I put the dish into the oven to heat it up and pull my clothes off as I make my way into my bedroom. I switch the shower on in my ensuite then slowly peel my underwear off and look at myself in the mirror. I sigh and pull my hair up into a bun.
When I look back in the mirror, I’m reminded of the day I first saw Noah. Out of nowhere, the urge to go for a run starts to trickle through me, making me itch all over. I stick my head out of the bathroom door and notice the time on my alarm clock. It’s too late to go for a run now, but I walk over to the clock and set the alarm for four in the morning. Then I go over to my drawers and pull out my old sports kit. I check for holes and lay them out on the single chair that I have sitting in the corner of my room. I walk back into the bathroom and climb straight into the shower.
I don’t know why I’ve started to think about Noah again. I know it’s obviously because I’m seeing him again after all these years, but every time I had a spare second today, images of our time together enveloped me. If that wasn’t bad enough, the conversation we had in the corridor this morning has been on constant repeat in my head, especially the bit about my antics. Unless he’s been stalking me, it means Ruby has been talking.
I’m drying myself after my shower when I hear a knock on the door. I grab my terry-toweling gown and fasten it around my waist and wrap my hair up in a towel. I pull the door open and Ben surprises me by holding up a bottle of red wine and two wine glasses.
“Oh, erm, hey.”
“Hello, Ariel,” he says with a smile, walking straight past me. “I thought we could celebrate your successful first day.”
I take a deep breath and shut the door. “I was actually planning on having an early night because I have to be up at four.”
His face falls. “Just one glass then. We’ll make it a quick one.”
I roll my eyes and direct him towards our sofa. “Just the one.”
He pours each of us a drink and holds his glass up. “A toast,” he says, “to York’s best midwife.”
I can’t help but smile at him as I raise my glass to touch his. “Cheers,” I say. We both take a sip and then I realise what he said when he first came in. “How did you know it was a successful day anyway? It could have been crap.”
He laughs. “I checked up on you.”
I blink at him. “Why?”
“Because I can. And because I wanted to make sure you were okay. Noah was an arsehole this morning.”
I nod. “Let’s not talk about him.”
“Agreed,” he says. “Where’s Ruby?”
“She left a note saying she was going out with some of the girls from work.”
“Ah,” he says. “Those nurses can be a handful when they want to be.”
I cough. “And doctors can be arrogant arseholes when they want to be.”
He laughs, clinking his glass against mine. “Touché.”
“So,” I say, “why are you really here?”
He sighs and takes another big gulp of wine. “Ruby told me about your nocturnal habits.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “What, and you thought you’d come and get the first slice?”
I notice the way his eyes widen and the panic that settles across his face. He isn’t acting. That’s good.
“No,” he says firmly. “No, Ariel.”
“Then what?” I push.
He rubs at his jaw and offers me a weak smile. “I guess I was just hoping you’d know that I can be a friend if you need one. Tell me to mind my own business, but—”
“Mind your own business,” I interrupt.
“Ariel,” he huffs. “I just want you to know that Ruby is worried about you. If you were my friend, then I would be too.”
I’m getting annoyed. Have they been talking about me behind my back like children? “Why the fuck is it anything to do with either of you?!”
“She’s just worried,” he says again.
“Why? I use protection, so what can she possibly be worried about that she feels the need to tell you when I specifically asked her not to?”
“It’s not about whether you’re having safe sex. You must know that.”
I shake my head. “It’s just fucking sex. If I was a bloke and you were my friend, you’d be high-fiving me and telling me what a legend I was.”
He smiles. “Maybe, but I’d also be telling you it was dangerous behaviour and not just because of the risks of having multiple sexual partners. I’d be telling you that it’s blatantly fucking obvious that you’re using sex with strangers as some sort of therapy to treat a bigger underlying problem.”
“Get out,” I spit. I bolt up off the sofa so quickly that I knock my glass and it spills all over him. It makes him jump, which in turn makes him lose his grip on the bottle and it drops onto the sofa before rolling onto the almost all-white rug.
“Shit!” I hiss. I look around for a towel, but I don’t see one. I pull my robe off without thinking about my nakedness underneath it and start to mop up the wine that’s now spreading across the wooden floor. “Fuck,” I mutter, bending over. “Ruby will go nuts. This was a present to her from her folks and I think they bought it from Harrods.”
Ben leans down and I know he’s trying his best to ignore the fact that my naked arse is in the air. “Who the fuck buys a rug from Harrods?”
“Ruby’s parents,” I tell him. “Go and see if there’s any white wine in the fridge to throw over this will you?”
“That doesn’t work,” he tells me.
“Just go get it, please,” I snap.
He comes back a minute later and hands me a bottle. I unscrew the lid and pour it all over the deep red stain. It’s not going to work. I can already see that. I lean back on my heels and huff. Shit. Double shit.
“It’s still spreading,” he says, pulling off his t-shirt to soak up what he can.
I carry on dabbing the stain with my robe when someone knocks at the door. “Who is it?” I call.
“It’s me,” says Ruby. “I forgot my key.”
