The Road Trip: The heart-warming new novel from the author of The Flatshare and The Switch Beth O'Leary (ready to read books .TXT) 📖

Marcus turns his head just enough that I can see his face from where I’m sitting. He drops his hands, removing the tissue; there are dried, bloody watermarks all down his mouth and chin. I’ve never seen him like this, so stark, so horrified. He looks very, very young.

‘Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, Addie. God. I can’t believe you could think that.’

Addie shakes her head, frustrated now. ‘You thought the worst of me at every opportunity. You had it in for me. I couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing.’

‘Even if I was drunk and manic and whatever I was – please, Addie.’ Marcus’s voice cracks. ‘You need to know that I truly thought you were cheating on Dylan. I thought there was something between you and the teacher.’

There is silence for a while. The bathroom tap drips faster and faster, and I wonder if it’s been getting quicker like that all along. Addie shifts a little and lifts her gaze to mine.

She takes a deep breath. ‘You weren’t . . . I . . . I did . . . I had a crush on Etienne. For a moment I wondered – and I let him – and then I didn’t want to, but he didn’t stop, and . . .’ She’s sobbing now too, cradling her injured wrist in her lap, tracing her fingers across the swelling. ‘Dyl, I feel like you stopped being angry with me because something bad happened to me, but that doesn’t make me good. That doesn’t erase the other stuff.’

That hurts my heart – a real, physical pain in my chest.

‘Addie. No. Come on. Imagine it hadn’t ended how it did. Imagine you’d just walked out of his office the moment you’d wanted to. Would you still have said you didn’t deserve forgiving?’

She stays quiet. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I can’t . . . untangle it.’

‘There’s no question, for me. You came close to betraying me, maybe, but you didn’t. I don’t care about almost. I care about what really happened. Everyone’s got the potential to do the wrong thing – if we were measured that way, we’d all come up short. It’s about what you do. And you told him to stop. You walked away. It was me who fucked up, Addie, and I hate myself for not letting you tell me what really happened when I came to the flat that night. I’d become the person I tried so hard not to be. I didn’t listen. I failed you.’

She leans into me then, pressing her body against my chest, and I close my eyes and hold her close as she cries.

We sit in the bathroom for another five minutes, maybe. Addie’s head is tucked beneath my chin, and I can feel Deb behind me, her leg against my spine, and there’s Marcus with his back to us, hunched, broken.

Deb moves first. ‘We should . . .’ She nods towards Marcus. Addie and I shift, getting up slowly; Marcus remains motionless. We leave him there. Deb leads us all out of the bathroom, all shuffling in a line. In the street light that seeps between the crack in the curtains, I catch sight of Rodney. He’s starfished in the middle of the double bed, mouth open, snoring.

Addie

As far as I’m aware, Marcus sleeps in the bathroom – or maybe just stays sitting there on the edge of the bath all night. I don’t know. I’m not sure I care, either.

I don’t know how to feel about it all. I’m not convinced it was love, what he felt for me, whatever Deb thinks, whatever Marcus says. I think Marcus just wanted what his best friend had. Even more so when he didn’t get it.

Deb shoves Rodney over and makes do with a third of the double. I take Marcus’s bed and lie on my side, watching Dylan sleep.

He looks so gorgeous in the darkness. The light from between the curtains catches on the tips of his eyelashes and leaves long shadows across his cheeks. Before I really clock what I’m doing, I push back the covers and cross the floor between us.

He wakes as I climb into the bed beside him, and for a split second – as he looks at me, eyes all sleepy and confused – I hesitate, feeling a pang of that old anxiety. For so long I thought Dylan wanted that sexy summer girl. A woman he could chase, the way he chased Grace. Someone out of reach. It’s hard, even now, to come to him for once, be the first to lay my weapon down.

But then he smiles and pulls me into him, tucking his body behind mine.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I will always be so, so sorry.’

‘Please don’t,’ I whisper back. ‘We can’t be sorry for ever. That’s what forgiveness is for, isn’t it?’

He pulls me in with the arm that’s looped around me, the way it always was when we slept like this. The smell of him makes my throat tighten with emotion.

‘I’ve got you,’ he whispers, as he tucks me in. It’s something he used to say, I can’t even remember why. I know what it means, though: I’m here. I’ve got your back. I’m yours.

I lace the fingers of my good hand through his, pulling his arm into my chest. I used to just kiss his hand when he said it, maybe, or smile. But I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last year and a half and when I remember all the times he said he loved me and I didn’t say it back, it makes me furious with myself. As if I was winning, somehow, by holding that back. As if there was some weakness in showing him I cared.

‘I’ve got you,’ I whisper. ‘I’ve got you too.’

I’m woken by the buzz of my phone. It’s in the pocket of my pyjamas. Dylan is still holding me, fast asleep. I smile. I start to