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“What?” Josh asks. “I can see your brain whirring.”
If I want the truth to shine through, why gloss over it?
“I’m just, I dunno,” I shrug. “Wary.”
“Yeah, same goes for me. I think we’ve both been shafted and left for dry. It’s not a pleasant experience.”
I meet his eyes. “No. It really isn’t.”
He hangs the towel on the rail.
“Want to get the conversation out of the way? Let us both know what we’re dealing with here? Cards on the table?”
I’m so glad it’s him who has suggested it and not me. I’m clearly not the only one who wants to get the elephant out of the room.
“Sounds great.”
He laughs. “Yeah, brilliant fun. Can’t wait.” I love the sarcasm in his smirk. Love the way he holds me tight. “Let’s do it. All on the table, right from the start.”
“Brilliant fun, can’t wait,” I mirror, squeezing him tight. “Right, let’s do it.”
“You going first or second?” he says. “Your choice.”
I weigh it up. Fuck it. I’ll dump the emotional baggage from the off, even if I make a tit of myself.
“First,” I say.
I just hope there aren’t a shedload of tears he has to clear up along with his rug.
Chapter Nine
I wonder exactly where to begin the ex conversation. At the start, working my way forward to the catastrophe at the end, or in reverse, starting with how much of a cunt Connor was when he ditched me for a bitch of a groupie, and left me sobbing in our shitty excuse of a life all alone with a mountain of debt. The thought still makes my stomach flip – just the sheer volume I’ve got to pay off, even now.
I feel sick at the memory of the rage and the pain. The humiliation, because it was so bloody obvious he was seeing Carly – to anyone who wasn’t me, that is. Call it naivety. Call it fucking trust.
Yet here I am, about to trust again. On night number one after one single dinner date.
Smart move, Ella. Smart move. But I can’t fight the butterflies, and the hope. I can’t resist the gorgeous man I’ve already dive bombed deep with.
One look in his eyes puts my qualms to bed, because he’s worth the risk. Naïve of me or not, he seems so beautifully genuine as he smiles.
“You sure you want to go first?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’ll go first. No problem.”
He positions himself so he’s able to look at me, an elbow propped on the back of the sofa, and then he waits. No rush, no questions, nothing. Screw it, I opt to let my mouth run free, and let the story lead wherever it leads me.
“I’ve only ever been with one guy, and we were together for just over seven years. I met Connor at high school and got an instant crush on him. It was kind of ditto. Two goth weirdos at school together. After a while we started hanging out and became soulmates and all that regular teenage shit. But it lasted. It got stronger and stronger.” I pause, remembering the way Connor used to wait for me after college, with his rucksack slung over his shoulder. The same one I threw at him as our final goodbye. “We used to live in Tintagel, over in Cornwall, and he was mainly at my place. His stepdad is a total douche, who never used to shut up about what a freak Connor was, but Connor was always welcome at ours. So, it quickly became serious and my home became his home, me and him together with my parents. And then it never stopped. Seriously, it never stopped. My whole life was entwined with his. All our dreams of the future were dreams together. He wanted to be a rockstar, and I believed it was destiny.” I smile at the memory of him perched on my bed, strumming away, singing a song about forever. “He was so determined that he wanted to make it, and I was all in, right beside him. I said we’d travel the world together to make it happen. I’d be at his side whatever it took, and I believed it. I believed in him. I used to take so many videos of him, and post them online, and he got some followers, sure. But not enough to make him a success. We thought it would be easier for him to perform live, right in front of people.”
Josh’s eyes don’t leave mine. “Do you still believe it? Still believe in him?”
“That he can make it as a rockstar?” I nod, picturing Connor onstage, singing his heart out. “Yeah. I do. He’s amazing at it. Ha. Amazing. Old habits die hard.”
Josh smirks. “That’s why you moved to London, isn’t it? So he could go after the music scene?”
“Yeah. My parents had already emigrated to Australia, and Connor was desperate to get to the big city, and it all seemed to add up. We were living with his folks, and his stepdad was still a douche, and London was great at first, when we got here. We were so excited when he started performing his first gigs.” My heart starts thumping as I remember the first time he stepped out on stage. How proud I was of him.
“It was fantastic,” I admit. “But then real life got in the way. Stress over money, stress over time, over him not landing the multi-million record deal of his fantasies right from the start, like he figured he would. We hated where we lived, and I hated my job, and I resented him more and more for not even trying to stand alongside me in the bullshit parts of life as well as the good bits. I got into debt trying to support us, even though I was working crazy long hours. He was always networking as he called it, which really meant hanging out with people in bars bleating on about music constantly, and we spent less and less time together. When we did spend time together, it was usually at gigs, when I could get there around shifts, and even then, he was networking. It just… turned to shit. The whole thing turned to shit.”
