CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’m at Roasted by quarter past seven.
I nervously hang around outside for a bit, remembering why I don’t like getting to places early, because you have time to think about things and I’m already feeling sick to my stomach as it is. That is partly down to the hangover from last night and such an early start this morning, but it’s mostly because of what I know I have to do. Pacing by the door, I join the queue at half past, glancing back over my shoulder every few seconds, terrified that I’ll get the timing wrong and this won’t work.
When my coffees are ready, I grab them and linger by the door again. My calculations have paid off, though. At exactly seven forty, Ryan comes into sight, walking from the tube station, his hands in his pockets, his jaw set, his eyes fixed on the ground a few paces ahead of him. He wasn’t lying when he used to say how early he got to the office every day.
I exhale shakily and, steeling myself, I march over to stand in his way.
He stops and looks up. His eyes widen with disbelief.
“Harper!”
“Hey.”
We stare at each other for a moment, taking the other one in.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his forehead creasing like it does when he’s confused about something and is trying to find the solution.
“I got you a mocha,” I say, holding it out for him. “I know you like those.”
He takes the cup from me and raises his eyebrows as he reads the name written in black marker across the side.
“This is for Parker.”
“I purposefully said Parker this time,” I confess. “It seemed easier.”
He nods. “Thanks.”
“I wanted to give you a mocha and also an apology,” I say hurriedly, desperate to get this out before I lose my nerve. “The day I lost my job, I said a lot of things … angry things, and I was upset and hurt and you didn’t deserve it. So, I wanted to say sorry.”
He looks surprised. “Oh.”
“I’ve been thinking about everything and how it was unfair of me to explode at you like that,” I ramble, “especially when I’d been the one in Florence telling you that I wanted to keep things professional at work. Cosmo put you in a difficult position, and as upset as I was, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m sorry.”
He hesitates. “Right. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We both stand there awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says eventually, frowning. “For not telling you.”
“I know.” I nod. “You already told me that.”
More silence.
“Congratulations on the podcast,” he says. “It’s incredible.”
“Thanks! And thank you for your message. That was really nice of you.”
“Of course.”
This is excruciating. I didn’t think it was going to go like this. I didn’t know how it was going to go, but I didn’t think there would be so many awkward pauses. There’s a gulf between us, and I have no idea how to close it.
The only thing I can think to do is follow Ryan’s lead from Florence. Time to bare it all.
“Okay, here goes,” I say out loud, psyching myself up and looking into those piercing blue eyes that make my heart thud so hard, it rings in my ears. “Ryan, since you started working with me at Narrative, I—”
“Harper!”
The last voice I would like to hear right now is Cosmo’s, but of course he’s barreling over to us, beaming at me like an old friend.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, stopping beside us before checking his watch and letting out a forced laugh. “The one time you’re early for work and you don’t work here anymore. Classic!”
“Hi, Cosmo,” I say warily. “I’m here to … uh … see Ryan.”
“Fantastic! I hope you’re in discussions to work on another piece for us. Any ideas you have, send them over to Ryan here—” he slaps Ryan on the back, causing him to flinch “—and I’m sure we can get them in, no problem!”
“I’m quite busy now, so—”
“Oh yes, the podcast. Excellent stuff. Any freelance features, though, send them our way. We pay competitively, as you know, and we could use some celebrity angles.” He sees someone behind me and grimaces. “I have to go. Rebecca is over there and we have a publishers meeting in a minute. Nice to see you, Harper, and remember, we’d love to have you writing for us again. Name your price.”
He scurries off toward a smartly dressed woman standing by the building who waves him over, a stern expression on her face.
“I can’t believe him,” I utter, watching him go.
“He’s a piece of work,” Ryan agrees, looking irritated.
“He really is. They need to give you his job. ASAP.”
The corners of his lips twitch. “What were you saying before he interrupted? Since I started working with you at Narrative,” he prompts, his gaze fixed on me.
“Yes, that was it. Okay, since you started working with me at Narrative, I have had certain feelings toward you. Strong ones,” I admit, my cheeks burning. “At first, I thought they were feelings of dislike because, you know, we clashed quite a bit and you’re a nightmare for someone like me to work with and because of our history—it was a big jumble of irritation in my head.”
“Okay,” he says slowly.
“But then I realized, they weren’t feelings of dislike, they were the opposite,” I explain nervously. “You said that you were crazy about me, right from the start. Well, I think I’ve been crazy about you, too. And I know I’m crazy about you now. I have missed you so much. When everything was awful, I wanted you there. And now that everything’s finally looking up, I want you there. I want you all the time, to be there through everything. You’re the most thoughtful, lovely, best person I’ve ever met.” I hesitate, before adding, “And I love you.”
Because, hey, might as well be completely honest.
His lips part in surprise. He’s about to say something when that most unwelcome of voices comes booming at us once again.
“Ryan!” Cosmo calls out, approaching us speedily. “Sorry to interrupt, but Rebecca would like you to join us in the meeting as well. I’ve said you’re busy talking to one of our star freelance writers—” he winks at me “—but she’s insisting. She wants to know about the … direction of the magazine.”
