I saw your messages. I think we need to talk. My place? An hour?
I’ll be there.
She glanced at the clock. She couldn’t decide whether that was going to go by in a heartbeat or an eternity. She decided to throw herself into the shower and worry about it from there.
The last time she’d seen Jannes, he’d been walking away from her in London Fields. Walking away because he was afraid that she would leave him. Because he couldn’t trust that someone could love him enough to stay. What had changed in the last week? she wondered. Had anything? Because if this was just because he missed her, and not because he had realised that they needed to do things differently, then it was all going to end in tears.
She was never going to find out, though, if she didn’t talk to him.
She mused it over in the shower, wondering how he had managed to make sure that she’d seen those posts. It was only when she got out of the shower and checked her feed again, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, that she realised what he had done. Every single person. He had managed to get every single person that she followed to post that picture of them, of that moment when they had been so happy, so excited, those emotions real, even under the falsities that surrounded them.
They couldn’t just keep taking it in turns to freak out and run away each time that one of them had a breakthrough—eventually one of them was going to have to break the pattern so that they could talk about this—that was the only way it could ever work. And Jannes had hit the ball straight into her court. He knew how she felt about him. She’d told him how she felt about him.
Her heart stuttered when the doorbell rang, and she knew that this was her last chance to back out. She could carry on being afraid. She could pretend that she hadn’t heard the door, hide in her bedroom and wait for Jannes to go away. Or she could be brave, and go out there and talk to him, as she had been desperate to do for the last week.
She opened the door.
Jannes was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking every inch the poster boy for wholesome Nordic health that he should be.
‘Hey,’ he said with a hopeful smile, and she reached out a hand and pulled him into the apartment.
‘You’re here,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I mean you texted me and... I can go.’
‘Don’t go, come in,’ she said, leading him through to the kitchen, wondering how things could be so awkward when they’d been friends for so long. ‘How did you do that to my feed?’ she asked, sticking with professional curiosity because that seemed like the safest of all the questions buzzing around her head right now. ‘Did you befriend a computer hacker? Break into the algorithm? Because if you did I want your superpowers.’
‘No,’ Jannes said with a laugh that sounded a little forced. Good, so she wasn’t the only nervous one here. ‘It was a little less hi tech than that. I befriended everyone that you follow. It wasn’t hard, to be honest. They all love you, were happy to do anything I asked if it was for you.’
‘But that’s hundreds of people,’ Lara said, her mouth falling open.
‘A little over a thousand, actually. But, like I said, they were happy to do it.’
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she said, shaking her head, still trying to avoid looking at the big picture, because—frankly—it scared the bejesus out of her.
‘Lara, I would do anything for you. I thought you knew that.’ Okay, so that was the big picture. Harder to avoid it now that he had said it out loud.
‘Last time we talked,’ she started, cringing at the memory. ‘I asked you... Well, we both know how that conversation went. I put myself out there and...’
‘I’m not proud of that. I wish I could go back and change it.’
Lara shook her head. ‘But you shouldn’t. I’ve had time to think and I’m sure you were right. I walked away and I hurt you. And I’m working on my own stuff, I even went to therapy with Mum, but the things you said were right—we both hurt each other, and if we try this again we’ll end up making the same mistakes and it’s not worth losing you over. This last week... God, I’ve missed you, Jannes. So much. And I can’t bear the thought that we might do something that means I spend the whole of the rest of my life feeling like that. I mean, marriage! We messed up fake dating. How are we meant to make a real relationship work?’
‘We will get things wrong. We’ll make mistakes, and we’ll argue. But that doesn’t have to break us. People make mistakes all the time, and then they apologise and they talk and they figure things out. I know that you love me. And you should know that I love you. I love you a lot. So much, Lara. I want us to take a risk, if it means that we can be happy together.’
‘You love me?’ she asked, her mind sticking on those three words. ‘Even though I don’t know if I can do this?’
‘Even though you don’t know if you can do this,’ Jannes said, reaching for her hand, threading their fingers together. ‘If anything, that makes me want it more. And even if we decide that it’s too big a risk, it’s not going to change how I feel about you. You can knock me back and know that you’ll still have me in your life. You won’t lose me if you don’t feel the same way. It’s not all or nothing—I’m not giving you an ultimatum. I just want you to know how I feel. That I’m here, offering you my heart, everything, if you decide that that’s what you want too.’
‘Of course it’s what I want,’ she said, not able to resist the grin that was spreading across her face. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted. I was just too scared before.’
‘Then we’re doing this?’ Jannes asked.
Lara lifted her shoulders and let them drop. ‘I don’t even know what this is. Is this getting married? Because that still feels like a bit of a leap.’
Jannes shrugged. ‘I’m ready to leap. I’m at least ready to talk to the vicar about leaping. But you don’t have to be just because I am. We can take this as slow as you want to, or as fast as I want to. We will work out what we need together.’
He pulled her closer with their linked fingers and let his hands fall gently on her hips. She took that as the invitation she hoped it was intended as, and took a step closer until her body was warming against his and she had to tip her head up to see his expression.