back together with her?’ I asked, trotting after him. I was starting to feel too warm once again in my Zara midi dress. Seriously, I should have burned it after the first time I wore it but I was still short on wardrobe options and would be until I got my first proper paycheck.
John looked at me over his shoulder and laughed out loud. ‘Kate? Christ, no. We never should have got married in the first place. We weren’t right for each other from the start but we were young, I was so sure she was the one. You know what they say, when you wear rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags are just flags.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘People don’t change, you know, no matter how much time you give them. You just start to lower your expectations until, eventually, you’re on the floor.’
John moved underneath a big oak tree. I stopped a little way away, just outside of the tree’s shadow, and squinted up at him.
‘That’s not true,’ I murmured.
‘I’m not talking about your boyfriend,’ he said stiffly.
‘Yes, you are,’ I replied. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t expect Patrick to change, I don’t want Patrick to change. I want things to be exactly how they were before.’
‘But you can’t turn the clock back, Ros.’ He shook his head sadly and scratched his nose. For moment, I thought I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes but in the next moment, they were gone. ‘Trust me, I’ve tried.’
‘You’re not me, you don’t know,’ I said firmly. It was true, it was true, it was true. I had everything I wanted, everything I’d longed for. Patrick, my friends, my job.
‘Ros, what’s going on?’ John stretched up to wrap his hands around an overhead bough. ‘You’re upset.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I answered as I snapped a leaf from one of the low-hanging branches, following its veins with my fingernail. ‘Why would you say I’m upset?’
‘OK, not upset,’ he replied. ‘You seem angry. I’m not like Patrick. I don’t play games, I’m not clever with words and I don’t say things I don’t mean.’
‘You’ve met him twice,’ I reminded him, my temper beginning to flare. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I was angry. ‘You don’t even know him.’
John let go of the tree and took a step towards me. ‘And does he know you?’
I crunched the leaf in my hand.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that when you’re on your own you’re funny and interesting and kind and I want to know everything about you. But when he’s there, you’re awkward and weird and always deferring to him,’ he said, coming closer. ‘If I had to choose, I think I preferred it when we first met and you were just rude.’
‘I wasn’t rude when we first met,’ I replied, too heated to hear him. ‘I was embarrassed. You were – doing what you were doing, after all.’
‘I was referring to the part after that but good to know you haven’t forgotten,’ he muttered, eyes shifting awkwardly towards the sky. ‘I don’t like him, Ros. He’s rude, he’s pretentious and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.’
‘Thank fuck no one’s asking you to go out with him then!’ I yelled, shocked at the fire in my voice. ‘And he does care about other people, he cares about my friend and he cares about me.’
But as the words came out my mouth, my conviction trailed off. Did Patrick care about me? As much as I cared about him?
‘Right, if he’s so brilliant then why are you standing out here, talking to me, instead of sitting in there and listening to him?’
I looked up at him, one, maybe two steps away from me, dark hair falling in front of his dark eyes that were more hazel than brown in the sun. I heard the sound of ragged breath and realized that it wasn’t coming from me. Or at least, not only from me.
‘Did you know it was me last night?’ John asked quietly.
‘No,’ I answered honestly, my anger seeping away. ‘Did you know? That it was me?’
He replied with a nod.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about you,’ he said, stepping closer.
I searched the grass for any response he might accept and that I could live with. From the moment I’d left Sumi to the moment I’d finally fallen asleep, I hadn’t thought about anything else. And when I closed my eyes, it was John’s face I saw in front