by Lucy Wild
“What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I saw the email.”
“What email?”
“The bet between you and him, whether you could get a random employee into bed. Congratulations, you won. I hope it was worth it.”
“Jen, listen…”
“I think you should go.”
“But I saved you.”
“And he wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for your bet. Please, Will, don’t make this any harder than it already is. You’ve done enough damage.”
“Listen, it was a bet but I was an idiot. You’ve changed me, Jen. I’m not the person I was before I met you. Please, just give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain what? How you used me?”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t know I was going to fall for you. I didn’t know that making that phone call would make me the happiest I’ve ever been.”
“But it was based on a lie.”
“Please…”
“Will, if you have any respect for me at all, you’ll leave. Now.”
He looked at me, his eyes pleading. I shook my head and looked away. I didn’t look up until I heard the door closing downstairs. Only then did I sink to the floor and let the tears flow.
I remained there for a long time, my body feeling violated by Lionel’s touch, made all the worse for knowing it wouldn’t have happened if Will hadn’t rung me. This was why you didn’t fuck the boss. It was a bad idea all round.
I sobbed for a long time. I wasn’t just crying over what had just happened, I was crying for what might have been, how happy I thought I was, how all of what I thought I had was now gone. I couldn’t work there anymore, I couldn’t be in the same building as him.
I managed to get to my feet and stumble through to the bedroom. Climbing into bed, I wrapped the blankets around me and continued to cry, thinking how even my flat didn’t feel like home anymore, not after what had happened. I made a decision in that moment, one that although I didn’t know it, would change the entire course of my life.
FOURTEEN - JEN
I MOVED HOME. IT FELT surreal, like I’d only been trying out being an adult and had failed.
My room was how I’d left it, posters still on the walls, teddies piled up on the armchair in the corner.
“Did you leave it as some kind of shrine?” I asked, turning to face Mum and Dad who were on the landing behind me.
“I had my bedroom turned into an office when I moved out,” Mum said. “I promised I’d never do that to you two.”
“So Snotbrain’s bedroom is still the same too?”
“Don’t call your sister that.”
“But that’s her name.”
“No it isn’t, as you know.”
Dad sighed. “It’s like you never left. Now come and have a cup of tea and let’s talk.”
I told them everything, omitting only the more lurid elements. They listened in silence as I cried my way through the worst parts. When I was done, Mum just got up and gave me an enormous hug. I sobbed into her chest as Dad sat quietly behind her, waiting.
“You can stay for as long as you like,” he said at last.
So I settled back in like I’d never left.
I’d given notice at Bailey Inc. and because I had some holidays left over, I used them instead of working my notice. I was able to leave after a single day back at work, most of it spent in H.R and payroll, sorting out the details.
There was no rush to get another job. I had no bills while I was at home, my parents refusing to take any rent from me despite my offers. “You’re our daughter,” they said. “What would it say about us if we took money from you?”
The nights were the worst. Through the day I was able to keep busy, helping Mum with her sewing or working with Dad on his vegetable patch in the back garden. But at night it was just me in my bedroom, alone with my thoughts.
That was when the heavy weight in my chest would make itself known, my heart hurting so much as I dwelled on what I’d done, on what I’d gone through.
I missed him. That was the saddest part of the whole thing. I missed him and there was no point denying it.
He might have just used me, he might not have cared about me but that didn’t stop me caring about him. I wanted to be with someone who was probably laughing about me at that very moment.
Will didn’t even try and get in touch. That hurt the most. I told myself to get over him, that he wasn’t worth my pain. It made no difference. I wanted him, I wanted his touch on me, his lips on mine, his body wrapped around me when I lay on my side at night. There was a gaping absence in my life and it was hell.
It was four months after I’d moved home when Dad asked if he could talk to me. Mum was out at the shops and was bringing back the ingredients to make my favourite upside down cake, hoping to cheer me up.
“Have you got a second?” Dad asked, sticking his head around the door of the living room. “Or is it a good bit?”
I put my book down and sat up. “What’s up?”
“Mind if I come in?”
“It’s your house, Dad.”
“I know that, dear, but you might want your privacy.”
“I’d rather have your company.”
He nodded, walking in and settling in his armchair by the window. He looked outside for a few seconds before turning, a serious expression on his face, one that I didn’t see very often. It meant a talk was coming. We’d had a few in my life. But this time when he began to speak, he surprised me by not talking about me but talking about himself. That never happened.
“I almost lost your mother,” he began.
I didn’t answer. I had no idea what to say.
He continued a moment later. “It was about a year after you’d moved out and I don’t know, I think I’d been taking her for granted for a while. You’ll get like this when you’ve been with someone a long time. Sometimes you get complacent.
