Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (37 page)

‘When you put it like that, it’s not.’ Jack sighed. ‘But counselling isn’t some amazing cure-all, though. You need to be realistic about it.’

‘Why? Are you saying that you don’t love me any more?’ Hope bit her lip hard to stop the tears from falling.

‘I
do
love you, but it seems like I always end up going back to her,’ Jack said, and Hope got why he was saying it – because he was trying to be straight with her and he didn’t want her to jump to conclusions and start picturing an engagement ring, or worse, her wedding dress, a bouquet and centrepieces – but it still hurt. Didn’t mean she was going to back down without using every weapon in her arsenal, though.

‘Or you could say that you
always
end up coming back to me,’ she pointed out. ‘Because you do love me and I love you, even after all the shit you’ve put me through, I still love you. I still want to be with you and I think we’re worth saving.’

‘I want to think that we’re worth saving, too,’ Jack said in a small voice, and Hope waited for the inevitable ‘but’ and when it didn’t come, she decided to press her advantage.

‘Then, come on, Jack! Let’s do this! You’ve given me thirteen mostly wonderful years, all I’m asking for is another few weeks, and if the counselling works and we get back to what we were, then that’s a good thing, isn’t it? And if it doesn’t, I’ll let you go, even though it will half kill me, and you can go to Susie if you really think she’ll make you
happy.’
She let out a huge breath. ‘Really, for you, this is win/win.’

‘Well, OK, yeah, you’re right.’ Jack still had his hand on Hope’s knee and he squeezed her thigh. ‘It can’t hurt, can it?’

‘Do you want to try that once more with feeling, Jack?’ she asked archly. ‘This doesn’t stand a chance of working if you’re just coming along for the ride and you’re not prepared to put any effort into it.’

Hope was pushing him, but she didn’t know if she was pushing him too far or not enough. There seemed to be a very fine line between the two, but Jack wasn’t getting defensive; rather, he was nodding like he actually agreed with her. ‘Sorry, I know I’m not likely to get much sympathy but I’m just so confused. It’s like I don’t know what’s going on in my own head any more and, for the record, I haven’t liked myself very much these last few months. It’s been a total headfuck, if you must know.’

Good
, was the first thought that popped into Hope’s head, but she ruthlessly thrust it away. ‘Is that so?’ She tried with all her might to make her voice sound noncommittal, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she’d succeeded.

‘There are things I can’t tell you because it’s not fair to start going on about the person I’ve been seeing behind your back, but for every moment that I’ve been really happy with Susie there were hours when I was in hell over what I was doing to you.’ Jack’s hand on her knee tightened again. ‘It’s important that you know that. And do you know what my worst moment was?’

‘Was it when I found out for real and we had that fight in the
Skirt
kitchen?’

Jack shook his head. ‘Truthfully? I was just relieved that it was finally out in the open.’ At least he had the grace to look thoroughly ashamed. ‘It was reading that list you wrote,’ he said. ‘It was like a punch in the gut, if you must know. That’s why I started blubbing.’

Hope rolled her eyes. ‘You’re saying that having counselling and staying with me is preferable to all that DIY we have to do so we can put the flat on the market? Really?
Really?
’

‘Fuck off, Hopey! I’m talking about the other list, where you wrote that I didn’t love you any more and that I was your ex-boyfriend, like they were items that you’d already checked off. To know that that was what you were thinking … that that was what I’d put you through … I already
told
you, this thing with Susie, I’ve never felt like this about anyone but I still have feelings for you, Hope. Big, important feelings.’

‘But the sex is better with her?’ Hope asked, even though as soon as the words had left her mouth she regretted them.

‘Not better, but different,’ Jack said tactfully. ‘Maybe we might be able to get our mojo back with the guidance of a trained professional.’

But surely, if they loved each other, then they shouldn’t need tips and leaflets and advice on how to put the lead back in their pencils, Hope thought to herself. ‘I want this to work so much, I’ve never wanted anything so badly,’ she confessed. ‘But if you’re just doing this to get our parents off your back or because you feel guilty then …’

‘Look, I said I’ll give it a go, Hopey,’ Jack was beginning to sound really exasperated. ‘We’ve got another six weeks or so until Christmas and we’ll have some counselling and then I’ll make a decision. I can’t give you any more than that right now, I wish I could, but I can’t. But I promise you, I will take it seriously.’

It was more than Hope had dared to dream. And now that Jack was finally opening up to her, she couldn’t embark on an intensive course of couples therapy without being as honest as him. She owed him that and God, she couldn’t live with the guilt for much longer.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said in a voice so
strained
that she could hardly choke out the words. ‘It might change the way you feel.’

Jack tensed up. ‘What?’

Hope exhaled slowly. ‘Well, it’s just, in the interests of full disclosure I have to be completely truthful with you. And you have every right to be mad at me but …’

‘For fuck’s sake, Hopey, just tell me!’

‘I kissed Wilson!’ That wasn’t how she’d meant to deliver the news; shrieking it into existence without any back story, and Jack took his eyes off the road to stare at her in horror in a way that Hope wished he wouldn’t when they were gunning down the fast lane of the M62. ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’

‘What do you mean, you kissed Wilson?’ he rapped, pressing down hard on the horn to beep at someone who’d dared to beep at them when they’d swerved between lanes.

‘Well, I’ve seen him around a bit,’ Hope explained like that made it all right. ‘Then he helped out with Jeremy last week, gave him a couple of days of work, and I took him out to dinner to say thank you and well, we ended up kissing.’

