“It’s rude to just bin something of someone else’s. I’m trying to take the high road.”
He tried to tug the duvet off me but I held it tight. “No, it’s rude to leave your girlfriend of six years on Christmas Eve without giving her any explanation. It’s rude not to take all your stuff. It’s rude not to treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve and it’s just fucking senseless to leave you in the first place.”
I exhaled, slightly exasperated. “I don’t disagree with you about any of that. I just don’t see how sending the village up in smoke is going to help.”
“I’m not suggesting you take up arson as a hobby. He was a dick. Allocate him the responsibility he deserves, get angry about what he did, and then free yourself. Move on.”
“You don’t think I’ve moved on?” I raised my eyebrows, hoping he’d get my silent message that he was living proof I’d moved on plenty.
“I don’t think anyone could move on while they hang on to a bunch of their ex’s shit in a plastic bag. And don’t give me that I’ve-moved-on-with-you bullshit. This isn’t about whatever’s going on with us. This is about you still thinking you need something from that man.” This side of Sebastian where he was dominant and possessive and wanted more for me than I wanted for myself was part of him I could eat up with a spoon. It was like nothing and no one could stand in his way. “I’ve seen your fire when we’re together. Harness it, let it rip and then refuel.”
Somewhere in the last year, my brain had stopped expecting Carl to turn up wanting the rest of his things. But my heart had still been hoping for something. And now? It wasn’t so much that I wanted him to come back, more that I wanted an explanation of why he left. That missing information was stopping me from closing the door and moving on.
“He should have told me he was leaving. He owed me that. Something changed for him and I deserved to know what.”
“Right,” Sebastian said. “He was an arsehole.”
“He was.” There were no excuses to be made. He’d not behaved like the man I’d been with for the six years before.
“He’s held you back while he’s moved on.”
Irritation pricked the back of my neck. God only knew what Carl was getting up to, and with who. I hadn’t been able to even look at another man until nearly twelve months later, when Sebastian appeared in Snowsly. “I deserve better than Carl.”
“You deserve a man who’ll communicate to you how he’s feeling. Not a boy who just runs away.”
I sat bolt upright. “Exactly. Even if he left because he just didn’t like me, he should have had the bollocks to say it to my face.”
“Yes,” Sebastian said.
“He never gave us a chance. He never had both feet in like I did. Because if he’d been committed to a future together, he wouldn’t have left without warning—without some kind of indication he was unhappy.”
I’d been so full of sadness about what I’d lost, I’d failed to look more closely at what had gone. I’d been grieving a lost future for the last twelve months without asking myself whether a future with a man like Carl was something that I really wanted. His leaving should have woken me up to the fact that Carl wasn’t a man who deserved my heart. And he didn’t deserve my grief, either. My future wasn’t lost because he was gone. It was still mine to create.
I jumped out of bed and pulled on my clothes. “Yep. I’m ready.” I popped the neck of my jumper over my head. “Let’s burn his shit to the ground.”
Sebastian grinned at me and pulled on his jumper.
“Actually, if I’m letting go of my past, then can you promise that you’ll do the same? If I’m setting fire to Carl’s stuff, can you promise you’ll send your mother the music box for Christmas?”
He paused, his arm midair as his hand still searched for light through his sleeve. We locked eyes and I could see ten different ways he wanted to answer me in his expression. I knew Sebastian well enough now to know he wouldn’t tell me he was going to do something if he didn’t intend to follow through.
He finished pulling his jumper on and with a simple scrape of his fingers through his hair, Sebastian became cat-walk ready. “I promise I’ll consider it. With my mother, it’s complicated.”
“Okay, then that’s a step forward at least. Let’s get the matches.”
As I emptied the bag out onto the small patio off the kitchen, I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d been hanging on so tightly to this sorry pile of worn paperbacks and old clothes.
“It will all fit into the barbeque, I think.” I scooped up the small mound of belongings and plonked them into the round metal barbeque that I never used.
Sebastian handed me the matches. “You want to say anything?”
“Like a spell or a hex or something?”
“Maybe? Or just something like goodbye. I don’t know. I’ve not attended many burning rituals in my lifetime.”
“Really?” I asked. “The way you advocated for this moment, I thought you were head of the Burning Rituals Lobby Group.”
Sebastian smiled at me like he thought I was amazing. When I was with him, I felt like I was. Or at least I could be.
I pulled out a match, lit it and tucked it under one of the pages of a worn, water-stained book. “Carl, you didn’t deserve me. And I deserve to be rid of you.” I lit another match and threw it on top of his AC/DC t-shirt and that bloody Star Wars duvet cover. “I don’t want to waste another moment of my life thinking about you or your stupid t-shirts.”
The fire began to burn harder now. More books were being eaten away by the fire and embers from the t-shirt had started to twist and curl.
Finally, I threw the Darth Vader pillowcase on top of the flames. Be gone, Vader.
Nineteen
Sebastian
Everyone shifted in their seats in Granny’s living room and began to stand as the morning Christmas Committee meeting at the Manor started to disperse.
Granny reached out and patted me on the hand. “Stay a minute, will you?”
As everyone filed out, Mary came in wheeling a tea trolley, Granny’s favorite teapot and two cups set out on the top tray. “Biscuits are in the tin,” she said, tapping the same purple-and-white-checked biscuit tin Granny had been using for the last thirty years.
“You pour the tea and I’ll prize this thing open. I’ve got your favorites,” Granny said, pulling the tin onto her lap.
“I have a favorite biscuit?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten one. I poured out two cups of tea and added milk to both. I wasn’t a big tea drinker but I’d had my first-ever cup with Granny. It was more about comfort than taste.
“Bourbons, of course,”
I nodded in recognition. I’d loved them as a boy. “Of course.”
She offered me the open tin and I took out a chocolate Bourbon, getting the distinct impression I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Granny then took out a custard cream, because that had been her favorite biscuit for the last thirty years or more.
“It’s wonderful news that takings have matched last year’s,” she said. Celia had nearly burst when Barbara announced the good news about turnover from yesterday, and I couldn’t help but enjoy her excitement. Things were heading in the right direction. “I think it’s a relief to everyone that Snowsville’s market and my boo-boo with the website hasn’t completely destroyed what we’ve built.”