Anyway, she started talking about divorce and I had no idea she was even thinking about it. It was a hell of a shock, Jen.”
“I had no idea,” I said, seeing the pain in his eyes despite his attempts to hide it.
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and I nearly lost her because I got lazy. Now, I know, I know. You’re thinking, what the hell has this got to do with me?”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“You were and that’s fine. The point I’m trying to make is that I love your mother and it took nearly losing her for me to remember.”
I nodded slowly.
“I know what love is,” he said. “I know what you’re feeling about this Will of yours.”
“Dad-”
“Let me finish, please, then I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”
“All right, go on.”
“Thanks. You fell for a man who did you wrong.”
“I never said I’d fallen for him.”
“I might be old, Jen, but I’m not an idiot. You’re in love with him and if you can’t see that, then maybe I didn’t raise you right.”
“But what if I do love him? What does it matter now? It’s over.”
“That’s my point. I thought it was over. I thought I’d lost your mother and that was when I chose to step up and be a man. You need to do the same.”
“You want me to be a man?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Grow a beard? Develop an interest in model trains, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly. That or talk to Will.”
“I don’t get it. Why should I talk to him? He hasn’t even tried to ring.”
“That’s not strictly true.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“About a week after you moved back, he rang the house, spoke to your mother.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now. If you’d spoken to him then, you’d have told him to go to hell and that would have ruined everythi
ng. You’ve needed time on your own to think and before you protest, you know I’m right.”
“Maybe,” I said, scowling at him. “Maybe not.”
“You can hate me, that’s fine. Doesn’t change how I feel about you. And you can hate Will for what happened too. Or you could talk to him and see if you can forgive him for what happened. Your mother forgave me for neglecting our love. Look where we are now. That could be you.”
“Fighting over the remote control?”
“And being in love with the person of your dreams.”
I didn’t answer. It was a hell of a lot to take in.
“You don’t have to do anything now,” he said, getting to his feet. “But at least think about it. I knew a guy once who didn’t make the call I’m suggesting and he spent the rest of his life regretting it. I said I’d never be him and I’d hate for you to be him either. I love you, Jen, I want you to be happy and I can tell how happy he made you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, picking up my book and not taking in a word of it for the next hour. I was still on the same page when Mum got home with the shopping.
“Are you all right?” she asked when I came into the kitchen to help her unpack. “You look pale.”
“I think I need to talk” I said. “If you’ve got time to listen.”
FIFTEEN - WILL
IT’S STRANGE NOW TO THINK back. I’d been off work for ages. The place was coping fine, Robert was doing everything I needed. I’d turned off all of my phones. I wasn’t taking any calls.
What I was doing was nothing. I was sitting at home and feeling utterly miserable. Was this the price of falling in love? If it was then there was no wonder the guys at the club preferred fucking around.
Jen had broken me. I’d gone from bored and empty to full of emotions and I hated it. I just wanted to feel nothing again.
I wanted to stay at home and lock the doors and never speak to anyone but I had to go out. Today was the day of the court case.
Lionel had of course sued me for assault and today was the day I had to stand up in court and tell the world why I’d punched an upstanding citizen in the stomach. He was suing for a million for physical and mental distress. I guessed that meant the friendship was definitely over.
I couldn’t believe his audacity. I’d found him about to do God knows what to Jen and he had the balls to turn around and sue me?
I shaved for the first time in weeks. There hadn’t seemed any point before.
I had only tried to get in touch with her once. Her mother had coldly informed me not to call again. I took the hint.
I needed to shut down my emotions. I needed to lock it all away, get back to being the person I was. I didn’t need her. I could survive just fine.
The pain in my heart said otherwise, a constant companion that was still there even as I walked into the courtroom that morning.
Seeing Lionel brought it all flooding back, all the memories I’d been working so hard to suppress. He’d done this. If he hadn’t made that bullshit bet with me, I wouldn’t have been feeling like the most worthless human being on the planet. I didn’t have Jen therefore I didn’t have anything.
It dragged on for most of the day but in the end the conclusion was as short as it was satisfying.
“He’s asking for one million,” the judge said, bringing my attention back to the case as I got distracted yet again. “What is your final response?”
“I’ll write a cheque for two million if you’ll let me hit him again.”
“Mr Bailey, I’m afraid that is not how the justice system works in this country, even if you are a billionaire.”
I pulled out my chequebook and wrote out an amount. I held it out towards Lionel’s lawyer. Lionel shoved past him and marched over, snatching it from my hand while grinning broadly. “Pleasure doing business with you.” He glanced down. “Hang on, this says two million.”
He looked up in time to see my fist connecting with his chin.
