‘I just need space,’ he repeated. I had no idea where this was coming from. He’d been happy. I’d been happy. Well, not in work, and not when we went days without seeing each other, but we’d been happy together. We were happy together.
I turned to look at him. He looked like a boy, reluctant to extend a comforting arm in my direction for fear that I might shake it off. I desperately wanted him to reach out. I didn’t understand, I couldn’t. Sam sat rigid, my best friend turning into a stranger right before my eyes. I looked around Sam’s bedroom, every inch of it holding its own memory of our time together.
‘Space?’ The only word I managed to utter sounded foreign in my mouth. No. Why? It didn’t matter, I’d probably got the wrong end of the stick anyway; Sam was always saying I jumped to conclusions too fast. I looked down and pulled the sleeves of my jumper further over my hands.
‘Jess?’ Sam gently rested a hand on my shoulder. I saw tears welling in his tired eyes. Sam never cried. My stomach turned in fear. ‘You know I love you…’ I savoured each precious word, desperately trying to ignore the ‘but’ I knew was coming.
‘I love you too,’ I whispered softly, but Sam had already begun speaking over me.
‘…amazing times together… five years… best friend…’
My heart ran a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of the words coming out of my boyfriend’s mouth.
‘…too much… concentrate on work… need time… something different…’
I absorbed his lines in broken shards, trying to process them in a way that led to a different conclusion than the one I couldn’t bring myself to think, never mind hear. Sam reached out and took my hand. His was shaking. Mine was still.
‘I think we need to be on our own for a bit,’ Sam said, tears now falling down the familiar face I had seen mature before me over the last five years. ‘You know, find out who we are without each other, who we are outside “Sam and Jess”?’
This was all wrong. It couldn’t be happening. I studied his tear-stained face, my eyes tracing his jawline, clenched and sure. How could he even comprehend a future without me? We had it all planned out. Everything we’d be, everything we’d do. I searched for the words. Words that would make him want me. Words that would make him want us.
‘But I like “Sam and Jess”,’ I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d even said it out loud.
‘So did I,’ Sam responded, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
Did.
‘Sam, please.’ I wasn’t above begging for what I knew was right. ‘I know it’s been hard since I finished uni. I know I haven’t been perfect, but we’re great together, we’ve always been great together, things will get easier when I get a new job…’ Sam placed his free hand on top of my own and squeezed, shaking his head.
‘It’s not you, Jess,’ he said, a cliché I never thought we’d become. ‘I’m just not ready…’
‘Ready for what?’ We could diagnose the problem; we could find the cure. He always did. He’d promised he always would. ‘Moving in? Marriage? What, Sam?’ We could save this. We needed to save this. ‘We can take our time with all of that; we don’t need to do anything we aren’t ready for.’
‘I’m just not ready for what we are, J.’ Sam’s words cut through my chest. I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t. He was my future. I was his. I wouldn’t cry. Because it wasn’t over. I held his hands tighter, looking down at mine intertwined with his. To have and to hold.
I wouldn’t let go.
‘Maybe one day I will be.’ He reached a hand up to my cheek and delicately tilted my chin to face him. ‘Maybe one day.’
I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. I leaned my face in closer to his, my lips lightly grazing his nose, then tracing their way to kiss the freckle just above his lips. He breathed deeply, drawing me in, kissing me, firm and strong. Maybe one day. He pulled away and time slowed down. Fractions of moments, like the parts of our past coming undone. Sam offering me a lift to the station. Me refusing. Sam opening the door. Me leaving. Sam closing the door. Me looking back. Then realisation, then fear, then falling, tears falling. Tears and tears and tears and tears until there were no tears left to fall.
But hope, a tiny hope.
Maybe one day.
Maybe.
One day.
6 September 2020 – Sydney, Australia
Three words I’d held onto for three years. And for what? A chance rendezvous on the other side of the planet where Sam could dole out scraps of hope – a box room here, a job there, a lunch, a graze, a gaze – and then take everything back like a twenty-eight-day return policy. Keep the receipt. That was probably what Sam had thought about me. And Tim. Take her, use her, be amused by her. And then take it all back. I’d given Sam my truth, every bit of me – it had never been enough. Why would my lies be any different?
I looked out over the ocean, the stones I had thrown lost forever. It was my fault. All of this was my own fault. I wasn’t a twenty-eight-day return policy; I was damaged goods, faulty and broken.
I looked at my rucksack, bursting with baggage. I glanced at my watch, thin and cheap. An hour had passed since I had first sat down. But where the hell was I meant to go next? Sam had always been my true north. I pushed my feet even further into the sand. Fucking Sydney. Maybe it was time to go home.
Home; the thought of it caught in my throat. I cast my mind back to London, conjuring images of red buses, red phone boxes and red-faced commuters. It had never really felt like home. Nottingham had always been my home – but that was when we were all there: Zoe, Austin, Sam. I looked up at the waves crashing, churning as realisation rose to the surface. For a long time, home had been where Sam was. Home didn’t exist any more. It was like all the tears I had held back since arriving in Sydney were finally coming to the fore. Sydney had been one big disappointment. The past three years had been one big disappointment – but at least they had had the hope of ‘maybe one day’.
I tried to imagine the next three years without it, without that shard of hope that the life I had imagined might actually become a reality. Tears continued to fall, uncontrollable and messy. Not content to ruin my own life, I’d had to go and ruin Sam’s future too. He’d been happy. I had wanted him to be happy. I sobbed harder, sick to my stomach. I needed to stop doing this, screwing up, leaving a trail of destruction in my wake. I closed my eyes. I needed hope. I needed a miracle. Fuck it. God, if you’re real and you actually give a shit. I need help, I need a plan, I need a job, rent money and somewhere to stay until I get all of the above figured—
‘Jess?’ I heard a woman’s voice interrupt from behind me. ‘Jess, are you okay?’
Chapter 32
‘Jess, is that you?’ the voice rang out behind me. A small part of me prayed for it to be Zoe – stranger things had happened – before I realised she had a thick Australian accent. Please don’t be Jamie. Please don’t be Jamie.