Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (62 page)

Why I love Jack

It was only a rough first draft, but even so Hope was horrified. These weren’t reasons why she loved Jack; they were reasons for them to stay together against all the odds. Because the odds were saying very clearly that she didn’t love him. Not really. They were good friends. They were loving friends, even, and it was all too much of a faff to split up.

It was such a deep secret that she could barely form the thought, but Hope had always felt like the junior partner in their relationship. Jack was the cool one, the prettier one,
the
talented one, and the only way in which Hope was more than Jack was in the amount of love she had for him. She loved him more than he loved her, and that was just the way it was.

Love wasn’t a thing that could be measured out, but Hope knew that if she could weigh it on her kitchen scales, all the devotion, the regard, the passion and the need she had for Jack would always outweigh what he felt for her. Until now.

They’d both admitted that there had been problems in their relationship, problems that had crept up on them when they weren’t looking, but now it occurred to Hope that their biggest problem was that she didn’t love Jack
enough
any more.

Hope squinted her eyes and tried to see into the future, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see Jack in it. If she was brutally honest with herself, then Hope had to admit that forty years from now, she still wouldn’t trust Jack. Every time he said he was working late or didn’t return a phone call in a timely fashion or he said he was going Crown Green Bowling with his pensioner mates, she’d be torturing herself by imagining him with other women.

She wanted to trust him, but wanting something wasn’t enough to make it actually happen. And Hope knew that Jack didn’t trust her now either, she couldn’t expect him to, and without trust, there was no happy-ever-after. Not when her love was peeling at the edges, and was no longer the glue that kept them stuck together.

Her phone beeped again, and even the thought that it might be Jack with an update on the monster-queue situation made Hope feel sick. Thankfully, it was only a text from Jeremy.

FYI. Ma has invited Vicar 4 Crimbo lunch. Says U need arseload of spiritual guidance. (She didn’t say arseload tho.) Jez x

Hope groaned out loud. She’d been dreading the visit back home as it was, without a guest appearance from the local vicar, an unmarried man in his late sixties who thought he was living in the nineteenth century. Hope still had cold sweats about the time he’d been drafted in by her mother when she’d realised that Hope and Jack were having sex out of wedlock. There had been a lot of talk about hellfire and Homes for Unmarried Mothers, even though he was meant to be United Reformed.

She’d have to get through the next week as best she could, Hope decided. Put a brave face on it. Smile through gritted teeth. Be vague and non-committal on the subject of marriage and babies, and when they got back to London, she’d talk to Jack. Definitely before December thirty-first, because she didn’t want to start the New Year the same way that they’d spent the old year – with doubt and uncertainty and crossed wires.

It was going to be awful, but staying together for the wrong reasons was worse, and surely Jack would realise it was for the best. That he didn’t love her like he thought he did, and that this sudden passionate love that he felt for her owed more to Hope spending the night with Wilson than anything else.

If they split up, or
when
they split up, Hope would be free to spend other nights with Wilson if she wanted to, or she’d be free to fall in love with someone else, or not get bogged down in all the trials and woes of another relationship but go on dates and have affairs and …

Hope nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a tap on the window and she saw Jack standing there with two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a huge grin on his face. She had a silly, childish urge to lock all the doors so he couldn’t get in the car, slide over on to the driver’s seat and leadfoot it until she ran out of motorway. But that was just stupid.

Still, she shuddered when Jack opened the door on the
driver’s
side, and it had nothing to do with the icy-cold air that whistled through the car.

‘Here you go,’ Jack said, handing over her coffee. ‘Extra shot of espresso, warm milk, no foam.’

‘Thanks …’

‘So, did you read it, then?’ Jack asked eagerly. ‘What did you think?’

‘It was really unexpected and very, very touching,’ Hope was able to choke out truthfully. ‘Not sure if I really live up to your PR, though.’

‘Oh, I think you do,’ Jack assured her and as Hope was wondering how she could steer the conversation on to a more general theme, he pulled something out of the pocket of his coat. ‘I had the naff idea of stashing this in the bottom of your coffee cup, but it is vintage, used to be my grandmother’s, and I was worried you might swallow it.’

‘What is it?’ It was obvious what it was, because only a ring would fit in the small, squat jewellery box, but maybe a ring was just a ring. ‘I mean, is that what I think it is?’

‘I also thought about trying to conceal it in a cracker for you to pull during Christmas dinner, but I had visions of it landing in the cranberry jelly. I suppose I could go down on one knee, but it’s fucking freezing outside,’ Jack said cheerily.

He opened the box with a grand flourish to reveal a simple diamond solitaire in an old-fashioned claw setting. ‘So, hey, Hopita Bonita, after thirteen years, shall we finally make it official?’

‘No! Oh God, no!’ Hope burst out, and she couldn’t be any kinder than that because the words didn’t even come from her heart, but her gut. The thought of being engaged, or being properly engaged, had been an overriding theme of the last year, but now the sight of a diamond ring destined for the third finger of her left hand filled her with horror. She’d just made a monumental decision that they needed to break up for their greater good, but Jack was forging
ahead
with plans for them to spend the rest of their lives together.

