Lottie Loves Read online

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So, how are things with you?” Joe asked as he finally slid into the seat opposite me. I wanted to answer him right away, to keep up some sort of pretence of normality, but I couldn’t seem to stop staring at him like a mad person. It was so weird, having him here, knowing that we’d both been through these entirely separate lives without one another. I couldn’t work out how I’d managed to do it. It seemed so normal at the time, just something I had to do, but now…well, now everything was different. “What have you been up to?” He eventually laughed, sensing my inner turmoil.

  “What, in the last five or six years?” I made a feeble attempt at a joke, just to try and lighten the atmosphere. “Oh you know, this and that. Same old, same old.”

  “I know what you mean,” he agreed, leaning back in his chair and shooting me a curious look. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Where do we even begin?”

  My life without Joe flooded my mind, but not in order, not as a sequence, just as odd flashes that barely made any sense. I didn’t really want to tell him any of it, I didn’t want him to know anything about where my life had headed. He had once asked me to keep me and him a secret, and in a strange way that made me want to keep everything I’d had with Danny away from him too—just to protect what we’d had. I couldn’t explain my sudden protectiveness over everything with the one person I’d once shared everything with, but I couldn’t seem to shake it.

  “Why don’t you tell me about what you have been up to?” I asked, desperately needing him to take the lead. I stared into his eyes, trying to make my plea obvious, and luckily for me it must have worked, because he quickly nodded, and started talking.

  “Well, for the past couple of years…” he started awkwardly, clearly dancing around the taboo subjects that we were obviously not about to discuss any time soon. “I’ve been working for a law firm.”

  “What? Really?” I screeched, totally blown away by that. Joe Davies…a lawyer, that was a sentence that made absolutely no sense to me. He was never academic, he didn’t care about his education, he always focused on sports and he’d made that perfectly clear that was where his life would go. This was a huge turn of events, one I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around. “You’re a lawyer?”

  “Not yet,” he confirmed, smiling through thin lips. “Because I never continued with my education, I’ve had to start at the bottom, to work my way up, to learn as I work. It’s hard work, with not a lot of pay, but it’s something.”

  I wanted to ask him what his girlfriend or wife thought of that, just to find out about his marital status for sure, but I stopped myself at the last moment, unable to ask such a damn cheesy question. It would be far too obvious what I was really asking. I would only end up humiliated, and then I would need to explain my own very complex situation. There was no way that conversation would be one-sided.

  “Wow, that’s…” I shook my head, still trying to figure out how that’d happened. “That’s incredible. It really is something else though, I never would have placed you in an office job.”

  He looked up at me through his eyelashes, an odd look in his eyes, then he said the only sentence that could truly make my blood run cold. “And I never thought that you would end up dating some crazy, partying rock star.” He said it with a soft edge to his tone, but his meaning was clear. It seemed like he’d been keeping up with my life much more than I had his…unless this information had come from research done in the past couple of days, of course. “So, how did that happen? And…what are you going to do now?”

  No, no, no. He knows everything…even about the cheating. How humiliating!

  Frustrated tears pricked my eyes and I pumped my fists by my side. A massive part of me coming here, of wanting to confront the past, was a distraction from my very unpleasant present. I certainly didn’t expect to end up discussing it with someone who didn’t know me at all anymore, there was no way I could handle that! Plus, I certainly didn’t want him to realise how damn unlovable I was. That fact I would much prefer to keep to myself.

  “I don’t…I don’t…” I wanted to just tell him I didn’t want to discuss it, but for some reason the words didn’t want to come out. They got stuck in my throat, and during that time my face flushed brightly, which caused me to glug my wine quickly. Just for something else to do.

  “Sorry.” He seemed to sense I wasn’t in the mood, even if I couldn’t actually vocalise it. “That was really inappropriate of me to ask.”

  “No, it isn’t…” I couldn’t help it, things were so strained that a weird giggle burst from my chest. At first Joe looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but after only a couple of moments, he joined in too, accepting that it was the absolute best way for us to break the ice. There was far too much that we couldn’t talk about, too many subjects that were dangerous. I felt like we either had to laugh about it, cry about it, or go our separate ways. This was the easiest of the three choices. “I’m sorry,” I eventually managed to explain through the slightly hysterical laughter. “This is all so strange.”

  “Well, I guess there’s only one way to deal with that,” he told me, sounding much happier now. “Let’s get stinking drunk.”

  Now that was an idea I could get on board with. I needed to have some fun anyway, I wanted to let my hair down after all the stress and sadness I’d been through recently, and this really felt like the perfect time to do that. So, I lifted up my glass and clinked it against his, a happiness buzzing right through me.

  “So…how is it, being a lawyer?” I asked him, hoping he would feel like he could be more honest now.

  “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer yet, but it’s okay, actually. It makes me wish I’d listened more in school, of course, because I feel a little old to be doing what I am…but it’s going to be great.” He paused thoughtfully for a second, staring into his pint glass. As his eyes met mine again, I could see he was struggling to hold everything in, just as I was. It made my heart beat faster because I had the strong sense that the more alcohol became ingrained in our evening, the looser our lips would become.

