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Henry mindlessly reached out and set all the weights on the scale to zero as he passed it. Half the lights in the clinic were already out as he headed down the hall to his office, only to be stopped when a nurse called to him.
“Sorry, doctor. One last patient.”
Henry looked at his watch. He had already been here an hour later than he had planned.
“I know, but I promise this is the last one. The doors are locked.”
“Not a problem, Clara.” It wasn’t her fault people waited until the last possible moment to get seen. He took the patient file from her and headed back down the hall.
“Exam room two,” she called after him.
Henry knocked on the door and then stepped inside. “Hello, I’m Dr. Cavill,” he said as he glanced at the name on the top of the file. He stopped with his hand on the door as he read the name again. Adelaide Harbridge. There could be two Adelaide Harbridges, right? He lifted his eyes and sighed. Not two Adelaides with those big brown eyes, though.
He shut the door as she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“My job.” He sat down on the rolling stool and pulled out his pen. “What seems to be ailing you?”
“You don’t work at this clinic though. I came here because you don’t work at this one.”
His teeth ground against each other for a moment as he fought back the impulse to tell her to go to a different clinic and walk out. “I’m picking up extra shifts. Having to buy a new car wasn’t exactly in the budget I had set.”
Her face dropped and she rubbed her hands over her thighs. “I thought you had insurance.”
“Yes, well, insurance doesn’t cover replacement value on a car that new.”
“And of course, you had to have a brand new car. Doctor Henry Cavill could never be seen in anything less than the best. I’m surprised you’re not actually in a three piece suit right now.”
He carefully stood up and turned around so she wouldn’t see the vein in his forehead throbbing. “I don’t wear a suit somewhere it’s likely to be doused in vomit.” He placed her file carefully on the counter. “Now, Adelaide, you told the nurse you’re running a fever and have a sore throat?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s have a look.” He washed his hands and grabbed a tongue depressor from the jar. “Open up and say ah.”
She rolled her eyes but opened her mouth. Henry pressed her tongue down and angled the exam light so he could see better. The back of her throat was covered with white spots and her tonsils were swollen and red. He tossed the tongue depressor in the bin and then palpated the lymph nodes in her neck. She winced as he touched them and he gentled his touch on the swollen glands. He could see the clammy sweat on her forehead and brushed her fringe out of the way to check her temperature.
“Your nurse took my temperature with one of them newfangled thermometers,” Adelaide said.
Henry yanked his hand away. “Sorry. Habit. You’re definitely running a fever though.”
“I already knew that.”
“It looks like you have a strep infection. I want to run a test to be sure though.” He got a cotton swab and said, “Open up.”
She opened up her mouth again.
“I have to get the back of your throat, so you know, don’t gag.” He had the swab in her mouth already so she couldn’t answer, couldn’t make a biting remark about how she never had problems with her gag reflex before, about how he always made sure to hit the back of her throat. The words were visible in her eyes though, clear as if they had been typed in 72 point font against the weak tea of her skin. She was too pale. Even without a word or the cold sweat she was trying to hide with her hair, one glimpse of her skin let him know that she was sick. She should have been the warm desert sand, not a fevered and watery phantom.
His hand faltered for a second as he stared at her and then he snapped his attention back to his task. “So, I’ll just go test this and I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.” He didn’t look at her as he left.
Adelaide watched the door shut and flung herself backwards onto the examination table. “Fuck, fuck fuck!” She pounded the table a few times, crinkling the obnoxiously thin protective paper. Of course the first time she ran into him after four months she would be sweaty and gross and contagious. Because that’s just the way it would work. Henry looked perfect, just like always, with precisely rolled sleeves and trousers that clung in ways she had spent several bottles of wine trying to forget. He even had a beard now, the absolute tosser. Like his face hadn’t been perfect enough before, now it waspettable.
The 42 carat wanker.
She clung to the reasons they had ended it. His stupid car. So she had wrecked it. It was an accident. It wasn’t like she had deliberately gotten up that morning and thought, what can I do to fuck Henry’s miserable little life over? Oh I know, I’ll total his car. It had been a bleeding accident but that didn’t matter to him. Oh no, it was just one more float in the Adelaide’s an irresponsible little toff parade that he had seemed to lead about the flat on a biweekly basis there towards the end. She’d offered to pay for it, but that had just made it worse. You can’t just throw money at your mistakes and erase them, Adelaide Sydney Harbridge. She had begged to differ. She had been doing that for a long time and it had worked perfectly. Until that moment. That moment where she had said, fine, then buy yourself your own damn car, and he had yelled back, I will, like I’ve paid for everything my whole life, and she had picked up her purse and walked out.