Hope thrust the box back at Jack. ‘Sorry, but no. I
told
you we should take things slowly, so why would you think this is what I want?’

Jack shook his head violently. ‘What? What the fuck? This
is
what you wanted. I know you came out with all that stuff last Friday because it seemed like the sensible thing to say, but you can’t deny it, Hopey, you’ve been
gagging
for me to propose.’

‘Maybe once I was, but now … This would be the worst idea either of us have ever had,’ Hope said. ‘You’re in love with the person who I used to be and an idea of the person you think I’m going to be, and neither of them is who I am any more.’ She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the bewildered look on Jack’s face or the ring he was still holding towards her. ‘I love you. I do, but I don’t want to marry you.’

‘Why the fuck not?’ Jack demanded. ‘Have you any idea how much I wrestled with this, and then you just throw it back in my face? It’s about him, isn’t it? I knew you’d fucked him.’

‘OH, GOD!’ Hope screamed in sheer frustration. ‘It’s not about him. It’s about you and me. We’re holding each other back. We will never be the people we need to be if we stay together.’

‘What kind of person do you need to be? You are what you are, Hopey, and you can’t change that,’ Jack bit out. ‘Like I can’t change who I am. I came back to you. I
chose
you. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘You’d never have had to choose, because you’d never have had an affair if you’d been happy with me, or getting what you wanted from our relationship,’ Hope said and she sounded and felt deathly calm now, because she knew that she was doing the right thing. One day – not now, because he honestly looked as if he might throw up – Jack would
realise
it too. He’d even thank her for it. ‘We have nothing in common any more.’

Jack stared at her in bemusement. ‘We have loads of things in common.’

‘We have thirteen years of shared experiences, but really, Jack, if you met me at a party and we got talking, I wouldn’t be the girl you’d end up taking home,’ Hope said sadly, because she wasn’t. Jack didn’t have any friends from back home or university like she had Lauren or Allison. He hadn’t done it callously or with any calculation, but he’d thrown them off as soon as he started working on
Skirt
and now he only hung out with other boys who worked as graphic designers and wore T-shirts with slogans printed on them in Helvetica type. They drank in Shoreditch, shopped at A.P.C. and American Apparel, and for all their urban edge, there was something confined and safe about their world.

Hope wasn’t like that. Or she didn’t want to be like that.

‘I would want to take you home,’ Jack insisted. ‘I love you.’

‘You love me like you love The Beatles,’ Hope said as she impatiently wiped away the first inevitable tear. ‘You grew up with their songs and you know everything about them and they’re comforting. Like, you always listen to
Rubber Soul
or
Abbey Road
when you’re in a good mood, and when you’re feeling down, you put on
The White Album
, but they don’t hold any surprises for you any more.’

‘Don’t do this, Hope,’ Jack said quietly. ‘You’ll always regret this.’

‘No, I’m going to be sad. I’m going to be really, really sad, but if I do this now before we go down a path that’s hard to get off, then there’s an outside chance that we might still be friends. I’d regret not having you in my life, but I don’t want you to be at the centre of my life any more.’

‘Are you in love with him?’ Jack demanded, and Hope could only cover her face with her hands to stop herself
from
screaming again. It was like a horrible metaphor for their relationship that they were trapped in a cramped stuffy space, arguing because neither of them understood where the other one was coming from.

‘You’re like a scratched record. Wilson’s my friend and yes, I’m attracted to him, but I don’t love him, I don’t even know if I could love him and anyway, you said you loved Susie. Did you suddenly just stop loving her?’

‘Don’t start that all over again! Is that what this is all about?’ Jack shouted, and he suddenly wrenched open the door of the car so he could hurl his cup of coffee as far as he could, which actually wasn’t that far. ‘How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?’

She hadn’t wanted to do it like this. In fact, it had been merely minutes ago that Hope had even realised that she was going to do this, and now they were shouting at each other in a small car in the Scratchwood Services car park, and even though Jack had slammed his door shut again, people were walking past the car and peering at them curiously as it was obvious they were having the mother of all rows. ‘Look,’ Hope said, clinging on to the edge of her seat, like she was clinging on to her temper. ‘Look, you did fall in love with Susie. You did sleep with her and it changed everything.’

‘You think I don’t know that,’ Jack said bitterly, and he tossed the jewellery box on to the dashboard. ‘I did one bad, stupid, horrible thing in thirteen years. Can you just give me a break?’

‘You have no idea, do you?’ Hope clutched her hands through her hair. ‘It isn’t just the cheating, you’ve put me through hell. You made me tell our mums that we were breaking up. You stormed out whenever you felt like it. I even took it in turns with you to sleep on the fucking sofa! Why did
I
have to sleep on the sofa?’

‘You agreed. We agreed that it was fair to take turns,’ Jack reminded her, but Hope shook her head.