The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,100
in both their lives.
And now he was retreating at a million miles an hour and not returning her phone calls.
If only Patrick hadn’t turned up on her doorstep yesterday. If only she’d told him to leave the script and she’d call him when she’d read it. If only she’d insisted that Oliver come over for dinner, or that she’d gone to him when she’d finished with Patrick.
If only.
Sick at heart, angry, confused and hurt, she went to bed. She lay awake for a long time, having imaginary conversations with Oliver where she said all the right things and he responded in all the right ways and the horrible, hollow feeling in her stomach went away.
I don’t want this to be the end. How can this be the end?
It was her last thought before she fell asleep. The first thing she did on waking was check her phone to see if there was anything from Oliver. There wasn’t. Short of bombarding him with phone calls until he picked up or getting on a plane and confronting him in person, she was out of options.
She was on the verge of giving in and making another call when she heard the sound of the mailman’s motorcycle out in the street. Mail was a rarity for her, since she handled most of her bills online, but sure enough, the mailman stopped at her letter box.
The back of her neck prickled with prescience and she shoved her feet into the nearest pair of shoes and made her way up the driveway in her pajamas. There was a lone envelope in the box and she knew before she picked it up that it was from Oliver.
He was too good a man, too nice a man to simply cut her off at the knees. So he’d written her a letter and caught last night’s mail and now she was supposed to read it and accept his decision and move on.
She stared at his sloping, elegant handwriting for a long moment, then she walked slowly to the house. She set the letter on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the envelope some more.
She felt as though she was standing at a crossroads, two unknown paths stretching before her. The path where she curled up in the corner and accepted that what had happened between her and Oliver had been nothing but a beautiful bubble that had been destroyed by the intrusion of reality on one side. And the path where she clung to the reality of her feelings for Oliver and his for her and chose to believe that even though there were so many odds working against them, they were meant to be together.
For some reason, Patrick’s words from yesterday echoed in her mind.
You never believed in us like that. You always held back. Always.
It hit her then that she’d never held back with Oliver. Right from the start she’d given him nothing but honesty. She’d been brave with him and she’d been bold and she’d chosen to believe in them.
She still chose to believe in them.
Which meant that, really, there was only one path before her. She would have be brave and bold again to take it. She would have to pursue love with the same kind of fearless zeal she employed in her working life. She would have to put herself out there in every possible way.
She took a moment to appreciate the depth and breadth of her decision. Then she picked up the envelope, opened it and read Oliver’s letter, because she wanted to know what ground she’d be fighting on when she went to find him.
His letter made her cry, because, as always, he’d been honest to a fault. He apologized for his hasty departure and explained that at the time, it had felt as though he didn’t have a choice. He told her in painful, exposing detail how paranoid and anxious he’d been, sitting on his side of the fence knowing that she was alone with her very charming, very handsome ex-husband.
He told her that in the short, in the perfect weeks he’d known her she’d made him feel as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds in his life. He told her that she was beautiful and sexy and clever and courageous and that he wanted her to be happy and to find the next thing in her life that would make her smile. And he told her that that thing could