She had gone to the pub round the corner, because she knew he would come after her. He always came after her. She bought a round for the house when she walked in the door. And another one an hour later. Two hours after that the bartender cut her off, and no matter how much she offered to tip him, he wouldn’t give her another drink so the somewhat handsome bloke to her right had offered to share the bottle of scotch he had back at his flat. That was when Henry had finally arrived. Just in time to see her stumbling drunk out of the pub and towards a cab with a stranger, and he had stopped her and the guy had taken a swing at Henry, who being completely sober easily sidestepped the sod and let the man’s momentum carry him down to the pavement.
He’d taken her home, put her to bed, and she’d woken up late the next morning with a bottle of paracetamol and a glass of water on the nightstand and all of Henry’s belongings gone. All of them except her key to his car. His totaled car because she had been texting while driving and hadn’t seen the light change. He had left that on the coffee table for her. Right next to his key for the flat.
She had called. He hadn’t answered. She had called again. It had gone straight to voicemail. She had left messages. She had texted. Nothing. Nothing for four goddamn months and now this. Pestilential, unshowered, and in running pants. She had been trying so hard to get over him but now she didn’t want to get over him so much as hide from him somewhere he’d never find her.
He knocked on the door and she sat up as he came in.
“Well, it’s definitely a strep infection.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“A shot of penicillin, forty-eight hours rest, and you’ll be all better.”
“I can’t miss work for two more days.”
He almost dropped the bottle of penicillin he had brought in. “You have a job?”
“Yes,” she answered, unable to hide the irritation at his question, though she knew that her being employed was widely considered among those in the know to be a harbinger of the End of Days.
“Well, I’ll write you a note for your bosses. You’re contagious. No work. You need rest and fluids.”
“Doctor’s notes are a real thing?”
Henry chuckled and pulled out a pad from his shirt pocket. He quickly wrote out an explanatory note and signed it. “Just give this to your boss.”
Adelaide plucked the paper from his fingers and folded it in half. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“Now, unfortunately, the shot goes in your bum.”
Adelaide lifted a skeptical eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, but it does. It has to go in a large muscle, and no, before you ask, I did not just say that you’re fat.”
She crumpled into a sulk for a moment before sliding off the table and tugging down her running pants. Henry looked up from filling the syringe as she turned around and grabbed the edge of the exam table and stuck out one hip. “Good?”
Henry reminded himself he was a professional and it didn’t matter how many times he had seen her in a similar position under non-professional circumstances, right now he was a professional and she was his patient and he was her doctor and that was that.
“Relax.”
“You’re about to stab me in the arse with a giant needle, Henry. I’m not going to relax.”
“No, I meant relax your leg.”
She scowled over her shoulder at him. “What?”
He sighed in frustration, grabbed her hips, and shifted her so she wasn’t using that leg to support weight. “Just stay like that.”
“Well, you’re still bossy,” she snarked.
“You never complained before,” he shot back.
She flushed red and turned her face away from him.
“Okay, so this is going to be cold.” He swabbed her cheek with disinfectant and tried to think of something to talk about to distract him from the sight of her familiar and forbidden flesh. “You have a date tonight or just behind on the laundry?”
“What?”
“You’re wearing a thong. That means you either have a date or you’ve run out of other options.”
“I don’t think my knicker habits are any of your business, doctor.”
“Right. Sorry.” He tapped the needle to make sure there was no air in the syringe. “Okay, this might sting. On three.” He could see her entire body tense and he rubbed his hand over the small of her back for a few seconds until she relaxed again. He counted and she hissed as the needle punctured her skin and he slowly pushed the thick liquid into the muscle. “Almost done,” he murmured. A few seconds later he pulled out the needle and covered the injection site with a cotton ball. “This might be sore but massaging it or using a heating pad on the site will help.” He put a plaster over the injection. “And a Hello Kitty plaster and you’re ready to go.”
Adelaide yanked her pants back up. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Rest for the next few days and if you’re not better in forty-eight hours come back in.” He opened the door for her.
“Well, um, thanks.”
“Goodbye, Adelaide.”
“Goodbye, Henry.”
He watched her walk down the hall and when she got to the corner she looked back and waved. He smiled and she turned the corner and disappeared out of sight.
