Commitment Issues by Ali Ryecart

Chapter Forty

Elliot

The brandy joins the other two I’ve drunk, adding to the layer on top of the G&Ts I had with James. For somebody who’s not much of a drinker I’m doing pretty well. But I’m not doing well, I’m not doing well at all.

“What a mess, Jas, what a fucking, awful mess. It was never supposed to be like this.”

Jasper, curled up next to me on the sofa, whines, and looks up at me with his big brown eyes.

“You miss him too, don’t you?” I whisper.

And I do miss Freddie, I miss him so damn much. I pushed back at everything James said. It’s casual, it’s no strings, it’s a temporary friends with benefits arrangement. He saw through every hollow word, but still I denied everything. But now, it’s gone midnight, and my thoughts crowd in on me. They should be hazy and drunken, but they’re clear and crystal sharp.

I turn my mobile over and over in my hand. I’ve sent Freddie a couple of texts since I’ve been home, but he’s not answered. I’ve left a voice message, but again there’s been nothing. We’ve not had contact for the past four — no, five days now. I’ve told myself it’s due to being busy with work when it’s really just another indication of that cool distance that’s formed between us.

Cool distance I can’t take any longer.

“Do you think I should phone him, Jas, now, this minute?”

Jasper whines again, before burying his face in the sofa, and clamping his paws either side of his snout. He shifts, his claws scrabbling at the leather. I don’t know where his blanket is, and I don’t give a rat’s arse.

Midnight has turned to 00:40am. I can’t ring, no matter how much I want to, because calls at 00:40am can only mean one thing.

“I know he’s going,” I say quietly, as I stroke Jasper’s rough, wiry fur, “and I want him to go, for his sake, but I don’t want him to go for mine, and I know how selfish that makes me sound. But I can’t let him go without making things right between us, because it’s all gone wrong, Jas.”

Jasper slips from under my hand and stumbles off to the kitchen and his basket. Even my dog doesn’t want to put up with my maudlin navel gazing. I don’t blame him. It’s now nearly one o’clock. I’m tired but I know I won’t be able to sleep, and I should be drunk but I might just as well have been drinking water.

Pushing myself up, locking the house, and turning off the lights as I make my way to my cold and empty bed, I know what I have to do. Tomorrow, which is really today, I’ll go to him, and tell him I’ll always be his friend, I’ll always be there for him whenever he needs me. I’ll tell him all of that as I don’t tell him what he must never know, and what I must for both our sakes keep to myself

He must never know how much I love him.

* * *

I do sleep, but fitfully, and my eyes are dry and gritty as I climb out of bed and drench myself under a jet of water that’s so hot it damn near boils my skin. Coffee. Espresso, because this morning’s no time for tea. I need the nuclear bomb of caffeine to explode in my bloodstream and blast me into the day.

There’s still no response from Freddie, and I’m starting to get a nervy, creeping feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something’s — not right. Something beyond us being not right. His silence is uncharacteristic. I call again, but just as before his voicemail picks up and I go to leave a message, but my throat closes up and I end the call. The clock ticks over to 06:30am, early for many but not for me, and I can be at his front door in forty-five minutes.

Moments later, I’m out the house and all but running to the Tube station at the bottom of the hill.

Early Saturday morning, there are no crowds on the Underground to impede me, and I make it to the house Freddie shares with Cosmo in forty minutes. It’s madness, what I’m doing, doorstepping him as though I’m some kind of stalker, but he’s given me no choice.

I press my finger to the bell button, and keep it there.

“For fuck—? What? Elliot?” Cosmo, his hair sticking up, bleary, and wearing ridiculous Christmas novelty pyjamas, stares wide-eyed at me.

“I need to talk to Freddie.”

“He’s not here.”

“Has he told you to say that?” I look past him, towards the stairs, almost expecting to see him peeking over the banister.

“No, I really mean he’s not here. He went home, to his parents. On Wednesday evening. Come in, for God sake, it’s pissing down with rain.”

I barely notice the rain that at some point between racing out of my front door and ending up at this one, that the city’s enduring a drenching.

He grabs my arm and pulls me in. Like James, he’s small and compact and a lot stronger than he looks.

My eyes are everywhere at once, looking for Freddie, for any sign of him. The house is quiet and calm, so different from the last time I was here, the party where I dragged the drunk off Freddie because I couldn’t bear even then to see another man’s hands on him.

“I take it he’s not spoken to you? About what happened?”

“What are you talking about?”

