The One That Got Away (9 page)

“If I was being honest, neither did I.” I thanked him for agreeing to let me stay with him before laughing off his ideas of the two of us going out so I could get Mel out of my system. After telling him I’d let him know what was happening soon, I hung up.

When I let myself into the house I was assaulted by the smell of my favourite meal being prepared. My heart sank at the sound of Mel humming to herself. She was pottering about in the kitchen making dinner, not a care in the world, as I walked in from the darkness outside.

“Hey, baby. Dinner’ll be ready in forty-five minutes.” She stood on her tiptoes to give me a quick kiss, wincing a little when she twisted at the waist. She may have been off her crutches, but was still having to take painkillers now and then when she overdid things.

“Hey.” I felt sick and couldn’t begin to stomach the idea of eating. This conversation needed to be as swift and painless as possible.

“Are you okay?” Mel stopped what she was doing and turned to look at me, worry on her face.

“We need to talk.”

Heidi:

Considering I’d only been away for a couple of days, it took me almost a week to recover in full. The routine of getting the kids up, washed, dressed, and dropped off at school, before making my own way to work was as mundane as it’d been before the reunion. At least I was able to run on autopilot since I couldn’t shed the event from my mind. I’d been back in work at the café for a week, thinking I was putting on a great act for everyone. At least until Sophia, my best friend and fellow lackey at the café, dragged me outside for a cigarette following a crazy-busy lunch run.

“What the hell happened in London?”

I looked at her in shock.

“Oh, come on. I know you think you’re fooling everyone else, but I know you a bit better than they do.”

Did she ever! The first friend I made after moving into the area, she’d seen me at my worst, after I finally got the balls to kick Jason out when he’d cheated on me, again. She’d also seen me at my best, usually when we had one of our rare nights out, and I’d let loose and have fun. We were as close as sisters, and it wasn’t very often I hid anything from her. I hadn’t told her about Shane, though, wanting to keep my past behind me.

“You know . . . I don’t even think I could sum it up properly.”

The grin on her face was huge. “I’ll come with you to pick the kids up, then have dinner at yours. I have a feeling this’ll be juicy.”

I shook my head, rolling my eyes. Sophia had this built-in gossip radar. It was surprising she’d not picked up on the fact I had some sort of news sooner. There was no way I’d be able to dissuade her.

“I should’ve known.” I stubbed out my cigarette and went inside to wash my hands.

“You should have told me the moment you got back.” She actually scolded me. “It’s not very often you give me a reason to want to sit on the floor in front of you, chin in hand, glass of vino, and listen to you talk. Let’s face it, you’re quite boring.”

I flicked soapy water at her in response.

“For once, you let yourself have fun, rather than being Little Miss Sensible. Just go with the flow and see where it takes you.”

In the seven years we’d been friends she’d always teased me about being ‘the sensible one’ out of our circle of friends. The fact that something had happened to me while I was away was like a lottery win to her. I laughed while she made googly eyes at me and blew me a kiss. Tonight was going to be interesting, and a bit messy. Thankfully, it was Friday, and I didn’t have to worry about letting myself have a lie in.

:: ::

Sophia stared at me, a look of amazement on her face, for a full five minutes after I’d finished my tale of debauchery. The kids had been fully entertained by her and were now holed away in their bedrooms, reading or watching a DVD in bed. There’d been no escape from her.

“I’d say I was proud of you for finally becoming the wildcat I always knew you were . . .”

“But?” There was a ‘but’ every time she trailed off at the end of a sentence that way.

“Why the hell is this the first time I’ve even heard about this Shane?” She looked at me with a hurt look on her face that I knew was fake.

Unsure how to answer her question, I dodged it for the moment by walking out into the garden to get some air. Why hadn’t I ever told her about Shane, especially when we’d gotten back in contact?

She followed me out and handed me a fresh glass of chilled wine.

“To be honest, I don’t know. I guess I felt more than a little guilty about it all, like it was some sordid affair, which it kind of is.”

“It is a bit, but I can understand why you went there. I mean, I’m a big believer in never going back to an ex because all mine are utter dicks. However, this whole thing with you and Shane doesn’t seem as straightforward as that.”

Typical Sophia. She always managed to understand the intricacies of anyone’s problems. She was the go-to girl of our friends whenever one of us was having ‘man woes’. Though she’d never had kids herself, she’d been put through the ringer by pretty much every single guy she’d ever been in a relationship with. There was an excellent back catalogue of experience for her to draw from when doling out her advice.

With a laugh, I tried to stall a little longer, “Yeah, Roger was the biggest dick of all. None of us will forget how he strung you along. You and four other women!”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “My past isn’t what’s on the table for discussion right now, Heidi. You are. Tell me, what do you want to get out of all this?” she asked. “Be honest.”

“That’s not even worth considering. I mean, what’s the point?” I shook my head. “We live hundreds of miles away from each other. There’s no way we could get together, even if it was what I wanted to happen. I doubt he wants that either.”

“Look. You’ve both admitted you’ve been left wanting more from each other. He’s even told you he’s ending it with his missus. What’s to stop the two of you meeting up now and then, to test the waters and scratch a few itches?”

“It’s not that easy, Soph. We both have lives and responsibilities. Besides, I haven’t heard from him since I dropped him off at home.” For the entire time we’d been back in contact, I couldn’t remember going more than a day or two without some sort of communication. Even if it was just a text to say ‘hi’. Yet, this time it had been almost a week, and nothing. I felt like an idiot. How could I have become so dependent on contact with Shane? Up until the reunion, all our flirting had occurred through instant messages and the odd cheeky photo. Seemed that now we’d had sex, he didn’t need anything more from me, despite what he’d said to me on the roadside.