I left the courtroom a few minutes later to the sound of the judge chuckling and Lionel yelling after me that he was going to take me for everything I had. Good luck, I thought as I had nothing at all anymore.
“That was funny,” a voice said and I looked up to see a woman standing on the steps outside. It wasn’t just any woman. It was Jen.
The weight around my heart lifted into the air and vanished in an instant, I felt so light I thought I might take off.
“Jen?” I asked, not sure if it was a mirage. “Is that you?”
She nodded slowly. “Hello, Will. I heard you were in court today, thought I might come along and watch.”
“Did you now?”
She looked guilty. She also looked so hot, I wanted her more than anything. “I was going to get a drink, want to join me?”
“I guess.”
She walked next to me as we crossed the street to the nearest bar. She didn’t say anything until we were sitting in a booth together, two glasses of poor quality wine on the table between us.
“How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Not great,” she replied. “You?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”
“Listen, Will, I need to know something and I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?”
I nodded, gulping as my heart started to pound in my chest. What was she going to ask me?
“Did you sleep with me to win a bet?”
“No. I…I had no idea who I was ringing and when I met you in person, I couldn’t go through with it but then…”
“But then what?”
“But then I fell for you.”
“You…fell for me?”
“I fell head over heels for you and I couldn’t stop myself. I’m so sorry, Jen.”
She held up a hand to silence me. “I don’t want apologies, Will. I want you to step up and be a man. Grow a beard, like model trains, that sort of thing.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me.”
“Never mind.”
There was a half smile on her face and the sight made my cock twitch. She looked so beautiful, even more so than I remembered.
“I had a beard this morning as it happens.”
“What I mean is if you want to give this another shot, I think it might be worth a try.”
“I do want to and do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I realised something important and I never got chance to tell you before you left.”
“What’s that?”
“That I love you, Jen, with my heart and soul and everything that matters, I love you.”
A tear ran down her cheek and she leaned over the table, sliding her hands into mine. “I love you too.”
The wine glasses crashed to the floor as I bumped around the table to throw my arms around her. She pressed herself into my chest and then we kissed.
It was the best kiss I’d ever had because it spoke of three things at once, hope for the future, love for each other, and forgiveness for the past.
“We take it slowly,” she said when we parted. “Deal?”
“Deal. Don’t worry, I will spend the rest of my life proving to you how much you matter to me. If you want, I’ll even try liking model trains.”
“Then you’ll have a lot to talk about when you meet my Dad.”
She was talking about meeting her parents. It might have been a throwaway comment but it was one that showed me things were going to be all right. I wasn’t going to fuck up again. I might have been a bad person but I wasn’t going to be one anymore. I was going to dedicate myself to her, to us.
We sat together, the smell of spilled wine strong in the air. Outside the bar, the noise of traffic faded away. All I could hear was her soft breathing as she remained by my side. I planned on having her by my side for the rest of my days and every single one of those days would see me proving to her just how much she meant to me.
EPILOGUE - JEN
Christmas Day…
He looked surp
risingly relaxed in the festive sweater. It amused Dad no end to see the executive billionaire with a reindeer on his chest, the nose of which flashed red throughout the meal before the batteries died.
“So this is your kind of Christmas?” Will asked, looking around the table at the four of us. There was me, Mum, Dad, and Snotbrain, crackers pulled, plates empty, glasses drained.
“Pretty much,” Mum said. “We sometimes put a film on but that’s going to be a bit tricky here.”
“I’m sure I can sort something out,” Will said. “Once I’ve sat still for a minute. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much.”
“I can tell,” Dad said. “You’ve gone bright red.”
“That’s probably Rudolf here.”
I looked around the table as they talked, marvelling at how much had changed in the last few months.
Living with Will, regular trips together to see my parents. Sarah and Gareth married and in a starter home. Me head of the I.T department after my barnstorming speech at the A.G.M about needing more funding to keep the company running smoothly. We’d even spent his birthday at his mum’s house. That was fascinating, watching him try and relax in the presence of his mum who couldn’t be happier to see him, especially as, in her words, “You’re the most excited I’ve ever seen you.”
“Can you blame me?” he asked in response, squeezing my hand, “when I’ve got this one by my side?”
I groaned but inside my stomach turned cartwheels. He loved me. It was a wonderful feeling and I didn’t think I’d ever get over the wonderful sense of surprise.
Since we’d got back together, he’d eased off the business, finding that Robert was a perfectly competent replacement. He was spending more time with me, with his family, and here.
I looked past the table and out at the ocean. It was beautiful.
“Can I take this off yet?” Will asked, looking at me.
“Has he suffered enough?” I asked the others.
“No!” they all cried at once.
“Please,” Will said. “I’m dying here.”
“Oh, all right,” I said. “But you have to keep the hat on.”
