You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) Read online

  “Sure you did,” I said.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped. “If you’re going to be all passive-aggressive about it…”

  “I’m not being passive-aggressive.” I was wide awake now. I was pissed off, of course I was, but at the same time I felt almost relieved, as if Jonathan’s leering over naked girls was the same as my longing for Felix, and the two things somehow cancelled each other out.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Look, I’m really not. If you think having some stripper’s tits shoved in your face is an appropriate way to do business with your colleagues, who am I to argue?”

  “See? Totally passive-aggressive.”

  “Jonathan, what do you want me to say? For God’s sake, it’s done now. Either you’ll do it again or you won’t – you’re a big boy now, you can make up your own mind about what’s appropriate.”

  “So you don’t care?”

  “Is that why you told me? So I’d fly into a fit of jealous rage?”

  Jonathan pushed his hands through his hair. Suddenly he looked desperately tired.

  “Yes, actually, a fit of jealous rage would be preferable to you apparently not giving a fuck what I do.”

  “Well, you’re not going to get a fit of jealous rage,” I said coldly. “I thought we’d be spending some time together while we were here, and evidently that isn’t going to happen, but I’m not going to make myself miserable by arguing with you. Presumably you’ve got another busy day tomorrow – you should get some sleep.”

  Jonathan didn’t say anything more. He went to the bathroom and I heard the shower running. I turned out the light and lay on my side, facing the wall, and when he came to bed I pretended to be asleep.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Jonathan was hollow-eyed and sour with hangover. There was no breakfast, because we’d both forgotten to order it the night before, and no coffee.

  “Want me to ring room service?” I asked.

  “Don’t bother on my account,” he said. “My first meeting’s at seven, remember. So I can’t hang about, much as I’d love to.”

  “Look, I – about last night…” I began, then stopped myself. I didn’t want to apologise for our row, which hadn’t been my fault. I didn’t want to tell him I’d seen Felix, because that would lead to another, worse row – and this time it would be my fault.

  “I said I was sorry, Laura. What do you want, blood?”

  “I just want us to have a nice time together,” I said miserably. “Like we did yesterday, remember?”

  I could barely remember it myself – the previous morning seemed like a different world, like it had happened to a different person.

  Jonathan’s face softened. “We will, I promise. I’ve got meetings in the diary all day today, and a dinner tonight, but tomorrow’s almost free, and we’ve got another day after that. I’m sorry this hasn’t turned out like you hoped. I know it’s dull for you hanging around on your own, but I’ll make it up to you, okay? I promise.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a fresh unfurling of guilt inside me as I kissed him goodbye. I wasn’t hanging around on my own. I hadn’t last night and I wasn’t going to today, either.

  While I was in the shower, Felix sent a text. “So what’s happening?”

  Naked and dripping on the bathmat, I texted back, “J working all day. How about you?”

  His reply arrived almost immediately. “I’m meeting a hot woman for breakfast at the deli where they filmed that scene from When Harry Met Sally.”

  I felt briefly bereft, then I realised what he meant. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I texted.

  I dressed quickly – no heels this time, no designer frock. I just chucked on jeans and a stripy top and flat shoes, because I knew there’d be exploring to do. Felix hadn’t said, but it was implicit – we’d be spending the day together. All day, and perhaps the evening too. I felt giddy with excitement as I left the hotel and boarded a subway train.

  In the air-conditioned chill of the carriage, I tried to force myself to think. I knew I was approaching a crisis – a point at which I’d have to make a decision. But I wasn’t capable of being rational, balanced or reasonable – my heart was so firmly in charge that my head wasn’t even getting a look-in. Also, I was fiercely hungry – all the cocktails we’d drunk the night before, plus no dinner, had left me feeling light-headed with desire for food as well as for Felix.

  Take a look at yourself, Laura, I scolded. You’re turning into an animal. Where’s your self-control? But I didn’t know, and nor did I particularly care.

  Felix was waiting for me in the deli, two steaming mugs of coffee in front of him. When he saw me he jumped up and hugged me so hard he almost lifted me off my feet.

  “God, you look amazing,” he said.

  “You didn’t say that last night,” I said. “And I spent two hours getting ready. You contrary bastard.”

  “You hadn’t got ready for me then,” he said. “Today you have. But you’re always beautiful. You always were. Now drink your coffee and I’ll get us some food – do you want smoked salmon, salt beef or pastrami?”

  “All of them,” I said. “But that would be wildly excessive. You choose.”

  A few minutes later, he returned carrying a tray heaving with food, and for a while we didn’t say very much because we were too busy stuffing our faces. When I could eat no more, there was still enough left to feed the five thousand.

  “I’m beginning to think you’re some kind of feeder,” I said. “Remember, you always used to bring me bacon sandwiches on weekends? And that lunch on my birthday, and now this. You’ll only be happy when I’m so huge I can’t get up from bed, and the fire brigade have to be called to winch me out of the window.”

  “It’s fuel,” Felix said. “We’ve got a busy day ahead of us. Unless you have to be somewhere else?”

  I noticed how, as ever, he shied away from mentioning where I might need to be, or who with.