><
Henry climbed the stairs of the building wondering what in the world he was doing there. No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what he was doing there. He was bringing Adelaide soup and juice because lord knew if she was so far behind on the laundry that she was wearing a thong she probably hadn’t been to the market in the same amount of time. That she had a job had baffled him. She had never worked while they had been together. She had never needed to, and that she was not only working but concerned about missing work worried him. The only reason for her to be employed that he could think of was that her parents had finally cut her off, but an alien abduction and personality transplant seemed more likely than the money tap getting shut off. She had moved too. The address on her file was different and not located in one of the trendy parts of town. So he had found himself stopping at the market on the way home from work and getting food for someone who was as likely to toss it in his face as say thank you.
He knocked on the door to her flat and waited as the sounds inside got closer to the door. The light through the peephole darkened for a moment and then there was the thump of her leaning her head against the door.
“What are you doing here, Henry?”
“I brought you soup.”
“I don’t want your soup.”
“I know, but you’re going to open the door and take the soup so I can stop worrying about you for some stupid reason and go home and sleep.”
She opened the door and looked at him sullenly. She had a blanket wrapped around her like a cloak and her pointed chin seemed even more obstinate than normal. “That’s a lot of soup.”
He looked down at the heavy bag. “I got you juice, too. With the bits in it.”
“You don’t like it with the bits in it.”
“Yes, but you do and since I got it for you, I got it with the bits.”
“That was nice of you.”
“I am sometimes capable of niceness.”
She leaned against the door. “You were nice most of the time.” Her eyes sagged shut for a moment.
Henry’s brow creased as he looked at her. He brushed her fringe aside and rested his hand on her forehead for a moment. “Your fever is still climbing. Come on, let’s go get you into bed.”
Without waiting for her to argue with him, because she would right now, she most absolutely would, he set the bag of food on the floor of her apartment, picked her up and shut the door.
“Put me down.”
“I’ll put you down on your bed. You need to rest.”
“Well maybe you shouldn’t have come over and made me get off the sofa.”
“You’re going to disagree with everything I say right now because you’re sick and cranky and that’s how you are when you’re sick and cranky, so I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to take care of you.”
“I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t need you to take care of me. I can take care of myself just fine.”
Henry merely looked at her in disbelief and carried her into her bedroom.
Adelaide closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see him see her bedroom. Messy would be a huge understatement. She hated cleaning. Hated it. She would do just about anything other than clean and in the months she had lived here she had done anything but clean.
“Do you have clean linens somewhere?”
She stuck her arm out and pointed to the small cupboard in the hallway. He carefully sat her on the top of the pile of laundry on the chair and then went back out into the hall. A few minutes later her bed was decked out in clean sheets and pillowcases. She stood up and took one step towards the bed before he caught her with one arm around the waist. She looked up at him in surprise and he checked her temperature again.
“You need a cool shower.”
“I do not.”
“Your temperature is still rising, Addy. We need to bring it down.”
“You can’t tell that with your hand.”
“I can do a lot of things with my hand, Addy. And right now I’m telling you to go take a cool shower.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You want me dragging you down to A&E and making someone give you an ice bath even less.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Try me.”
Her face scrunched up as she tried to think of something witty to say but the longer it took the wider he smiled so she just screamed and stomped into the bathroom. “I hate you!” she shouted before she slammed the door shut.
Henry sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “I know,” he muttered.
A few minutes later the bathroom door opened. Addy shrieked and cowered in the corner, covering everything important and giving him a view of the Hello Kitty plaster. “What are you doing in here? Get out!”
“I’m just checking the temperature of the water.”
“It’s cool, just like you said.”
Henry pulled back the shower door and stuck his hand under the stream. “No, that’s warm.” He turned the dial and tested it again. “That’s cool.”
Addy stuck out a hand to feel the water and yanked it back. “That’s cold!”
“No, it’s cool. You’re running a fever so it feels colder than it is.”
“That’s cold, Henry. You can’t make me stand in that.”
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the small counter. “You’re right, I can’t.”
She looked at him suspiciously, like she was a toddler he was trying to trick into eating vegetables. “I’m right?”
“Yes. You’re an adult. You’re capable of making your own choices. So get out of the shower and hope your fever goes down on its own.”
She reached for the dial and then paused. “And if it keeps going up?”
“Then you can go to the hospital and they can put you on ice to bring your fever down, or you can have a seizure from your brain getting too hot and hope you’re capable of calling for an ambulance after.”