  Although maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that was what we both needed to finally get past the events that had happened, the things that changed everything. Of course it was possible that the wounds were too wide, too gaping for any kind of healing, but if we didn’t say anything about it all, then we’d never know.

  “Anyway, what about you? What are you doing with your life these days? Did the photography thing ever pan out?”

  For a moment, I basked in the happy glow that came with him remembering that side of me…until it hit me that now was the moment I would have to let him down. “No, I…actually I didn’t ever go to college to study photography.” A sickness started to rise up into my throat, humiliation burned as I had to admit that I’d failed. “I ended up doing English Literature instead. Now I work at the library near where I live, and I teach an adult class too.”

  “You do?” He looked really bewildered about my life. “Wow, I can’t believe you let all that talent go to waste. You still do it for fun though, right? I remember you always loved carrying a camera around with you.”

  I shrugged half-heartedly, already needing the subject changed. I only loved it because of the attention it got me from him, I did it mostly because it healed a rift between us, I only wanted to take it further to please him. Maybe I was talented in that area, maybe it was a shame I’d thrown it all away, but I couldn’t go back to that place now. I wouldn’t even want to pick up a camera anymore, even if someone placed one in front of me. That version of my life was done.

  In desperation to talk about anything else, I asked a very dangerous question. I didn’t even mean to, it simply blurted out of my mouth before I could stop it. As soon as the words were out there, in the world, I wanted to shove them back in, deep into my throat, but it was far too late for that.

  “How are your parents?”

  At first Joe looked at me in shock, almost as if he couldn’t
believe I’d asked that question, but I watched him physically reel himself back in. I saw him take control of himself before he answered.

  “Erm…yeah, I’m not sure really. Things have been really strained between them all this time, and I think it might be finally coming to a head. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up divorced.”

  I blinked a few times, trying to keep the guilty tears inside. Of course it wasn’t my fault their relationship was strained, I hadn’t done anything to make that happen, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling a sense of responsibility. Things would have turned out so much different if only…

  If only…why does it always have to come back to that?

  “How is your mum, anyway?” Joe jumped in, before I could become too consumed by negativity. “Is she still living in the same house?”

  “She is.” I nodded slowly, unsure of how much I could talk about her. Did I tell him about Malcolm? Complain about my stepdad when his own family was falling apart? My brain was growing increasingly fuzzy as the line grew blurred. “Shall I get us another drink?” I scraped my chair back and stood up rapidly. “I suppose we better get started if we’re going to get wasted?”

  As I waited for the bartender to finally get to me, emotions tore through my chest. This was so much more…everything than I expected it to be. I knew it’d be hard to see Joe again, that it would drag so much up, but I assumed there would still be that easiness there between us. The bond, the connection, that had taken us through life…but I should have guessed it wouldn’t be exactly the same.

  You didn’t go through all that me and Joe had, without obtaining a few damn scars.

  “Will you marry me?”

  It was the question that had started off this tailspin…or more like the expectance of this question—Danny hadn’t actually asked me yet—and it was also a large turning point for me and Joe too. It didn’t finish us, but I did still feel like it was the beginning of the end, which was maybe what scared me so much about it now.

  As I turned back to glance at Joe, he was looking at me strangely too, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the same memory was running through his mind as well. Was he thinking about the time he asked me to be his wife? The day I agreed to be his forever? Was he just as curious as me to find out what would have happened if we’d gone through with that plan, if we’d actually got hitched?

  Would we have been able to make it work?

  Would we have lasted?

  Would we have been happy?

  Chapter Twenty

  It happened one casual Saturday afternoon, when I was least expecting it, there was literally nothing unusual about the day at all. We’d just been hanging out as per usual, nothing special, nothing to make me suspicious. Joe wasn’t even acting strange, so there wasn’t anything to give him away. Maybe if he’d been sweating a little, or hopping from foot-to-foot anxiously, I might have been able to guess what was coming, but there was nothing. We were simply lying in the sun at the end of Joe’s garden, just out of sight of our parents so we could kiss occasionally, when all of a sudden he bounded up onto his knees like an excitable puppy.

  “What are you doing?” I teased, blocking my eyes a little from the sun. “Will you just lie down for a little while longer? I’m enjoying the sun, it’s nowhere near cold enough to go inside just yet…”

  “I don’t want to go in,” he interjected, brushing his hair out of his eyes. Ever since we’d started dating, he began growing his hair out, and although it looked a little too messy, I loved it. It felt like mine. I loved running my fingers through it, pushing it off his face, just generally touching it at every available opportunity. “I need to talk to you. Sit up, please.”

  “Urgh, don’t make me,” I groaned playfully. “You’re killing me here.”

  “You need to sit up,” he insisted, tugging at my arm. “I promise you it’ll be worth it.”

  I assumed it was going to be some silly Joe bullshit, something I wasn’t totally in the mood for, but I did as he asked anyway, just in case it was important. As it turned out, it was a good job really. It was the most important conversation I would ever have in my life!

