable, given that that was how he felt—and not tell him that he had made an enormous mistake in letting Lara go. They’d said that they were just going to go back to how they were before. That they’d pretend that the dating thing had never happened. But he couldn’t. She couldn’t. Too much had changed in the last few weeks.
‘Älskling,’ Mormor said as soon as she answered the door. ‘Come in and tell me why you are being so stupid.’
He smiled. This was going to go exactly how he’d expected. But something told him that Mormor’s tough love was going to be the only thing that helped.
‘So you’re not getting married any more,’ Mormor said, a cup of black coffee steaming in front of her crossed arms.
He sighed melodramatically, thinking that that might get through to her, and shook his head. ‘We were never getting married, Mormor. You know that. We told you that. Repeatedly. Don’t pretend that you’ve forgotten.’
She huffed in his face, which was precisely the reaction that he’d expected. ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten, Jannes. Just because I am in my nineties doesn’t mean I am an idiot, you know. Anyone with any sense could see that you and Lara were falling in love and going to get married. It’s not my fault if you couldn’t.’
‘Well, we’ve broken up,’ he said, regretting the air of certainty and finality. ‘Real us and fake us. It’s all over, so you were wrong.’
Her eyes softened as she passed him a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun. ‘I don’t know about that. But come on, tell me why you broke up.’
‘We weren’t right for each other,’ he lied.
‘Pfft! You’re perfect for one another. Try again.’
‘I’ll end up hurting her,’ he said, which was the truth. But he didn’t think that Mormor would accept it.
‘Closer. Not true, but closer to what you’re really scared about.’
He shook his head, feeling the words—the fear—bubbling up and not able to stop it. ‘She’ll leave me. Of course she will. Even my own parents would drive away from me twice a year without a backwards glance. I know they never looked back because I watched, every time, to see if they would. Or even glance in a mirror. And they never did. I decided a long time ago that I was never going to let that happen again.’
Mormor laid a hand on his shoulder and made a soothing noise. ‘And you think Lara would do that to you?’ she asked.
‘I know that she wouldn’t mean to,’ Jannes said, looking down at his clenched hands. ‘But eventually the novelty would wear off. We’d fight. She’d walk away. I know how these things go. But what’s worse is that I won’t be content to wait for it to happen. At the first sign of something being wrong I’ll be out of there, and I’ll hurt her in the process.’
Mormor looked up, tried to catch his eye, but he kept his eyes down, because he didn’t need her to see how far down this sadness went.
‘I don’t think that you do know everything, sötnos. I see how much she loves you.’
‘Then I’ll hurt her, trying to protect myself,’ he argued.
Mormor smiled. ‘You know, you can just choose not to do that. I’m not saying it’s an easy choice. But you can choose it. You just have to decide how brave you want to be. I think you have it in you to make this work. I think you deserve to be happy with Lara. I think she deserves to be happy with you. But that’s not going to happen until you decide to make a change. You have to let go of what your parents did to you and decide that you’re going to do better than they did. I know at least one person who would never walk away from you. Who has never thought twice about how important you are. Who knows that you would never, ever hurt her. If you can trust yourself to love me, älskling, you can trust yourself to love Lara. She deserves it. And you deserve to be happy.’
‘I think I need to go for a walk.’
He headed out of the apartment with no idea where he was going, o
nly that he needed to be moving to think about what his grandmother had said. She was right—he’d loved his grandmother since before he could remember, and he’d never once wondered whether she loved him back. Whether it was safe to love her. So whatever damage his parents had done when they’d dumped him in that school, it hadn’t touched every part of him. There was a part of his heart that was still undamaged, and he wondered if he knew how to find it. To tap into it. To make it grow.
Because that was what he wanted—he had to admit that now, if nothing else. They might not be able to make it work, but he wanted Lara in his heart. Or wanted to give her more of it, because he really was as stupid as Mormor liked to tell him he was if he thought that she didn’t have a place in there already. He’d loved her as a friend for three years, and in that time he had never doubted that she shared his feelings, that she wouldn’t want to hurt him. So why did he think that would change if the way that they loved each other changed? Either he trusted her, or he didn’t. He trusted himself to be there for her, or he didn’t. And if he couldn’t trust himself to do those things in a romantic relationship, then he had no right claiming a place in her life at all. Because she deserved better than that.
She deserved someone who would love her wholly, and he did.
He loved her, he trusted her, and he trusted himself to always feel that way.
He half sprinted back to Mormor’s apartment with this revelation, a new fear sinking in.
‘I don’t know if she’ll even take me back,’ he said, the minute that he was through the door.
‘And I can’t promise that she will,’ Mormor said, waiting for him as if she already knew this was exactly where their earlier conversation had been leading. ‘Only you two can work this out. But I can promise you that she loves you. Any old fool can see that much. And I can promise you that, however it goes, I will still be here for you.’
He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head.