“But you could call the ambulance.”
“No, because if you’re going to yell at me when I give you medical advice, I’m going to leave. I’m not your boyfriend anymore, Addy. I don’t have to put up with you being a brat.”
“I’m not a brat. I’m sick.”
“You use being sick as an excuse to act like a brat,” he shot back and pushed himself up from the counter.
His hand was on the door when she said, “So what, you’re just going to walk out again?”
“We’re not doing this right now.”
“Oh, of course not, sir. Yes, sir. You always get to decide what to do and when to do it, sir. How silly of me for thinking that I might get to have a say inanything. Sir.”
He turned around with an obviously restrained fury. “Do you really want to have a discussion about why I left? Then let’s have it. But you get your arse under that water while we do it.”
Addy stomped into the stream of water. She shrieked and shuddered and then crossed her arms over her chest. “I hate you for walking out in the middle of the night and refusing to talk to me afterwards.”
“You were going home with another man, Addy. I put up with a lot of shit from you, but I never thought you would cheat on me.”
“I wasn’t going to cheat on you.”
“You were wasted and going home with him. What did you think was going to happen?”
“We were just going to drink.”
“You’re not that stupid, Addy, and neither am I.”
“Yeah, well I forgave you after you kissed Maggie Stanton!”
“Oh my god,” he raged, “are you bringing that up again?” He grabbed the roll of loo paper from off the back of the toilet and squeezed it until it was almost flat.
“Yes, I am! You kissed her.”
“It was the clinic Christmas party and she caught me under the mistletoe and she kissed me.”
“You sure looked like you liked it.”
“What do you want me to say? That the two seconds it took me to realize it wasn’t you were the most wonderful of my entire life? Is that what you want to hear?”
All the anger washed out of her and down the drain, leaving her shivering in the cold water. “They were?”
“No! But I’ve told you the truth so many times that I’ve lost count and it doesn’t matter to you. I was drunk and it took me a second longer than it should have to figure out that she wasn’t you and get away from her. Maggie Stanton is nothing compared to you, and if I hadn’t been liquored up because someonedeciding adding another bottle of rum to the eggnog would be a good laugh, I would have never gotten anywhere near the damn mistletoe in the first place.”
She crossed her arms over her chest again. “So it’s my fault.”
“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Maggie’s fault.”
They stared at each other, both breathing heavy from the shouting but refusing to look away until she shivered as she stood under the rushing water. “Can I get out of here now?”
Henry slid the shower door open again and felt her forehead. “A few more minutes.”
He walked out of the bathroom and grabbed the bag of food and went into the small kitchen to find the fridge empty except for a few jars of condiments and a half empty bottle of wine. A shriveled apple rested in the bottom of the fruit and veg drawer. Henry dug his thumbs into his temples and rubbed for a few moments and then put the juice in the fridge and shut the door.
He set the soup on the hob to start heating and went back into the bathroom. “You can get out now.” He left without waiting for a response and went back into the kitchen and looked through the cupboards for a clean bowl. He finally found a huge mug at the back of one of the cupboards and a glass, and poured her soup in one and juice in the other. By the time he got back down the hall she had changed into pyjamas and crawled into bed. He put the juice on the nightstand and held out the mug of soup to her.
“I don’t want soup.”
“I don’t care. You need to eat something and this is what there is.”
“My throat hurts when I swallow.”
“That’s why I got you soup and not food with poky bits in it.”
Her eyes narrowed for a few moments and then she looked at him in confusion. “What kind of food has poky bits in it?”
He fought back a grin. “I have no idea; that just popped out,” he admitted. “But there’s a reason why every culture I’ve ever seen has some version of soup that they feed sick people.”
She rolled her eyes again but took the mug. He picked up the wet towel off of the floor and went to go hang it in the bathroom to dry. Ignoring the itching in his palms to organize the chaos of cosmetics scattered over the counter, he opened the medicine cabinet to get her some paracetamol for her, only to find it empty except for even more makeup. He sighed and went into the kitchen. Perhaps she had already gotten it out and left it by the sink.
A few minutes later, he strode back into her bedroom. “How are you not dead?”
Her face scrunched up in what would have been, at other times, an endearing display of confusion. “Penicillin?” she ventured.
“You’re twenty-seven years old and you are living in a pit. You have no food in the kitchen, you have no clean clothes, you have no washing up liquid, I couldn’t find any washing powder –,”
“Why are you going through all my stuff?”
