Breaking Joseph Read Free

missing
something?”
    “I’m no good at
it. I wanted to be, but only for you.” I bit my lip. “Not for
me.”
    He sniffed.
“Would you be faithful for him ?”
    “I’m not sure.”
The laugh turned sour in my mouth. “Not even sure if being faithful
is a reliable measure of anything. I used to think I could fix
that.”
    “And you
can’t?”
    “I’m not so
sure I should. What do you want me to say?”
    “You already
know that. I’m not going to make a bigger twat of myself by saying
it.”
    More silence.
It had been only three days since we’d broken up–in his mourning,
there was the echo of hope that our fling might survive. I
remembered what Joseph had said about Isobel: I had to give her
a catalogue of grotesque reasons to finish with me.
    Then I thought
about Charlie, the man who’d shaped Charlotte when she was just a
lump of school uniform and clay. Matt’s stepfather. That was a
secret more serrated than any knife.
    No, no. I
couldn’t be that cruel.
    “I wish I was
enough for you,” Matt mumbled.
    I touched his
knee and he swatted me away. “It wasn’t ever about that.”
    “Of course it
was. You know, I sat in that hotel room last night and looked
around at all your stuff with his stuff. You wouldn’t have known
that he bought you. D’you know what I realized? I could give you
all the money in the world, but you’ll never put your dress over my
shirt on the back of a chair. What a fucking gay thing to notice…I
can’t shake it. Keep seeing it.”
    “Matt.”
    “No.
Eventually, you’re going to find someone and settle down and have
this thing you say I want. Everyone does.” He cleared his throat.
“But it won’t be with me.”
    We’d been
involved for less than two weeks. Hardly a lifelong obligation,
huh? These words simmered on my tongue. But then to Matt, it was
never about what he deserved to get from me. Just whether he’d been
punished hard enough. It almost sounded like he talked to himself
more than me–maybe this apology wasn’t for my benefit.
    Aidan was
cleverer than he let on.
    “I’m sorry,” I
said.
    “Sorry doesn’t
fix anything.”
    “That’s half
the problem though, isn’t it?” Like two pieces of broken glass,
we’d never heal each other. We’d just slowly disintegrate, the
longer we tried. “All this fixing .”
    He sniffed
again. “I would try.”
    “I know you
would. Your persistence is quite admirable.”
    “Cheers.”
    “And if it
makes you feel any better, you’re officially the only boyfriend
I’ve ever been faithful to,” I said.
    “Really?”
    “Yep.”
    “That’s quite
an honour.”
    I peered
beneath his hair–he tried not to smile. “And I would totally still
jump you,” I added, “if it wasn’t for…well, you know.”
    “As much as it
pains me to say it, that’d be a bad idea.”
    “My life mostly
consists of bad ideas.”
    “If it wasn’t
for one of those bad ideas, I’d have never been with you in the
first place,” he said. “And I wouldn’t take it back.”
    I narrowed my
eyes. “I never said the whoring was one of them.”
    “Yeah…well.” He
sat back against the bench–the first time I’d seen him relax since
we arrived in New York. “We’re going to agree to be friends now,
aren’t we? Why do I feel like we’ve done this before?” He squinted
at me in the collage of sun and tree shade.
    “We have. Only
we hadn’t emotionally fucked each other with a cattle prod at that
point.”
    “Speak for
yourself, Leila. I can’t handle being friends right now, not
full-on. Maybe eventually…ah, I don’t know.” He gave a shrug and a
heavy sigh.
    “I understand.
And I’m sorry.”
    “Will you tell
me something, honestly? I need to know.”
    “Okay,” I said,
cautious.
    “Is Joseph more
than your client?”
    “Honestly?” I
pushed my tongue into my cheek. “I’m not entirely sure.”
    “I heard that
he dumped his girlfriend, and what with you finishing with me–”
    “It