I smoothed my palms over my skirt. I’d said what I needed to.
Silence pulsed through the space between us, and I tilted my chin up to look at him, anxious about what I would find on his face. It was as if he’d frozen to the spot, still holding himself back.
I rose from the bed and his hand shot out, grabbing mine. “Can we not talk about this?” His tone was pleading. “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t know what it means.” He linked his fingers through mine. “Are we done?”
“For now.” I tried to keep the tightness in my chest from escaping into sobs.
“What does that mean, for now? Fuck.” He pushed his hands through his hair, clearly frustrated.
“I just . . . I think you need some time—”
“I don’t need time. I need you.”
I took a deep breath. How long had I waited to hear that? Was I really going to walk away?
“Okay, I need time.”
“How long do you need?”
I knew if I gave Luke boundaries, our relationship would simply become a task on his list. If I told him what I needed, how long I needed, he’d diligently work through the to-dos I created and wait. It would be all about me, when I needed it to be about him. My worry wouldn’t dissolve in a set period of time. I needed him to experience life without me, work through the change, the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty, get past it, enjoy it and then decide it was me that he wanted. Not as a cure, or a convenience, but because he was in love, with me.
“I need to know that you’ve sorted your life, and that you still pick me. That I’m not just convenient.”
“Ashleigh, you would never—”
I couldn’t listen to his counter arguments. “This is what I need. You asked me and I’m telling you. Make new friends, date. I don’t know, get a dog, a new car. Get on with your life. See what it’s like. Show me that I’m a conscious choice for you.”
“Date?”
My stomach cramped at his question. What was I thinking? This was going to be horrific. The last thing I wanted was for him to find someone else, but if he did, then at least I knew we weren’t meant to be. If I took what he was offering now, I would spend a lifetime wondering if he was ever really mine. I’d become insecure and needy—a shell of myself.
“Yeah, date.” I looked out my bedroom window. I needed to leave or I was going to buckle, tell him it was all a big joke. I squeezed his hand, consciously trying to capture the feel of his skin against mine so I could replay it later when I was lonely and longing for him. I pulled my fingers from his and headed toward the door. “I know this is hard.”
He jumped out of bed, pulling on his boxers. “Jesus, Ashleigh. Are you scared to be happy? Don’t you feel this between us? Why are you walking away as if we’re nothing?”
I couldn’t turn and look at him. “Luke, you are everything to me. That’s the point. We’ve so quickly slipped into this that it feels like it could be over tomorrow. And if I let myself fall any deeper, it might just kill me. This way it’s only been a few days and we won’t lose our friendship.”
“We’ll never lose that, Ashleigh. I promise you.” His voice cracked and the sound tore right through me.
“Don’t make promises you don’t know you can keep. I need this, Luke. Please.”
He sighed, and it took all my willpower not to turn and comfort him.
“If you need me to prove my feelings, then this is what I’ll do. Because you are what I want, Ashleigh. What I need. My feelings won’t change.”
My heart ached. I wanted to say me too. But something kept me from forming the words.
Luke
“So you didn’t go into the office?” Haven asked. She’d come home to find me staring into space. I’d left Ashleigh’s flat and headed back to Haven’s with the intention of jumping in the shower and heading to work. I hadn’t been able to face the day surrounded by Ashleigh’s scent, her words, her doubt. When I’d arrived, I’d sat on the bed, just for a second to gather my thoughts, and when I next looked at the clock half the day had gone.
I shook my head. “I called them. I’ve kept an eye on my emails. Things will wait.” I would have been a mess at work. Better to feign illness than to turn up and give my clients reason to sue me for negligence. My head felt like a pinball machine as I jumped from being angry at Ashleigh for having so little faith in me, in us, to planning how I was going to win her back, then jumping again to an overwhelming feeling of loss. Perhaps Haven could help me make sense of it.
Haven looked at me, concern in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so down on your relationship yesterday. I just got spooked. Do you want me to speak to her?” She watched me fill the washing machine with laundry. I’d been able to do nothing all day but think of Ashleigh. I hoped that if I could no longer smell her on my clothes, it would clear my mind, and I could figure out a way to get her back.
Haven looked at me, sheepish and guilty.
“It’s not your fault. I knew she was likely to have a meltdown—I mean, come on, it’s Ashleigh—but I thought I could talk her through it. I thought I knew her.”
Haven narrowed her eyes. “Ashleigh?”
It took me a beat to realize what she was asking. “Yeah. That’s who she is to me.” Ashleigh had been right. My realization about her and my feelings for her had been sudden. In only a few days she had gone from being Ash—my sister’s best friend, the person I asked to be my plus one if I didn’t want to take my girlfriend, my family—to Ashleigh, someone who made me want to lobby Parliament to pass a law ensuring she had to be naked for the rest of her life. Someone who when she touched me, I felt the press of skin for hours afterward and yearned for it for hours beyond that. Someone I wanted to protect from the darkness, show the light. I wasn’t sure whether it was because we’d known each other for so long, but even though Ashleigh and I had only been together a few days, it felt different, deeper—more profound than anything I’d experienced with anyone else.
I thought she’d felt the same.
“Did she say anything? Has she called you?” I asked, desperate to know how I could make it all better.
“No, I’m sorry.” I could tell by how nice Haven was being that she was worried. Being with Jake had softened her edges, given her confidence, but it hadn’t made her a pushover. She was still capable of giving me a good hard arse-kicking when she felt the need arise.
“She said that she wants to know that she’s a conscious choice for me. But how can I do that if she’s not with me? She’s worried she’s just . . . I don’t know, available.”
“Is she right to be concerned?”
I’d been trying to answer that question all day. “Yes and no.”
“Fucking lawyers. Give me a straight answer.”
I scrubbed my hands across my face and squeezed my eyes shut. I wished I were having this conversation with Ashleigh. I wished she’d given me more time this morning. “She knows me, right. So yes, I like constancy in my life. I cling on to things that maybe I shouldn’t to create permanence. It was probably the reason I was with Emma for as long as I was.” There was a dull thud where my heartbeat should be, as if it were cloaked in fog. “But no, that’s not what my feelings, or should I say my change in feelings, toward Ashleigh are about. I don’t know, Haven. I feel like someone took my blinkers off and Ashleigh is a new person to me now. I mean she’s still Ash, but she’s mine now, too. Or she was.”