“Because you are going to keep getting sick if this is how you live. There is mold in your sink and under your sink there are maggots eating what I think at one point was a slice of cake. You are living with vermin, and we may not be in a relationship any more but that doesn’t mean I want you dying because you’ve bred some virulent strain of fungus in your bathroom.”
She stared into her soup. “I hate cleaning and I work all day and I come home and I’m tired.”
“Welcome to the real world! Nobody likes cleaning and we’re all tired. I am tired right now. I am exhausted and I am sitting here trying to make you eat soup because I am an adult and you are a fucking child and adults take care of children, even when they don’t want to.”
“I’m not a child.”
He growled and tore his hands through his hair. “You lived alone before you met me. Was it like this?”
“No,” she mumbled into the soup and then took a sip.
“How did you keep it clean before?”
“I had a cleaning lady who came in a couple times a week.”
“And food?”
“The market delivers if you pay an additional fee.”
“And then I moved in.”
“And you had a cleaning system and a market list with checkboxes for the frequently used stuff that you put on the fridge and you subscribed to that menu planning email thingie and you’d just print it off and we’d go to the market together and I just followed you around the store with the trolley and you checked things off as you put them in the cart and doing dishes wasn’t so bad if I was hanging out in the kitchen with you.” She looked up at him with half a smile and then returned her attention quickly to her soup when she saw the look on his face.
Henry rubbed his hands over his face and took a deep breath. “Why don’t you have a cleaning lady now?”
“I asked Daddy to pay to replace your car and he cut off my allowance so I will ‘learn some responsibility and not turn out as a ridiculous ninny like your mother.’”
He sank down on the edge of the bed. Well, that explained a lot. “And that’s why you have a job.”
“Bills suck,” she muttered into her soup.
Henry started laughing. “Oh, I’m sorry, beetle. I shouldn’t laugh, but you have to admit…”
“I know.” She smiled sheepishly. “As much shit as I gave you about how you never used credit and budgeted for everything and now I’m the one trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and my stomach somewhat full. I actually use the coffee pot now, Henry. I make my own coffee.”
He rubbed his hand over her calf. She was still using the duvet they had slept under together. “That’s a big step.”
“It doesn’t taste as good.”
“Maybe you should try a different brand.”
“I can’t afford the other brands.” She whispered the words into her soup and took another swallow.
Henry had never heard her say she couldn’t afford something before. All of a sudden she looked very small and very pale propped up against the headboard. “Where’re your keys?”
“Why do you want my keys?”
“I’m going to pop down to that Tesco around the corner and get you some paracetamol to help with the pain and this way I can lock the door while I’m out.”
“They’re somewhere on the coffee table.”
“You finish up your soup. I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you want me to get anything else while I’m there?”
“No.”
“Okay. Drink your juice, too.”
She smiled. “Stop bossing me around.”
He smiled back. “I’ll think about it.”
She was drowsing in bed when he finally made it back. “It doesn’t take that long to buy a bottle of paracetamol,” she shouted down the hall.
“I picked up a few other things while I was there.”
“It better just be more soup.”
“I bought more soup.”
She shook her head. Had he forgotten how well she could read him? “And?”
“Some washing up liquid. I couldn’t help myself.”
She snorted with laughter and then whined from the pain that it caused to shoot out from her throat into her ears. “You are compulsive.”
“Not technically. Just very clean.” He came back into her room with a sparkling clean glass of water and the bottle of tablets. “Now, here.” He handed her the water glass and opened the container of pills and pulled out the cotton wool shoved inside. “Hand.”
She held out her hand to him and he tapped three tablets onto her palm. “I got the non-childproof cap kind for you.”
She stuck her tongue out at him but then swallowed the pills, washing them down with a few gulps of water. “I never could figure out the trick of those.”
He put the bottle on her nightstand.
“Please don’t wash my dishes for me.”
“It’s no bother. You’re sick and I’m happy to lend a hand.”
“Daddy isn’t bailing me out any more. You shouldn’t either. I’ve got to learn to stand on my own two feet.”
He sat on the edge of the bed again. “I always liked it when you stood on mine.”
“You were a good dance teacher.”
“It always surprised me that you didn’t know all those ballroom dances.”
“Why? Because you think all posh girls grow up going to balls like the heroine of a Jane Austen novel?”
He shrugged. “Because I thought you were perfect.”
“You did not.”
“At first I did. That first time we all got together for the rehearsal? You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
“You know better now, though.”
