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“You don’t understand. I …” He lurched forward, and I winced when he vomited all over the floor. The smell hit my nose instantly, and I bit back a grimace. Nigel fell back on the couch, groaning as he held his stomach.
Ah, hell, now I was going to have to clean that up.
“I know you love her, but I love her, too,” he said, and I froze. Time slowed down as I convinced myself I’d misheard him. “I can’t stop thinking about her,” he rambled on. “Never should’ve touched her. I need her. She told me not to tell you, but it’s killing me inside. I hate myself for doing it. She’s so beautiful. I think about her all the time.”
Icy fear sliced through my veins. Was he talking about Maggie? And what the fuck did he mean about loving her, too? Tears were streaming down his face, and it shocked me. I’d never seen my friend cry. He’d been sad at my mother’s funeral, but he hadn’t shed a tear. His show of emotion didn’t soften me towards him. Instead, my thoughts turned dark because if he was saying what I thought he was saying …
Moving closer, I knelt by the couch. What do you mean? Who are you talking about?
I signed the question but received no response. Nigel had passed out again, and my thoughts raced a thousand miles a minute. His words ran through my head on a loop.
Never should’ve touched her. I need her. She told me not to tell you but it’s killing me inside. I hate myself for doing it.
My concern for Nigel soon turned to fury. Like, what the actual fuck was he talking about? I wanted to shake him awake and force him to explain himself, but he was out cold. Even if I could manage to wake him up, he was too shitfaced to talk plainly.
My brain scrambled to figure out what he’d said. Maggie and Nigel met before she’d come to dinner at my house that first time. She’d told me what happened, how he was drunk outside her place, but was that all? Had more transpired between them? Maybe on the night when he’d stopped by her flat to apologise for his behaviour?
She told him not to tell me? That was what he said, wasn’t it?
No, that didn’t feel right. I was missing something. Maggie was too forthcoming. If Nigel made a move on her, she would’ve told me. And what the hell did he mean he was in love with her? He didn’t even know her. No, the only way to make sense of this was to talk to Maggie directly. If there was any truth to it, she’d tell me; that much was certain.
Leaving Nigel’s flat, I headed back to Maggie’s. Yes, I left his vomit all over the floor. If what he’d just confessed to me was true, then I never wanted to see the fucker’s face ever again, never mind clean up his mess.
As I walked, I was plunged back into my relationship with Emer. That same feeling I got when she’d told me she’d cheated returned, the hollowness I’d felt, but it was worse because what I felt for Maggie far outweighed anything else. I loved her in a way that made the love I’d thought I’d felt for Emer seem empty and inconsequential by comparison.
It was a pure love, but Nigel had tainted it.
I hated him, hated he’d tossed doubt over what I thought I had with Maggie and made me question everything. Why did he want what I had? There were a million other women out there. Why couldn’t he just be in love with one of them?
The entire walk back to her place I’d worked myself up into a state, convinced history was repeating itself and I was doomed to keep choosing women who betrayed me. I didn’t want to believe it, but my negativity bias was pulling the strings.
No, it wasn’t happening. There was an explanation. There had to be.
Maggie was a good person. She’d said she loved me. I just needed to talk to her. Maybe Nigel had come onto her, and she hadn’t told me because she knew how far back our friendship went. I remembered how guilty she’d seemed when she told me about him being drunk outside her flat.
Yes, that made the most logical sense.
I pressed the buzzer, and she answered right away. I pushed open the front door, then walked down the hallway to the door of her flat, knocking once before she appeared. Maggie’s long hair was wet, and she wore a towel robe. She’d just had a shower, and the part of me that was still hopelessly in love wanted to tear open the robe and kiss every inch of her skin.
But first, I needed the truth.
