Two Christmases Read Free Page B

me—I’m so sorry. I was drunk and I just lost it. I’m sorry. Did Marty tell you? Is that how you know?”
    “Yes. Your easy screw texted me on my mobile and then rang me and told me all about it,” he said. “Talked about a letter, but I didn’t understand him. I didn’t get any letter. And I didn’t believe him initially either. I thought he was just jealous. But then it all made sense, the way you looked when you came home on Thursday. The way you acted. Were you drugged? Had you taken anything? Was that why you fucked with him?”
    Slowly, I sank to the floor. The metal handle of the floor cupboard felt cold against my head.
    “I don’t know why I did it,” I whispered, refusing to look at Jake but feeling his anger rolling around us both. “I was drunk, I told you. And yeah, I had some skunk too, but it was a club . That’s what happens. But it didn’t mean anything. It’s not like you and me.”
    He laughed, but the laughter ended with a gulp. “Not like you and me? Bloody hell, at least you admit there might be a ‘you and me’. I suppose that’s something. I should be grateful. I should be, but I’m not. I’ve always been faithful to my boyfriends. That may be old-fashioned, though God knows in this day and age, that’s surely no bad thing. You knew what I was like, how I felt about things like that, when you moved in. You told me it would be fine. You said you wouldn’t do drugs any more or any of the other stuff. You promised me. So how can I believe you now?”
    Then he couldn’t speak any more. Again I wanted to touch him but thought it would be unwelcome. Why would he want me here anyway? I’d let him down, big time. When we started living together, he’d talked about his family life and his parents’ drawn-out breakup. I knew perfectly well about his father and how much he’d messed Jake’s mother around, how there’d always been his father’s other women throughout Jake’s teenage years. The rows, his mother’s tears, the difficult court case. Oh yes, I knew how he felt about monogamy, how important it was to him. And I’d taken that knowledge and put the knife in with it. What sort of a boyfriend did I think I was? Still, I thought he was wrong about the drugs. Wasn’t he? Yes, I knew I hadn’t given them up as I’d promised him I would. Not entirely. But my encounter with Marty hadn’t been to do with any of that. It had been something else—the way the evening had shaped up; that feeling of being a little out of control but not dangerously so; the fact that I’d just wanted to have sex and hadn’t much minded who with. It was nothing to do with the drugs.
    Or was it? Maybe I was simply fooling myself. Maybe I’d had too many after all, breaking yet another promise to Jake, and I’d been nothing more or less than an accident waiting to happen.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it too. “I’m sorry in a way you can’t possibly believe. Bloody hell, Jake, I wish so much I could go back to last week and put it all right again. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
    I didn’t know what else to say. It felt as if whatever I said or did would never make it right. This time I made a move to touch him, but he shook his head, veered away from me.
    “You know… you know what the really funny thing is about all this,” he whispered.
    I didn’t think anything about this was funny, though I knew what he meant, so I simply waited.
    “I was going to ask you. It’s Christmas, so I was going to do it.”
    I stared at him. “Do what? Ask me what?”
    He took a deep breath. Turned to look at me. His eyes were red and his face crumpled.
    “I was going to ask you to be my partner,” he said. “I’d had it planned for tonight. It’s our nine-month anniversary of getting together. And, as I said, it’s nearly Christmas. I wanted… I thought I wanted to be with you forever. I didn’t mind about the drugs—because yes, I do know you still do them sometimes. I’m not a