“No. Still think that. Even after everything we’ve been through.” He tapped the glass and she took another drink.
“Do you ever wonder what if would have been like if Jennie had paired me with a different groomsman? Would we have even talked?”
“I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to ask you out. You are so out of my league.”
“You always were hung up on the class thing.”
“Yeah, well you grow up on the lower rungs and see how fixated you get on the distance between you and everything you want.” Again he tapped the glass and again she drank.
“I think I would have talked to you. You were definitely the most handsome out of all the gentlemen there.”
“I’m just glad that she made us all learn that ridiculous dance for the reception. It gave us time to get to know each other.”
“It gave me time to step on your feet until they were bruised and aching.”
“It gave me time to learn how to make you laugh.”
“Well, now you know the truth. I’m not perfect.”
“No, you’re not. But neither am I.”
Her eyelids were sagging as they spoke. “Henry, please don’t wash my dishes.”
“I won’t, beetle.”
“Can you just stay for a bit longer?” She wiped the tears away that had sprung to her eyes. “I’m so tired of being lonely.”
“Of course.” She finished her water and set the glass on her nightstand. The silence grew until it reached awkward proportions. “What are you thinking about, Adelaide?”
“That I wish I wasn’t contagious so I could ask for a hug.”
“Do you want a burrow?”
Her face constricted like she was about to cry again. “You would do that?”
“Scoot over.”
Her smile lit up her face and for the first time she looked like Addy again. He slipped off his shoes and she moved over to make room for him. He tucked in the blankets from her chin to her toes on her far side and then stretched out against her back and pulled the blankets over them, arranging them carefully so only her face was exposed as she rested her head on his bicep. With a final stretch he tucked the blankets between the mattress and his hip to hold them tightly in place. She made a familiar happy noise and wiggled a bit to get perfectly situated against his chest and then sighed as he wrapped his arm over her waist. He tried not to think about how perfectly their bodies fit together or the nights that he had held her like this.
He held her until their breathing synchronized, until she fell asleep, and for a long time after that. Finally he made himself get out of her bed, collect his shoes and leave. When Addy woke up the next morning, her dirty dishes were still in the sink and sitting next to her coffee maker was a bag of expensive coffee beans.
><
Three weeks later
“Doctor?” the receptionist called as he headed to his office at the end of another long shift. “There’s a woman who has been waiting to see you. Said it’s personal and wanted to wait until you were done with patients.
“Did she give a name?”
“Called herself Adelaide Harbridge.”
Henry took a deep breath and rolled his head from side to side. “Can you bring her back to my office?”
“Of course.”
Henry looked up at the tap on his open door. “You look like you’re feeling better.”
“I am. Thanks to you.”
“I think the penicillin had more to do with it than I did.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Of course; come in.” He gestured to the chair next to his desk and she shut the door almost the entire way before she sat down.
“I, um, I wanted to apologize. I know now a little bit better what it’s like to have to pay for stuff yourself, and how that makes it more valuable than if someone just gives you everything and I work in a shop now – did I tell you that’s what I do? I work in a shop selling ladies clothing – and I see how people treat me and I know that’s how I treated people and I think I treated you like a shopgirl a lot. I kept making messes, literal and figurative, and always knew that you would clean up after me, or I could just throw money at it and it would go away, and um, I was a really shitty girlfriend and I don’t blame you for finally walking out on me. In fact, I’ve been wondering lately how you put up with me for as long as you did.”
“I’m not the easiest person to live with either, Addy.”
“You hang up all your shirts so they’re in order by color, Henry. I crashed your car.”
He sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “I was a snob. Nothing was ever good enough. And sometimes I treated you like you weren’t good enough. Like your love wasn’t good enough.”
Her bottom lip quivered for a moment, the soft rose curve that perfectly mirrored the line of her chin. “I tried.”
“I know. You tried so hard and I kept changing the target. Giving you one more hurdle to jump over to prove it. It’s not your fault that we didn’t work out. There’s plenty of blame for both of us.”
Her expression kept wavering between a smile and a frown. “Ummm, I really did just come here to apologize. The shop next to us sells toys and I saw this,” she held out a gift bag, “and I had to get it for you. I bought it with my own money.”
Henry reached through the tissue and pulled out a toy car.
“It’s the same model as the one I crashed. It’s even the same color. I’ll never be able to replace the actual car, but I thought maybe, like as a symbol, this might tell you how sorry I am.”