My heart’s running at a mile a minute as the scenarios speed past me. An accident. Sudden illness. Police. Hospital. Ambulances… Cosmo’s staring at me, indecision in his eyes, and I know that whatever it is, it’s none of these.

“It’s not really for me—”

“What’s happened?” My voice is an angry growl, and I take a step forward. Cosmo moves back, his palms facing out towards me.

“Okay, okay.” He shakes his head hard as he scrunches his brow. “I told the stupid twat to speak to you.”

“Cosmo—”

“All right, hold your horses. I’ll tell you, but I’m going to have a cuppa and so are you.”

He spins around on his heel and I follow him to the kitchen, where he switches on the kettle and drops the tea bags into two mugs. I want to laugh. Tea, the righter of all wrongs, a soothing balm in a cup.

“Sit down.” Cosmo nods to the table, where he joins me with the drinks. “Gavin.”

“What? What are you—?”

“Gavin, that’s what’s happened.” He puts his mug down and leans forward. “Gavin, your ex-fiancé, is an evil, lying bastard. They bumped into each other in Waterstones, and Gavin told Freddie that you and him are getting back together. That you weren’t on a recent business trip because you were planning your reunion. I told Freddie it was all bollocks, because you’d never treat him like that. I told him Gavin’s a liar. Is he?”

I’m barely taking in what Cosmo’s telling me as the image, the obscene image, of Gavin dripping poison into Freddie’s ear is branded into my brain. I’m gaping, I know I am, and I clamp my mouth closed as I stare into Cosmo’s assessing, scrutinising eyes that are the double of James’.

“Of course Gavin’s lying, of course he fucking is. There’s not a chance in hell I’d ever get back with him. Jesus Christ!”

And Gavin knows that.

I jump up from the table, my blood raging through me.

All the sidling up to me in France. Telling me he’d made a mistake. Telling me he still loved me. Telling me he wanted us to be together again. And me, telling him no, telling him we weren’t just over, but dead and buried. This is his revenge. He stumbled upon an opportunity, stuck the knife in and twisted hard.

I’ve never hated him, never. All the things he said and did, I never hated him. But I hate him now. For his vicious and vindictive lies, I hate him.

“Elliot! Stop, just calm down for God’s sake.”

Cosmo shoves me back in the chair, standing over me, blocking the way, his fists planted on his hips. His voice is sharp, cutting through the red mist of my anger.

“It’s not true, none of it’s true,” I whisper, as I slump forward, every part of me trembling.

“I know it’s not, and I tried to tell Freddie that, but…”

“But what?” I lift my head, but it’s as though I’m trying to drag up a wreck from the sea bed. “What, Cosmo. But what?”

He golfballs his cheeks, before releasing a long exhale. He leans back against the table.

“Freddie said he felt that things had changed between you, that you were kind of distancing yourself. He’s adamant the two of you are just casual, which is bull in itself, because that’s not his style. Too prudish, and up tight—”

“Too suburban?” Just like me.

“Oh, suburban’s too wild for him. He’s from some Godforsaken, out of the way crease on the map on the Suffolk coast, remember. Anyway, when Gavin pulled his stunt, unbeknown to him he was feeding Freddie’s festering belief that you were pushing him away, and that history was repeating itself. Which it’s not, is it?” There’s a snap in his voice, a cold steel edge, and his eyes glitter like the hardest emeralds.

“What do you mean, history repeating itself?” But I know. The knowledge is making its dark way up my spine.

Cosmo swears under his breath.

“He hasn’t told you, has he? About Paul Stringer?”

The man who hurt Freddie. In France, Freddie had said without saying… The bitterness in his voice when he’d spoken of trust in a relationship. Paul Stringer, the man he’s never talked of, and I’ve never asked about.

“He let Freddie down. Badly. That’s all I’m going to say, you need to get the rest from him.”

I look at Cosmo, and stare into his watchful eyes. “I didn’t know, or not the detail. But I was — easing myself away, for his sake. He’s leaving, and that kills me inside, but he can’t know that, because he’s got everything in front of him. But us? We were only ever meant to be—”

“Fuck buddies?”

The words are hard and ugly, a club to beat me with. Because as much as I’ve told myself we were never more than a loose arrangement, Freddie had me tied in knots from the moment I saw him across the crowded café.

“No,” I whisper, “he was never that to me. Whatever I’ve told myself, he could never be that to me.”

“Then you have to tell him. He needs to know, because he’s breaking up. You’ve got to debunk all Gavin’s shit.”

“Then what—?” I rasp, but I already know what before Cosmo tuts, shakes his head and stares down at me for the fool I am.

“Tell him. Tell him that you love him.”