I shoot a glance at Ben but don’t say anything as I walk to the door. I yank the small towel from off my head and hold it against the front of my body. Then I open the door and smile as nicely as I can at Ruby. Her mouth drops open and she looks at me with horror.
“Ariel, you—” she starts to say.
“Ariel,” comes another voice. Noah swings around the doorframe and plants himself right in front of me. I can smell the whiskey radiating from him and it makes me feel sick. I hate whiskey. I hate the smell of it. I hate the taste of it. I hate it so much that I can’t stand to look at the bottles of it in the off-licence.
Despite the fact that he’s obviously wasted, Noah’s eyes hungrily trail down my body. He smiles at me lazily, until Ben walks into view, pulling on his stained t-shirt. Noah’s smile falls right off his face. “Slut,” he mumbles.
“Hey,” says Ben. “Noah, you should apologise for that.”
He leans against the doorframe and starts to laugh. “Ben, Ben, Ben. Benjamin. Benny. Little Ben. Benji.”
Ben rolls his eyes and mouths an apology to me as he grabs Noah’s arm, pulling him away from our door.
“Couldn’t wait to get your dick in, eh mate?” Noah asks as he stumbles into the wall opposite my door.
“Now, listen,” says Ben sternly. “I’m going to let that one go because you’re steaming drunk, but wind your neck in, Noah.”
“You wind your neck in,” slurs Noah. He pushes Ben off him and spins back around, pointing at me through the air. “I told you to stay away from her.” Ben huffs and tries to stop him, but Noah is too strong.
“You need to go and sleep this off,” Ben says to Noah.
Noah snatches his arm away and shuffles towards me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says to me. He staggers the last few feet until he’s right in my face. “I loved you,” he almost screams. “I fucking loved you with all my heart. I would have done anything for you,” he spits. “Fucking anything!”
My mouth drops open
and I don’t bother to try and close it.
He loved me?
“I’m sorry,” says Ben, “this isn’t like him at all.”
Ruby shuffles up next to me and drapes my silk dressing gown over my shoulders and tugs the towel free from my hands. When I don’t move, she tuts and pulls the gown up my arms before fastening the belt around my waist. “You can’t stand in the corridor half naked,” she whispers. “You’ll get cold.”
I nod, watching Ben try to wrestle Noah away from me. But he isn’t budging.
He loved me?
“Well?” he shouts. “Haven’t you got anything to say to that, Ariel?!”
I glance at Ruby, who pulls a face at me as if to say ‘what the fuck is going on?’ I shake my head at Noah.
“That’s a first,” he laughs. “Normally, I can’t get you to shut the fuck up!”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t know me anymore. You knew me seven years ago, but you don’t know shit about my life now. I’m not the same person I was back then.”
He laughs in my face. I want to punch him.
“That’s not what I heard,” he mocks. “And let me tell you, I’ve heard quite a lot.”
Now it’s Ruby’s turn to get a dirty look. She holds her hands up in defence, but I think she knows we’re not done with this.
“Actually, I have got something to say to that,” I tell him, putting my hands on my hips. I’m so annoyed right now that I don’t know if I can control myself.
“Go on,” he urges. He cups his hand behind his ear and grins at me. “We’re all ears.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “That’s what I have to say.”
Anger consumes his eyes as he lunges for me. He grabs my shoulders and pushes me up against the wall, pinning me against it with his weight. “That’s all you have to say to me telling you that I was blindly in love with you?”
He’s so close to my face that I have to crane my neck to get away from his whiskey breath. “Yes,” I say.
“You heartless bitch,” he says, shaking his head. “You broke my heart, Ariel, and I think you knew that all along.”
Did I? No, I don’t think I did. I broke my own heart, not his. And even if I did, his repaired itself a lot quicker than mine.
“You crashed into my life like a hurricane, trashed my heart and took it with you when you fucked off,” he growls.
“Noah,” says Ben. “I think you should let go of her.”
I hadn’t realised but he’s grabbed my dressing gown in his hands.
“This doesn’t concern you,” he tells Ben. “Go away. Both of you.”
No one moves. Ben puts his arm on Noah’s shoulder and in a blur of movement, Noah pushes him off and Ben grapples with him. Arms are flying everywhere and I can hear the two men grunting, and then I feel something hard colliding with the side of my face. Ruby gasps as I slide down the wall.
Shit, that hurt.
“Ariel,” Ben says, crouching down beside me. “What the fuck, Noah?”
“It wasn’t me,” Noah says.
“It was,” Ben spits. “You had my hands behind my back.”
“I’m fine,” I mumble, putting my palm against my cheek. I glance up at Noah, but he turns away from me. At this angle, I can see the angry twitch of his jaw. His omission of an apology really pisses me off. Yes, I’ve done some really bad shit. Yes, I fucked off when I really shouldn’t have. But I don’t deserve to be whacked in the face for it almost seven years later.
“I’ll get a cold compress,” says Ruby as she rushes into our apartment.
“I’m fine,” I call back, letting Ben pull me to a standing position.