Henry rolled the car back and forth on his desk as Addy wiped away the tears that were threatening to fall.
“This is wonderful, Addy. It means a lot to me that you did this.”
“Um, would you like to come over for dinner some night?”
“To your place?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to cook?”
“Yes.”
A smile curved the side of his mouth. “Do I need to bring antibiotics?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’ve been cleaning. Still trying to get caught up on all the laundry, but the kitchen is sanitary again.”
“That’s a really nice offer, but,” he hesitated and rubbed the back of his neck, “I think you should know, I’m seeing someone.”
“Oh.” She blinked a few times. “Right. Of course. I just thought, the other night, but, okay. Right. Good.”
“I’m sorry for giving you the wrong impression.”
“No. You didn’t. You were just taking care of a friend so I wouldn’t have a brain seizure or starve. I understand.”
“Addy…,”
“No, really, that’s brilliant that you’re seeing someone. How did you two meet?”
“She’s a doctor.”
Her smile was crystal bright and just as fragile. “Probably don’t have to scold her about doing the dishes.”
“Addy…”
“Okay, I’m going to go. I’ve got a load of laundry at home waiting for me to fold and put away. Apparently you’re supposed to put it away when you’re done folding it and not just leave it in the basket until you’ve worn it all.”
“I’ve heard a rumor to that effect.”
She hopped to her feet. “So, I’ll just go then.”
Henry stood up. “Let me show you out.”
“No.” She held up a hand to keep him from getting any closer. “I can find my own way.”
Henry nodded. “Thank you for the car, Adelaide.”
She pasted the bright smile back on. “You’re welcome. And good luck with your doctor friend.”
“Thank you.”
She took a deep breath and then blinked and looked away. “Goodbye.”
He shut the door after her and leaned his forehead against it. “Goodbye, beetle,” he whispered.
><
A month later
Henry climbed to the top of Parliament Hill, not knowing what he was doing there. That wasn’t exactly true. He just thought the reason he was there was incredibly stupid. The sun was shining and there was a light breeze. It was perfect kite-flying weather, or at least that was what Addy had always called it. Every time the weather was like this she had suggested they go fly kites from the top of Parliament Hill, but he had always had something scheduled that needed to be done, and they had never gone. So, as an apology to Addy, he had put off all the chores he had jotted down on his to-do list for this afternoon, bought a kite and was climbing to the top of the hill so that he could fly a kite. A dumb stupid rainbow of a kite shaped like a giant dragon. The shop owner had insisted it was the best kite money could buy so he had plunked down the money for it, even though he was just going to fly it once.
He was squatting on top of the hill trying to untangle the excessively long tail when someone plopped down on the grass next to him. “What are you doing?”
“Addy!” He looked at her as if she were a ghost. “You’re here.”
“It’s perfect kite-flying weather.”
He looked around. “You don’t have a kite.”
“Can’t afford one. I came up here hoping there would be people flying kites and lo and behold, here you are with a kite.”
He scratched at the neckline of his Henley. “You came all the way up here on the hope someone would have a kite?”
“Yep.”
“But what if no one was here? You would have wasted all that time.”
“But you’re here.”
“But what if I wasn’t?”
“But you are. Besides, look at all of that.” She waved at the London Skyline. “It’s beautiful weather and a gorgeous view. Even if there wasn’t a kite, which there is, how could taking some time to enjoy all that be a waste?”
Henry looked out at the view. It really was beautiful if you took the time to appreciate it. Depending on which direction you looked you could see the Gherkin, the Shard, the Eye, and even the halls of parliament, though they were a bit obscured now. Addy hooked her finger through one of his belt loops and yanked him down onto his butt.
“Damnit, Addy. My jeans are going to get dirty now.”
“You know what? Jeans wash. I’ve learned that.”
“You are exasperating.”
“And delightful.” She grinned. “Now spill, what are you doing on the top of Parliament Hill with a kite?”
“Apologizing.”
“To whom?”
“You.”
“But I wasn’t even here.”
“But you are here.”
Her eyes narrowed as he quoted her words back to her. “So, what are you apologizing for?”
“Never making time for you.”
She looked out over the sloping green hill to the trees below. “There were times I wanted to burn your diary. All those to-do lists.”
“Sometimes I think I would be happier if you had.”
She patted his arm. “No, you need your lists. It’s part of who you are. I should have just put myself on your to-do lists.”
“I always enjoyed doing you.”