“I can’t,” Ryan says firmly. “We’re in the middle of an important conversation.”
“Ah, I’m afraid I have to insist,” Cosmo presses, sucking a stream of air in through his teeth. “Perhaps Harper would be happy to rearrange. In fact, how about we take you for lunch, Harper, eh? We can discuss fresh ideas!”
“That’s okay, thanks,” I say, horrified, before turning to Ryan with an encouraging smile. “You should go. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, we were … we need to talk,” he says, his eyes wide with panic.
“It’s fine, honestly. This meeting sounds important for the magazine; you shouldn’t miss it. We can talk later.”
“But—”
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “Go ahead.”
He looks visibly distressed, but Cosmo doesn’t notice.
“There you go, we’ll rearrange. Come on, Ryan, can’t keep them waiting.”
“Harper, we’ll … we’ll talk,” Ryan promises as Cosmo urges him to go.
“Yeah.”
They head toward the building, and I turn to see Ryan glancing over his shoulder at me. I suddenly remember something important.
“Ryan!” I call out after him, and he immediately stops and waits as I hurry over to him, Cosmo nervously holding up a finger to Rebecca, who is standing by the door, pointedly tapping her watch. I hold out the tote bag that’s been hanging off my shoulder this whole time.
“Here,” I say, giving it to Ryan. “Almost forgot. This is for you. Good luck in your meeting.”
“How lovely, a gift!” Cosmo declares, before taking Ryan’s elbow and leading him away. “Thank you, Harper, and speak soon to sort that lunch.”
I turn around and start making my way home.
He doesn’t call me. Or message me. The whole day. Zilch.
I told him I loved him! Does he think I do that every day?! I certainly do not! And he thinks it’s acceptable behavior to leave someone in the lurch after they’ve poured out their heart? Well. I guess that shows what kind of person he is after all.
I’m not messaging him, obviously. I’ve already said my piece. I get that it was quite a lot to throw at him before eight o’clock in the morning, but he’s had the entire day to think on it and get back to me, and I haven’t heard a peep out of him. I’m not expecting him to say it back or anything. I get that we had a big falling-out and maybe he’s still cross or maybe he thinks we had our chance—twice—and it didn’t work then, so it’s not going to now. That’s fine.
But he still needs to acknowledge what I said.
I’ve been trying to stay busy so I don’t check my phone every few seconds, but that’s not easy when you’ve launched a highly successful podcast and your phone is buzzing all the time with emails and notifications. Every time it goes off, I grab for it, desperate for his name to come up on the screen, and you know what? It’s never him.
No amount of work can distract me from thinking about this morning and the butterflies dancing around in my stomach. Not hearing from him can’t be good news, though, can it? Surely, he’d have been in touch by now if he felt the same. Instead, he’s probably writing an essay in his notes app, trying to work out a way to let me down gently.
It did occur to me that I have a mole inside the office in the form of Mimi, so I could ask how he’s behaving to try to work out what’s going on, but I was too embarrassed to tell her what I said to him. If I haven’t heard from him by the end of today, then I will call her and explain everything and she can give me some advice on what to do.
For now, it’s just me in this.
Tucking my phone under my pillow so I can’t look at it anymore this evening, I come to the disappointing conclusion that I could tidy up. It’s a drastic idea, but I can blare music while I do it so my thoughts are drowned out and it will take a long time, which is exactly what I need.
As I start the soul-destroying job of unloading and then reloading the dishwasher to a motivating playlist of Queen’s greatest hits playing from YouTube on the TV, I start to understand why people recommend cleaning as you go along. There is a mountain of work ahead of me tonight. Singing along to “Radio Ga Ga” as I scrub the sink, I praise myself on throwing myself into being a responsible adult tonight and cleaning the house rather than seeing if anyone was around to go for a drink.
I stop what I’m doing as I realize that seeing if anyone was around to go for a drink would have been a much better idea and I’m a complete idiot.
My doorbell rings. That will be the delivery of some new books I ordered this week.
But it’s not. It’s Ryan.
“Hi,” he says, his eyes immediately landing on the bottle of surface cleaner and the cloth I’m holding. “Are you cleaning?”
“Yes,” I reply defensively. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to finish our chat from earlier. May I come in?”
“You’ve taken your time getting back to me. You said we’d talk, and then I didn’t hear from you all day.”
“I’m sorry, but I thought it best to talk in person about this.”
“How did you know I was going to be in?”
“I took my chances.”
“You could have messaged so I knew you’d be coming over,” I point out indignantly.
“I did!” he protests.
“No, you did not!” I say, aghast at the very cheek of it.
He rolls his eyes. “Check your phone.”
“I’ve been checking it.”
He sighs. “Can I please come in? I’d really like to talk to you in the flat rather than in the doorway.”
“Fine,” I say, taking a step back.
He wanders in with the tote bag I gave him this morning slung round his shoulder, admiring the lack of usual clutter covering the table, the clean counters, and the shiny sink. Queen is still playing at a high volume and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” has come on. It takes me a while to locate the remote to turn it down a bit.