“You got in the way,” Noah slurs. “As usual.”
What a dick. “You can’t have loved me that much,” I hiss.
His eyes narrow and immediately fixate on mine. “What?” he snaps.
“You can’t have loved me that much,” I repeat.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he says. “Why couldn’t I have loved you that much?”
I take a step towards him and push my finger into his chest. “Because I know that four months after I left, you were married. Didn’t you get my postcard?”
His jaw drops open. “Don’t you fucking dare. This shit is all on you, sweetheart.”
“You were married?” asks Ben.
“What the fuck has happened to my bastard rug?!” shrieks Ruby.
Chapter 13
THEN
The Confrontation
“What the fuck?!”
The screaming floats into my brain and seeps into my dream. I can hear someone yelling, but I was dreaming about angels. Angels wouldn’t shout or scream and they certainly wouldn’t swear.
“Get. The. Fuck. Up. NOW!”
Now I know I’m not dreaming, but I still don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to face whoever it is that’s yelling at me. And I really don’t want the heavy, muscular arm that’s draped across my bare stomach where my t-shirt has risen up to move, but it does.
“Tara,” he says, “this isn’t what it looks like.” His voice is deep and gruff from sleep.
“Oh, really?” she asks.
I open my eyes and immediately wish I hadn’t as my head begins to pound. I shuffle on the beanbag, feeling aches in places that I’ve never felt them before, and squint at the short brunette that’s standing over us with her hands on her hips. If her face wasn’t so beetroot red and angry, she’d probably be attractive.
“I thought you were working last night?” she asks, staring at him while tapping her foot on the floor.
“I was,” he says.
“I thought you were having a quiet night in last night?” she pushes.
“I did,” he says.
Last night? Is it morning already? Did I actually sleep?
“So, what?” she says. “You just picked this slag up in the graveyard?”
“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. He shakes his head. “Well, I didn’t pick her up in the way you think I picked her up.”
Did she just call me a slag?
“She looks like a child,” she spits. “Did you fuck a child?” She kicks my foot. “You,” she hisses. “Whore bag. How old are you?”
Oh, no she didn’t. I jump up off the beanbag and find myself right in her face. Her shock at my speed flickers across her face before she screws it up again. “One,” I say, “I am not a whore bag. Two, I am eighteen years and one day old.” I don’t miss his curious eyes as they flash across to me. Yep, he definitely thought I was older. “Three, who the fu—?”
I feel a hand on my arm and hear him sigh. “Ariel, that’s enough.”
“Ariel?” she laughs. “Your name is Ariel?”
I blink at her. “Yes, why?”
She turns from me to face him. “You cheated on me with the fucking Little Mermaid?”
“Well, that’s original,” I say. Hang on, did she just say he cheated on her? He never told me he had a girlfriend. I know I sort of jumped on him yesterday, but it’s not like he didn’t have the opportunity to say something.
“I didn’t cheat on you,” he says. “Listen, just let me get Ariel her clothes and then we’ll talk.”
“Ariel,” she mutters to herself. “I can’t believe you fucked a fish.”
“I was not named after The Little Mermaid,” I tell her through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t fuck her,” he says.
I want to raise an eyebrow at him, but I manage to resist. I actually don’t give a shit what he tells her.
“Your parents should be reported,” she says, ignoring him. “Who the fuck names their kid Ariel?”
I want to tell her that she can go ahead and report my parents because nothing will happen. And nothing will happen because they’re dead.
“That’s enough, Tara,” he says sternly. “I’ve told you that I haven’t cheated, so just let me explain the rest.”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
he repeats.
“No, I won’t believe you,” she says. Her voice sounds a lot calmer than I think mine would be if the roles were reversed.
“Why not?” I ask.
“You’re wearing his clothes.”
“Mine got dirty,” I tell her.
“I don’t give a flying fuck what your excuses are. You shouldn’t be half-naked and in his house. End of.”
“She needed my help,” he tells her. “Yesterday was probably the worst day of her life…”
I tune out when he starts to give her the edited version of how we met yesterday. I can’t believe this is how I’ve ended up. If this is an indication of how my life will be now, then I don’t want it. This isn’t what I had in mind for my future. My mum and dad would be ashamed if they could see me now.
I tune back in as he’s telling her that I fell into the grave. The cow bag doesn’t even seem to have an ounce of sympathy for me.
When he’s finished disclosing my story, she turns to face me, looking just as pissed off as she did five minutes ago.
“I should go,” I whisper.
“Yeah, you should,” she says.
“Hang on,” he says, turning to face me. He stares at me for a fraction too long. “Also,” he adds, turning back to face Tara, “even if I did sleep with her, it wouldn’t be cheating.”
She starts to throw a hissy fit in protest, but he stops her.
“We’re on a break,” he reminds her, but I know it’s really for my benefit. “Technically, we aren’t together.”
If they’re on a break and he doesn’t think he cheated, then why is he denying the fact that we had sex?
“Even if we were on a break, she still needs to go.”
Noah and Me Page 8