I changed the subject and Sophia—bless her—spent the rest of the evening chatting about anything and everything other than Shane. Which made it worse somehow.

:: ::

The evening after I’d filled Sophia in on the whole situation between Shane and myself, I was curled up on the sofa with my laptop. Making the most of the quiet, I was checking my social media accounts while sipping at a small glass of wine. Scrolling through my newsfeed, I scanned the posts, only stopping when something looked interesting or I’d been tagged in photos from the reunion. Laughing, I saved a load of them before continuing to scan. Shane’s name popped up on my feed in a post stating he’d just found out that he was going to be made redundant from work.

I sat back and debated dropping him a message, but decided against it. Instead, I posted a general comment commiserating him on his news, and left it at that. I closed the laptop then padded around the quiet house. I checked that the windows and doors were locked before making my way upstairs for a shower. The hot water beat down onto my stressed shoulders as my mind wandered once more to the night of the reunion. The memories caused my legs to tremble as my body remembered how it had felt to have him touch me. From the softness of Shane’s tongue, to the tight grip of his fingers at my hips. How it had been heightened by the feel of my back scratching against the brick behind me, and the orgasms that had left me unable to stand. The recollections were quickly turning me into jelly.

Feeling breathless, and more than a little turned on, I got out of the shower and walked to my bedroom, allowing my skin to air dry. I locked my bedroom door behind me to prevent the kids seeing something they shouldn’t.

I felt like a teenager hiding in my room to play with sex toys, but didn’t fancy having to explain to the kids about my ‘battery operated boyfriend’. I tended to keep my activities to a minimum, usually indulging only when they were with their dad. But for some reason, I needed this tonight. Ever since Shane and I had had sex, my libido had been off the charts. I’d tried to ignore it as much as I could, but thanks to my memories assaulting me, there was no way I could continue to do so. Not tonight anyway.

Moving around my bedroom, my now dry skin felt like it was on fire while I found my vibrator and began to settle myself on my bed. Turning it on and hearing the low buzz sent a shiver of anticipation along my entire body, but before I was able to start my phone rang.
Fuck!

:: ::

Shane:

I’d stared at Heidi’s comment on my post for a full hour before I summoned the courage to phone her. Since she had driven me home, I hadn’t made much contact, thinking she’d need some time to think. I know I certainly did.

Mel hadn’t taken our breakup well. The moment I sat her down and explained how I was feeling, she’d blown up at me. There had been shouting and crying about how much she loved me and how we could make it work if we spent more quality time together. I explained over and over how I felt: no matter how much time we spent together, I was never going to be completely happy in our relationship.

After she calmed down and stopped crying, she accused me of cheating on her. I had expected the accusation at some point. Without divulging the whole truth, I had admitted that there was someone else I had feelings for, causing another explosion of temper and tears.

Without saying anything else, I’d grabbed a large weekend bag and had begun to pack my clothes. I couldn’t handle being screamed at, even though I knew the breakup was my fault. Mel followed me round the flat, watching me shove my things into the bag. When I’d finished, I turned to see her looking at me with red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks. I’d caused that, and wasn’t proud of it. My admission, partial though it was, had lightened the weight that had been bearing down on me. The silence between us said far more than any words I could have uttered, and I was left with no choice but to walk out into the early evening air without a single glance behind me.

Since then, I’d been staying with Paul, fielding calls from Mel which ranged from begging to cursing me to Hades and back. Messages were sent via text, instant messaging, or posted to my social media profiles for the entire world to see. I had tried so many times to explain to her that we were better off apart, but ninety percent of the time, she wouldn’t listen and asked me to move back in. I ended up turning my phone off and didn’t go online for a while, with the hope things would calm down. Then, I got sucked into work with the sudden news that redundancies were being made across the entire company.

Having barely been in contact with anyone, I ventured online, deleting messages from Mel without reading them. There weren't as many as I had expected—she seemed to be losing steam on that front. I did want to speak to her to let her know none of the break up was her fault. Make it clear that it was a simple matter of neither of us being the ‘right person’ for each other. But I knew the moment I contacted her, I would only make the situation worse.

Instead, here I was, phoning the ex I had never been able to forget, and whom I’d fucked in an alleyway in London.

:: ::

“Hey, stranger.”
Her voice sounded happy, but there seemed to be an underlying tension there. Frustration, maybe, or something else.

“Hi.” Now that I had her on the phone, I wasn’t sure what to say.

“How’s things?”
she asked whilst I fumbled around to find the right words. “Sorry to hear about the job. Redundancy’s a pain in the arse.”

“No need to apologise, these things happen. I could have done without, but there’s not a lot I can do about it now.” I paced around my room, feeling more and more like my teenage self, tongue-tied and trying to talk to a pretty girl. “Anyway, that wasn’t why I phoned.”

“Oh?”

“No, I wanted to let you know I haven’t been ignoring you. Well, not you in particular, more like the world as a whole. I needed a complete break for a while.”

“What’s happened?”
As ever when she asked me a question, she sounded interested in my actual response rather than just asking to be polite.

In the background there was the sound of a kettle being filled and then cups clattering around. I could have murdered a cup of tea, but Paul had used all the milk and I couldn’t be arsed to walk down to the local shop.

“I’m assuming it’s not just the job thing.”

“No, that was the icing on an already unsteady cake.” How I wished she was next to me when I sat on my bed, not for sex—well, for more than just sex. More than anything, I needed someone to talk to without being paranoid about being judged in some way.