“You really messaged me?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
Leaving him in the kitchen, I head to the bedroom and reach under the pillow for my phone. Looking at the messages, I find a string of them from Ryan. He must have sent them just after I hid my phone from myself. Typical.
The first one is him asking if he can come over after work, followed by practically an essay. I take a moment to read it before joining him in the kitchen:
Harper, I owe you an apology for how I handled the days leading up to your redundancy. I’m so sorry. I need you to know that all I wanted was to protect us and I hated the idea of hurting you. I wanted to do things differently this time round … I couldn’t act normal with this knowledge hanging over my head. That’s what I did last time and I lost you. I figured I was doing the best thing by staying distant until you were informed and we could talk it all through, but I realize now that avoiding you hurt you even more … and it ended up hurting us even more, too. I wish I could go back in time and change my behavior, but since I can’t, please know that I am truly sorry and will do everything in my power to make it up to you, if you’ll let me.
After everything you said this morning, I’m really hoping you will let me.
I’m on my way to you now Xxx
I read his messages a few times, taking it all in, and then, composing myself, return to find him waiting for me in the kitchen.
“The place looks great,” he comments.
“You messaged an hour ago,” I note, putting my phone on the table. “That still means you left me waiting all day to hear from you.”
“I’m sorry, Harper, I had so many meetings, and I was trying to figure out what to say to you on the phone and I knew I had to apologize properly, so I rambled on in a WhatsApp before realizing it would be better to come see you in person. But I should have worked that out sooner and messaged you earlier. It’s just—the office is pretty stressful at the moment, now that we’re three people down. I don’t know how we’re going to make it work.”
I cross my arms. “I’m not sure I have that much sympathy for you there.”
“Right.” He nods. “Anyway, about this morning.”
He puts the bag on the table and slides out the gift I gave him. It’s the Max Sjöberg article we wrote together, and it’s framed. I didn’t have time to get it done properly. I put it together in a rush last night after I got back from dinner with Mimi. I had to search around all my pictures in the flat to find a frame that would fit the article. I found a black one that used to house a very pretty print I bought from the Saturday market in Herne Hill and swapped the article into it.
“Thank you for this,” Ryan says, holding it out and gazing down at it. “Our second ever byline together. I’ll have to hang it next to our first. I would say that maybe there will be plenty more to come, but I’m not so sure of that, now that you’re a famous podcast host.”
I look down modestly. “I’ve only done one episode.”
“And it’s already top of the charts. I wouldn’t expect anything less,” he says, putting the frame down on the table. “I’m sorry that Cosmo interrupted us this morning and that I had to go to that meeting. I thought about quitting on the spot just so I’d have the chance to go after you.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “That would have been an extreme action.”
“Some moments deserve extreme action,” he states firmly.
“I wouldn’t have approved,” I say, unable to stop a smile. “If you were going to quit all along, then the least you could have done was accepted voluntary redundancy and let me keep my position there.”
A smile plays along his lips.
“And if that had happened, you would have been under Cosmo’s repressive rule for even longer, and you have suffered that long enough. Look what you can achieve when you do your own thing.”
I shrug. “Maybe it has worked out for the better.”
“Maybe?” He chuckles, his expression softening as he relaxes into the smile. “You’re on the edge of something big, Harper. That much is clear.”
“I hope so. I guess we’ll see.”
He stares at me intently. “Did you mean what you said this morning?”
“About you being a nightmare for someone like me to work with? Yes.”
“I already knew about that bit,” he says, rolling his eyes. “For the record, you’re a much worse colleague. Do you know how annoying it is to work with an editor who doesn’t keep a schedule of publication dates for their features?”
I tap the side of my head. “I don’t need a schedule. It’s all up here.”
“It’s not up there,” he says matter-of-factly. “You had no idea when any of your articles were coming out. And let’s not get started on those email chains I asked you to forward to me before you left.”
“As I told you, my inbox must have swallowed them. There must have been a technical glitch,” I proclaim innocently.
He gives me a knowing look. “You couldn’t find them because you never file any of your emails into folders and your inbox is flooded with thousands of unread messages.”
“My inbox is organized in the way that I prefer it, Ryan. I know who I’m talking to and where I need to be at all times.”
“You forgot about the dinner with your parents, didn’t you? The night you had that awards ceremony that you’d also obviously forgotten about.”
“Maybe.” I eye him suspiciously. “How did you know?”
“Because,” he begins, a smile creeping across his lips, “I know you.”
I swallow, melting under his doting gaze. “I guess you do.”
“I do. And I love everything about you.”
“You do?” I whisper, hardly daring to breathe.
“Yes,” he says softer, moving slowly toward me. “Everything. Even the things that drive me up the wall. Your messiness, your infuriating organizational style, your shocking timekeeping skills, your stubborn inability to back down whenever we argue.”
“You know me. I like to have the last word,” I say, as he stops right in front of me.
He pauses, waiting for me to lift my head and bring my eyes up to meet his. “Harper, I love you. And I’m never going to lose you again.”
Cupping my face in his soft, warm hands, he leans down and kisses me.
And as I kiss him back, pulling him closer toward me, I can’t help but smile against his mouth. Because at last we agree on something.