  “I don’t have to be anywhere,” I said. “I’m where I want to be.”

  “What, you want to stay here? Shall I order cheesecake, and then make you do that fake orgasm thing so I can post it on YouTube?”

  I laughed. “You know that’s not what I meant. So, what are we doing?”

  Felix had lost none of his ability to plan adventures without appearing to have planned anything at all. That day passed in a blur of sunshine and laughter. It was like all our days off had been, except there was no evening performance to cloud our enjoyment – there was something far more significant, which we didn’t even mention.

  We took the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. We went to Ground Zero, and remembered that we’d been together in the flat in Covent Garden when the Twin Towers fell, holding each other and crying, unable to watch the scene on television but unable to turn it off, either. We walked up along an old railway track that had been turned into a park, and when we passed 28th Street, Felix told me about an amazing immersive theatre production we absolutely had to see together next time.

  “Is there going to be a next time?” I said.

  “I don’t know, Laura. I guess that’s up to you.”

  He took my hand, and when I look back, it seems as if, for the rest of the day, he never let it go – although of course that can’t be what really happened.

  When we’d walked so much I felt like my left foot was about to fall off, Felix said, “Time for a break?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “The apartment where I’m staying is about five blocks from here,” he said. “We could go there?”

  I knew exactly what that meant, but I didn’t say no. We stopped at a liquor store on the way and bought a bottle of champagne, then I followed Felix through a glass door and up three flights of stairs, which smelled a bit of unemptied bins. I felt my heart sink, worried that he was stuck in yet another squalid, miserable place. But when he unlocked the door, it was to reveal a beautiful, airy room, filled with the light of the settin
g sun, with white-painted walls and an air-conditioning unit rattling in the window, making it blissfully cool.

  “I borrowed this from a mate who’s working in California for a couple of months,” Felix said. “It’s small, but it does the job. I don’t know how long I’ll be here – it’s possible the show will tank and I’ll be back in London before you can say, ‘Make mine an Old Fashioned.’”

  “It’s lovely,” I said. I couldn’t help but notice that most of the floor space was taken up by a giant four-poster bed, covered by a blinding-white duvet. I wondered if he’d made it that morning imagining coming back here with me.

  I heard the champagne cork pop and Felix handed me a fizzing glass. Then he stood still for a moment, looking down at me, his face grave – almost sad.

  “Laura,” he said. “I’m only going to say this once, unless you ask me to say it again. I love you. I never stopped loving you. I regret what happened more than I can ever say. I’ve spent all this time regretting it, wishing I hadn’t been such a fucking fool.”

  I looked at the glass in my hand, then put it down carefully on the floor and wrapped my arms around him. I wanted my embrace to say that I was sorry, too, that it wasn’t his fault – to comfort and console him. But the feeling of his body next to mine was too intoxicatingly exciting, and I found myself pressing hard against him, wanting to imprint the shape of him into my flesh.

  Seconds later, we were kissing each other, as hungry and eager as we’d been the first time we’d made love in my tiny single bed, our skin still slick with post-rehearsal sweat. My hands moved over his body, discovering the hardness of his chest, the smoothness of his back, the powerful muscles of his thighs under his jeans. His lips moved from my mouth to my neck, then to my collarbone and lower, pushing aside the neckline of my top.

  “Take it off,” I said, and he did.

  I kicked off my trainers, not bothering to undo the laces. Felix carefully unbuttoned my jeans and I stepped out of them and stood in front of him in my bra and pants. He pulled his shirt over his head – I heard a button ping off and bounce on the floorboards – then held me close again, his naked skin warm and smooth against mine.

  For a moment, I rested my face against his chest, inhaling the smell of him. Then he lifted me up, as easily as if I weighed nothing at all, and laid me down on the bed.

  This was it, I realised through the haze of my desire – this was the moment, the point of no return. His mouth was pressed against mine, his eyes swimmingly close, his cock hard against my stomach. I wanted him like I wanted to breathe.

  And then I said, “Felix, stop.”

  He did. He lay down next to me and took my hand, and we both stared up at the ceiling, our breath coming in identical gasps. Every part of my body yearned towards him – I could almost feel myself thrumming with desire, like a twanged guitar string.

  I turned to face him and said, “I can’t do this. Not unless I leave my husband.”

  Felix looked aghast. “Laura, you can’t. Why would you do that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. He put his arm round my shoulder. I could feel his warm breath against my neck.

  “I can’t let you fuck your life up because of me,” he said. “Or your children’s lives, or Jonathan’s, even though sometimes I’d like to throttle the bastard. I’ve got nothing to offer you – you must be able to see that. You’ve got a great life with him. He’s what you and your kids need.”

  “Then why do I feel so trapped?” I said. “Yes, we’ve got everything we need, if you mean a nice house and holidays and access to good schools. I should be happy – I was happy, until I saw you again and felt just the same as I did before, when we were together. But it’s not the same, is it?”

  “You love him,” Felix said. “If you didn’t, we wouldn’t be lying here talking.”

  I looked down at the white sheets and knew what he meant. “I do love him. I do, but it doesn’t stop me wanting you. I have since that first time you kissed me – or Oberon did.”