  As I looked at him, all ready to complain, he totally blindsided me by sending me that heart-stopping grin of his, zapping all of the bad mood from my veins. “Okay.” I chuckled, unable to resist smiling back. “You’ve made me move, let’s have it.”

  “Charlotte Jones,” he started, which had every single one of my limbs freezing in shock. I’d had Lottie from Joe, Lotts too, mostly, but never Charlotte. No one called me by my full name ever, especially not Joe, so whatever he was going to say would be huge.

  That revelation created a massive ball of fear, which lodged firmly in my throat. I tried my best to calm it down, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Nor was my racing heart.

  “I have known you for far too long now,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to my shock. “You’ve always been there, no matter how much I try to escape.” He laughed loudly at that, proving he was joking, and I did my best to join in—although to be fair the noise that came out of my mouth was more strangled than anything else. “And I’ve really come to realise how much you mean to me.”

  Oh God, I thought in a state of sheer panic. What the hell is going on here? My entire body trembled with worry as I tried to work out where he was going with this. I didn’t want to assume he was going to break up with me, but what else could this be? That was the only logical next step…

  “I love you.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I love you more than I ever thought I would be able to love anyone.” His fingers lightly brushed my cheeks, but I was doing my best to ignore them. All I wanted to focus on was his lips, and the words spilling past them. “You’re sweet, kind, and very funny. Adorable, in fact. I honestly don’t know where my life would be without you.”

  In that moment I wanted to tell him I couldn’t even imagine an existence without him in it, but I couldn’t because the emotion had built up so powerfully inside of me. I feared the second I opened my mouth would be the moment I totally freaking lost it.

  “Lotts, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to lose you, ever. I want you to be mine. I want to be with you, to love you, to make you happy forevermore. I can’t even begin to imagine a future with anyone else in it…which is why I went out the other day and got you this…”

  He tugged a small box out of his pocket, one that had my eyes bugging out of my head. The ring inside might have been small, inexpensive, and not totally to my taste, but we were young, and Joe had gone out into the world, with money that he’d earned from his part-time job, with our future in his mind. He’d brought a ring just for me, with a promise to commit to me.

  I actually couldn’t believe it.

  I slapped my hand across my mouth, the entirety of our relationship flooding my mind all at once. There might have been a few ups and downs—the downs mostly because of the secretive nature of us—but we were happy…and about to get a whole lot happier by the looks of things. All I’d ever wanted was to be Mrs. Davies, and now it looked like that fantasy was about to get one step closer towards becoming my reality.

  “So, what do you say, Lotts? Fancy being my wife?”

  “That is not how you’re going to ask me,” I scolded, matching his jokey tone, trying my best to override everything else inside of me. “I appreciate the romance of everything else you’ve said, but ‘fancy being my wife’ isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid.”

  “Okay, okay, that’s fair.” He held up his hands in a defeated gesture, making me giggle a little manically. This whole situation had me hysterical, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Did I laugh? Should I cry? “So, Lotts, I love you…I’ve loved you forever, I want you to make me the happiest man alive. I want to work every day to make your life wonderful, so would you agree to be my lawfully wedded wife?”

  “Yes,” I burst out through the hysteria. “Of course I will.” I wasn’t doing
a very good job of holding in the feelings, they were flying down my face! “I would love to be your wife.”

  As he scooped me up in his arms, I felt like nothing could go wrong with the world. I knew we could make one another happy. After all, we’d been in each other’s lives since we were babies, if we were going to get bored of each other, it would have happened already. This was perfect, Joe was definitely the man I was destined to spend the rest of my life with, and now he’d realised it too! It might have taken him a little longer than it did me, but that hardly mattered now.

  “I told you it was worth sitting up for, didn’t I?” he teased, as he slid the ring onto my finger. My heart pounded heavily in my chest as it hit me just how serious this was. We couldn’t keep us a secret anymore if I was walking around with a ring on my engagement hand…people were bound to start asking questions eventually. Much as I wanted the world to know that Joe was mine and I was his, I couldn’t help but panic that it’d change the dynamic between us. I wasn’t quite ready for that to happen, not when things were so perfect. The secretive thing was working for us. What if being open and honest didn’t?

  “Well, I guess we better tell our parents soon then,” Joe announced, his thoughts clearly in the same area as mine. “Don’t you think?”

  “I do,” I replied slowly. “But I’m a bit nervous.”

  “They won’t hate it, you know,” Joe did his best to reassure me. “I think they might actually want us to end up together.”

  “That might well be the issue,” I told him dryly, brushing that stray strand of hair from his eyes again. “What if they start getting too involved?”

  “We’ve been together for months now, we’ve been doing this all alone. I honestly don’t think there’s anything they can say to affect us by this point, is there?”

  I pondered upon that for a second, before realising something that might change. “They may be a little more cautious about us hanging out alone together now…particularly in one of our bedrooms.” That wouldn’t have been necessary, after all we’d only done it once and it didn’t seem like either of us were in a massive rush to go there again, but I didn’t want our time together to be restricted in any way.