Patchwork Paradise(41)

I kept these money woes to myself, although I didn’t entirely know why. Maybe they embarrassed me, or maybe I needed to feel like I could solve something on my own.

“So tell me what’s going on between the two of you. I want to know everything.” Cleo was sitting on my backside, using her tiny fists to work a kink out of my shoulders that had been there for five days and wouldn’t budge.

“Argh,” I mumbled into my couch cushion.

“Well?”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of one of your massages, Cleo,” Imran said, “and believe me when I tell you that simultaneously talking and dying is not possible.”

She squeaked in outrage and dug her knuckles in extra hard.

“I hate you,” I groaned at Imran. He smirked at me, turned a page of my Lonely Planet book, and pretended to read.

“Where is he anyway? I haven’t heard from him in days.”

“That makes two of us,” I said. “Oh my God, Cleo, enough! I’d rather have limited movement in my shoulder than lose it altogether.”

With a last poke, she jumped off me. “Men,” she sniffed. “Babies, all of you.”

I groaned in agreement because that was all I could do as I levered myself upright.

“Yeah, but seriously,” Imran said, putting the book aside. “What happened? Did you guys fight? He didn’t come out again on Saturday.”

A hot summer wind wafted through the house, billowing my curtains behind the open windows. I tried to remember sitting here like this with Sam, and while I could, it felt distant, like a snapshot rather than a memory. He was fading, and here I was, moping over someone else. I missed the way Sam looked at me. I missed feeling like I meant everything to him. Knowing that no matter how shitty my day was, or how many bad decisions I made, he’d be there at the end of it, saying it would all be okay. He knew me better than I knew myself, but at the same time I couldn’t remember what his laugh sounded like.

Ah, love.

Cleo gave me her worried face. “What happened, Ollie?”

“Just what I told you on the phone. He broke up with Stephen. We had lunch, talked a little bit and then I went home with some vague promise of seeing each other soon.”

“Did you tell him how you felt?”

“Jesus, Cleo!” I burst out, just as Imran said, “Of course he didn’t.”

She gave us an indignant look, and I shifted deeper into the couch, fighting the urge to hide behind a pillow. “What? Why not?”

“Because he just broke up with someone! I can’t sweep in and go, ‘Oh great, my turn now!’”

Imran waved his hand at me in a See? Exactly kind of move.

“Ye-es,” Cleo said, like we were being particularly slow. “But he broke up with a guy he was only with because he thought he couldn’t have you.”

Suddenly I felt exhausted. I buried my head in my hands. What was I doing? Sam had only been dead for a year. These three people were the most important ones in my life. Could I really risk f*cking all that up for something that might fizzle and burn out before it even had a chance to catch a spark?

“This is crazy, Cleo,” I said. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do what, honey?” She stroked my hair and patted my back. “Fall in love again? Because I think it’s too late for that.”

Oh God. “What if I’m not ready?”

“It’s not something you can chose,” Imran said, gentler than I was used to from him. “It happens. And it’s messy and almost always at the wrong time, but are you really willing to let this go? Because you’re . . . afraid?”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Torn between two fears.

“I don’t even know if he still wants me.”

Cleo burst out in a loud laugh. “Oh, he wants you, Ollie. And it’s going to be glorious.”

I froze. “He didn’t.”

She giggled. Imran looked uncomfortably amused.

“He didn’t!” I repeated, scandalized.

“Aw, don’t blame him. He was drunk and maudlin and missing you. But I have to say . . .” She gave my groin a meaningful glance. “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at this piece of art myself.”

“Cleo!” Imran said, laughing.

“I meant the painting,” she told him, then ogled me with a deliberately lecherous look.

“Ew, ew, ew. You are like my sister. I’m not showing you the painting.”

“One day,” she said, “I’m going to sneak up there and see for myself how, and I quote, ‘breathtakingly beautiful’ you are, Ollie.”

I grabbed the pillow and whacked her with it. “Shut up,” I mumbled, to their apparent hilarity.



I couldn’t call my job monotonous, but I did drag myself through the next week like a drone. I tried not to miss Thomas and did anyway. I tried to remember Sam, and while I could, and found solace in the memories and photographs, he felt further away from me than ever.

At the same time I realized the emptiness of the house didn’t haunt me any longer. When Sam died, I’d been confronted with my greatest fear. It had taken a while, but being alone finally didn’t scare the crap out of me anymore. Beyond anything else, I knew I wanted to keep this house, needed it. Everyone my age had a mortgage, and I was lucky I’d lived rent free for this long, really. This place had been Sam’s and mine, and I would make sure it always stayed that way, no matter what happened next. In the end, money was only money, while this place was . . . home.