  “Never in my life have I found it so hard to stay in character,” Felix said.

  I tried to laugh, but what came out was a sort of choking hiccup.

  “I can’t cheat on him. It’s just so sordid, apart from being wrong.”

  “I want to fuck you, of course I do. Jesus, Laura, I’ve been lying awake at night thinking about nothing else. If you wanted me to, there’s no way I could resist, even if I knew it could only happen once. But you don’t want that. I understand why – it is sordid, it is wrong, too many people would end up getting hurt. But if you left Jonathan for me, you’d never forgive me. You’d feel so guilty about it that you’d end up hating me. You’d regret it for ever.”

  I thought about that for a second, and I knew that he was right.

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “To New York, I mean. It’s just been a really terrible idea all round.”

  “Not for me,” Felix said. “Even if I never see you again, I’ll be able to remember these two days.”

  “We’ll always have Paris?” I said.

  “Something like that.”

  He wrapped his arms around me again. His body was so familiar, so strong. Holding him made me feel safe, but I knew it was an illusion. This was the most dangerous place in the world for me to be. What I wanted to do could never be undone. Even if we never spoke of it again, even though no one need ever find out what had happened in that room, no one would hear us over the roar of the traffic outside and no one could see, I’d know. I’d know, and I’d never be able to forget it, face my husband or respect myself.

  I opened my eyes. Felix must have sensed the finality of my decision, because his lips left mine. I looked at his beautiful, familiar face close to mine for a moment, and then I said, “I must go.”

  “Yes, I think you must,” he said. “I’m sorry, Laura, I didn’t mean to leap on you. I just —”

  “It wasn’t only you,” I said. “I want to just as much. That’s why I have to go.”

  “I know,” he said.

  I put my clothes on again, as hastily as I’d removed them. Felix walked with me to the door. We didn’t say goodbye – he just brushed my cheek with a fingertip, and I tried to smile, then turned and walked away down the stairs.

  I walked all the way back to our hotel, and by the time I got there it was dark and I’d stopped crying, although the hollow feeling of sadness in my chest remained.

  It was only when I was in the lift going up to our room that it occurred to me to check my phone. I had twelve missed calls. Suddenly, I felt not just sadness but fear. I slid my key card into the door and opened it.

  Jonathan was sitting on the sofa, his back to me.

  “Hi,” I said. “You’re back early.”

  He stood up and turned to face me. “How long have you been fucking him?” he asked.

  I felt blood rush to my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do, Laura. He was hanging around you like a bad smell in London, and now he’s followed you here. Or perhaps you followed him. There I was worried you were bored, spending your holiday on your own. You haven’t been, have you?”

  “Jonathan, I…” I sought desperately for the right words. I wanted to tell him it was over, there’d never been anything, really, just a crazy longing in my own head for something from the past, a dissatisfaction with the present. But the habit I’d formed of denial was too strong to break now. And how had he found out? Someone must have seen Felix and me together – but who?

  As if he’d read my thoughts, Jonathan said, “I suppose you thought you were being discreet. Shame about your boyfriend’s fangirl following. I wouldn’t have seen this, except I was looking online for something for us to do together.”

  He threw his phone towards me, hard. Reflexively my hand darted out to catch it. On the screen was the photo Nancy, our waitress, had taken of her and Felix together the night before. Her face and his were pressed together, smiling, but in the
corner of the image was a slice of another face that was unmistakably mine.

  “Everyone’s talking about the NYC opening of Flight of Fancy’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this week,” the caption read. “So imagine how excited I was to meet one of its stars, Felix Lawson, out in Chelsea with his gorgeous girlfriend.”

  “Jonathan, seriously, there is absolutely nothing happening. Felix and I met up for a drink, and today we went sightseeing together. That’s literally all. I haven’t cheated on you, ever, and I never will.”

  Even though it was the truth, I knew how very, very close I’d come to it not being. My words didn’t sound convincing, not even to me.

  “Then why did you lie to me? God, you must think I’m completely fucking stupid.”

  “I don’t! Of course I don’t. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you – it just didn’t seem important.”

  “Oh, I see,” Jonathan said. “Honesty isn’t important. I guess that tells me all I need to know about how you feel about our marriage.”

  I stood, still holding Jonathan’s phone with its trivial, incriminating evidence. I couldn’t deny the truth of what he said: I had lied. I had chosen not to be honest with him – and not because it wasn’t important, but because I knew full well how important it was. I’d lied so I could carry on doing what I wanted to do, enjoy the heady sense of freedom being with Felix gave me, imagine a life without commitment and duty and responsibility.

  And now, by telling Jonathan that there had been nothing beyond friendship between me and Felix, I had made it even harder for myself to tell him the real truth.

  “You brought him into our home,” Jonathan said. “My home, our children’s home. Did you have sex in our bed?”

  “Jonathan, please,” I said. “You have to believe me. I didn’t sleep with Felix. Not in our bed or anywhere else. I didn’t!”

  Then I remembered the afternoon of my birthday, Felix’s room in London, Felix’s bed – and I realised that that, too, was not literally true.

  My doubt must have shown instantly on my face, because Jonathan said, “I don’t believe you, Laura.”