He placed the sugar packet back in the bowl and drummed his thumb on the table. “That’s the thing. I don’t know exactly how it happened. I’ve had a lot of time over the last few days, and all I’ve done is think about it. How we got here. What I know for sure is that it started off with her taking me to bed every time I wanted to go out with my friends. Saying we should have a quiet night in together, and after cancelling on my mates a few times, they stopped asking me to go out with them. The same thing happened with money. If I bought something new, she’d ask me if we could really afford it.” He shook his head again. “It wasn’t really a big thing, it was just stuff she dropped into conversations. And at the time, they bothered me, but I always shrugged them off, telling myself I was making a big deal out of nothing. So I said nothing.”
“And then…?”
“Then, she hit me. We’d been living together for about three months. She was in a bitchy mood over something and I was sitting on the couch, reading stuff online. She said she’d asked me a question, but I honestly didn’t hear her. She walked over, got right in my face and screamed at me about how I never listen. She slapped me. I was just… stunned. It came out of nowhere. She’d never done anything like it before. Instead of apologising right away, she stormed out and came back a few hours later. She sat on my lap and said she was sorry, but that she felt like I never listened to her when she was speaking to me. In the end, I was the one who apologised. I paid her more attention from then on, always made sure I listened to her, but I guess it escalated from there.”
I could almost hear him questioning himself. Wondering if it really was his fault, and maybe if he’d been a better boyfriend, she wouldn’t have hurt him.
I’d once done the same. With Jay. With my baby. Maybe if I’d had a healthier diet, got a bit more exercise. Maybe I hadn’t got enough of this or that vitamin inside me. And maybe if I hadn’t lost my baby, hadn’t been so selfish with my grief, Jay would never have left me.
The truth is, perhaps some of those things were true, and perhaps they weren’t. Who knows, if just one thing had been different, maybe the outcome would have changed. But chasing that idea around in my head was what had almost killed me.
What-ifs are an exercise in futility.
“She was so calculating,” Ash said quietly, almost as if he wasn’t talking to me, more thinking out loud. “It wasn’t like her moods went up and down, more that the longer we were together, the worse she got. Sometimes I felt like she was pushing me to see how long it would take for me to snap. There were some days when she didn’t mind if I left a plate in the sink, and other days, if she found the smallest crumb on the floor, she’d freak out. And she used to say she was sorry for stuff but then still blame it on me. ‘I’m really sorry I kicked you, but you know, you could have just taken the rubbish out instead of sitting down and playing on your phone all day.’ And that would have been an okay thing to say if it hadn’t come after I’d done a late shift and slept all morning, ready for my next shift, and had just woken up to make coffee. That was the thing. She never gave me much chance to do anything before flipping out.”
Not really knowing what to say to that, I was glad the drinks and cakes arrived, so I wouldn’t have to speak. Perhaps it was best that I said nothing for the time being. Ash had talked to me a lot since he’d been in hospital, and I knew he was still trying to understand it all. I didn’t want to interrupt, though I was a little concerned about the way his eyes had dimmed again. It was bound to happen when he talked about everything again, but it worried me. I hated to think of him being alone later, with only his thoughts for company.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay for the rest of the day?” I asked him, watching him over the rim of my coffee mug.
He glanced up at me before taking a sip of his own drink. “I’ll have to be. I can’t rely on people being around all the time.”
“How do you feel, though? Not the answer you gave the doctor so you could get out of hospital, but really. How do you feel?”
“That’s a loaded question.” He put his cup down on the table. “I’m happy not to be in hospital. I’m angry about everything Natalie did.” He looked up at me. “I forgot to mention, she ripped up all my childhood photos while I was in hospital.”
My mouth dropped open. “Why the hell would she do that?”
He shrugged. “She pieced them all back together and put them back in the albums, but they’re definitely ruined.”
“Would your mum have copies of them? Maybe she can send some over.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Even if she had some, I doubt she’d do that. It doesn’t matter. I hardly ever looked at them anyway.”
His words sounded genuine, but his expression told me that her shredding his memories hurt him more than anything else she’d ever done. I
suddenly wished I had been allowed into the flat with him. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, but I would have been happy if my presence made Natalie even a little bit uncomfortable.
I didn’t understand her reaction to me. She’d made it clear to him on a daily basis that she thought he was worthless, so why would it have mattered to her if he was cheating on her? If she didn’t think anything of him, why stay, and why care what he got up to?
I guessed that either, somewhere inside her, she did care, or maybe she thought so little of him that him leaving her was just a massive dent in her ego. Or perhaps she actually regretted throwing away someone who was so damn good.
Whatever it was, the damage was done.
So much damage.
Ash was so sweet. So kind. And had I not been so hung up on the age gap in the beginning, I might have noticed how good-looking he was. How anyone could cause so much pain to someone so amazing was beyond me.
In the time I’d been thinking, Ash’s eyes had dimmed further. He was holding his fork in his hand but he hadn’t touched his cake.
And in that second, I made a decision.
“Ash, can you please come home with me?”
He looked up, blinking as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly, so I continued.
“I know you’ll lose your deposit on the B&B, but I don’t think being on your own right now is the best thing. I have a spare room, and the house is big enough for you to have your own space. I spend most of my time in my office anyway.”
After a moment, Ash shook his head. “I can’t, Evie. You’ve already done so much for me. I can’t take over your house too. I wouldn’t be able to help much with paying for stuff, and…”