‘So it was just a thank-you kiss?’ Jack asked, and Hope could hear the relief, hear the ‘nothing to see here, move along’, and it would be so easy to go along with that version of events but if she wanted to be honest, then she had to be really honest.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it was more of a snog. Mutual snogging. I can’t deny it, Jack, it was good to have someone kiss me like they really meant it, and at the time, I really enjoyed it.’

Which wasn’t strictly true. Every time she recalled the kiss, and there had been plenty of times over the last week, when she treated herself to a slow-motion action replay, Hope could feel her insides curling up with lust until guilt made them promptly uncurl.

‘Oh, Hopita, has it really been that long since I kissed you? Like, kissed you properly?’

It had been ages. Hope couldn’t even remember how long it had been but that had been the last thing on her mind when she’d been pressing into Wilson’s hands as he stroked her breast, arching up against him, shuddering with need every time his tongue dipped into her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and ‘sorry’ was such a stupid, inadequate thing to say.

Jack patted her knee again, then kept his hand on her leg. She rested her hand on top of his. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, and after expecting shouting and maybe a little swearing, his calm acceptance was a little anti-climactic and rather disappointing. If he loved her, then it shouldn’t be OK that she’d been kissing someone else.

‘It’s not OK. It’s not even a little bit OK.’

‘I get it,’ Jack said. ‘You were mad at me, and Wilson, it’s obvious that he wanted to get back at me and Susie. She said that Wilson was obsessed with her, kept phoning her and begging her to take him back.’

Hope had to bite down hard on her lip because one of the things she definitely didn’t miss about Susie was the way she’d insisted that damn near every man she encountered was obsessed with her. ‘Way to make it obvious,’ she’d sneer if someone with a penis dared to stand too close to her in Caffè Nero. Or, ‘God, he wants me,’ she’d complain in a long-suffering tone if a man bumped into her while they were walking along the street. And yes, it had kind of been a running joke with them but then again, it kind of hadn’t.

‘Well, it wasn’t quite like that from what I heard,’ Hope said. ‘I mean, does Wilson strike you as the type to beg anyone to do anything
ever
?’ Hope thought about leaving it there before she said something bitchy, but God, she wasn’t a saint. ‘Just so you know, there was overlap. Quite a bit of it. She was breaking up with Wilson, which seemed to involve a lot of sex, even while she was shagging you. It’s a tricky one.’

The moment that she said it, Hope knew she shouldn’t
have,
even though it had to be said, and Jack was shooting her a look, the look he always gave her when she was drunk and behaving like a complete tool, or she was kicking off about something that didn’t really warrant a kicking-off when he was trying to work or watch something on TV. It was a look that very clearly said, ‘Tread carefully, because you’re
this
close to sleeping on the sofa tonight.’

‘It was messy, Hope. Everyone got hurt,’ he said thinly. ‘Of course there was going to be fallout and … overlap.’

‘I wasn’t overlapping with Wilson. It was just one kiss and you were staying round at Susie’s then anyway and it wasn’t like …’

‘Well, it’s not important now, and, well, I won’t see Susie while we’re having a bash at this counselling,’ Jack said, with a little expectant glance as if he wanted Hope to lavish praise on him. ‘That shows some commitment, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, well, the last time you said you wouldn’t see Susie wasn’t such a rousing success, was it?’ She actually smacked her hand against her forehead in an attempt to smack some sense into her brain. ‘I’m sorry! I don’t mean to keep being so, y’know …’

‘Bitchy?’ Jack suggested.

‘Yes, bitchy, but I’m angry with you, Jack. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but I’m really, really mad at you,’ Hope admitted, not that it was breaking news. ‘But well, I won’t see Wilson again if you don’t want me to. Not that there’s anything between us. We’re sort of friends now, but friends that argue a lot.’

‘And friends that kiss?’ Jack still wasn’t sounding bothered about it. Curious and intrigued, but not as if he was about to storm round to Wilson’s loft and ask him to step outside.

‘I think he was just trying to prove a point. It didn’t mean anything to him,’ Hope said, though she wasn’t sure if that was true.

Jack seemed convinced, though. ‘Look, I’m fine with you
seeing
him, because I trust you. And if this works out then maybe you’ll start trusting me again, too.’

‘Anyway, this counsellor person, do you have any idea how to find one?’ Hope asked, more to change the subject than anything else, because the subject was making her feel very uncomfortable. ‘Shall we Google it?’

‘I think Max, our Editor at Large, is in therapy … he spends a lot of time in LA … I could ask him.’ Jack pinched her thigh. ‘But I’m not seeing anyone who has a framed quote from
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
on their office wall, agreed?’

‘Hell, yeah, it’s agreed. And if anything in their office is made from raffia, batik or bark, then we’re leaving right away.’

‘Ditto for dreamcatchers hanging up in the window, and if they have a special talking stick that you have to hold if you want to speak.’

‘And a big box of tissues in a prominent position on the coffee table that’s been made from re-purposed driftwood,’ Hope added, and this time when she caught Jack’s eye, they both grinned.

It was good to know that they were still in complete agreement about some things, even if it was their absolute dealbreakers for choosing a counsellor who might be able to save them from themselves.

THE COUNSELLOR THEY
eventually found, through Jack’s colleague Max, didn’t have any touchy-feely hippie paraphernalia in her practice rooms, apart from ‘a metric arseload of pictures of her cat’, and when Hope phoned to book their first appointment, she didn’t issue forth a great stream of psychobabble, but sounded brisk and businesslike. Though that may have been more to do with the way she insisted that they pay for six sessions up front.