She nudged him in the side. “That was the one part of our relationship where we never struggled. But I don’t even mean that. I should have written ‘Take Addy to fly a kite.’ You would have done it then.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was trying to be the person you wanted me to be.”
“Instead of being the person I needed.”
Addy started to stand and Henry caught her hand. “Please don’t go yet.”
“I have to Henry.”
“Oh. Do you have to get back to work?”
“No, I have the day off.”
“Where do you have to go?”
She pulled her hand away and stood up. “Away from you.” She took a step back. “Away from you sitting on the grass on top of Parliament Hill with a kite. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have a girlfriend Henry. You have a girlfriend who doesn’t need kites or to jump in puddles and who probably rinses out her coffee cup instead of just leaving it in the sink. You’ve moved on and I’m not over you and I can’t sit here with this. I can’t sit here and see you being the person I always wanted and needed that you couldn’t figure out how to be while we were together.”
“You’re still in love with me?”
“You need me to say it? Yes. I love you, Henry. I have tried to make myself stop but I haven’t figured that trick out yet. I’ve learned how to use vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to clean everything in my flat. I make a list before I go to the market so I don’t forget stuff. I am not wearing a thong. I have figured out a lot of stuff in the last six months, but I haven’t figured out how to stop loving you.”
“I love you, Addy.”
She shook her head and her long hair swirled around her shoulders. “Not in the way I want you to, though. You’ve moved on.”
“I broke up with Caroline.”
“What?”
“I broke up with her.”
“Why?”
“Because she wasn’t you. You’re the most beautiful woman I know, and that’s not just about looks. I love you and that makes you beautiful, and I would look across the table at her and she wasn’t you.”
“But you…” She stopped as she searched for words and he held out his hand to her. When she took it he tugged her down so they were sitting face to face.
“But I what?”
“We fought a lot at the end.”
“Yeah, we did. You were irresponsible and I was stodgy.”
“So what makes you think things would be different this time?”
He smiled and stroked his fingers over her knees. “Well, you’ve gotten a bit more responsible and I’m going to get you a green pen and you can write in my diary and schedule yourself in wherever you want. That doesn’t sound very romantic, I know, but I’ll also schedule you in, like I did when we were dating. I stopped making you a priority at some point.”
“And you think that will fix it?”
“It will be a start. We’ve both changed in the last six months. I’m up here with a kite because I knew you would want to be here on a day like today. So I came up here. And here you are.”
She looked at the half built kite sitting next to him. “And here I am.”
“I’m in love with you, Addy. I’m just not very good at loving you. I haven’t found the list that gives me the steps I need to follow. Did you know that’s why I became a doctor? I loved organic chemistry. I loved all the cycles because they made sense. If you take these things and add them together then you get this output. Every time. And I knew that I just needed to follow the steps and I would get it right. Every time. And you, Addy. You are so much more confusing than a Krebs cycle and I tried to figure you out and when I couldn’t figure out the steps, I tried changing you into something I understood.”
“Someone with lists that can fold a fitted sheet.”
He grinned. “And then put all the sheets and pillowcases for the set inside one of the pillowcases so the set would always be together.”
She laughed and then looked over his shoulder as she thought back. “Yeah, I remember opening the linen closet after we first moved in together and you had rearranged it all. I was so confused. It was like finding a different country in there. Actually, you would probably be really good at my job. Do you want to come fold jumpers?”
Henry shook his head. “No. I want to get better at loving you, with all your random combinations that always end up surprising me every time. It’s like I left all the color behind me when I left. It’s so grey and boring without you and I miss you and I want you back. I got you a kite.”
“But you didn’t get me.”
“I know.”
“No, you didn’t come get me. If I hadn’t shown up, what would you have done? Flown the kite and gone home? That doesn’t sound like you love me and need me and want me back.”
“I knew you would show up.”
She rolled her eyes. “You did not.”
He put a finger against her lips. “You can’t laugh at what I’m about to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“You know how you love that Serendipity film and I’ve always thought it was stupid?”
She sighed dramatically and clutched her shirt over her heart. “With John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale and the book! Oh, I love that film.”
“I know. You always wanted something romantic like that from me. So I bought the kite.”
“You bought the kite,” she repeated, not understanding his meaning.
“I thought if we’re really meant to be together, with all of the ways that we’re different, if she’s really the one, then I’ll buy a kite and take it up to Parliament Hill and she’ll be there.”
She stared at him for several seconds and he watched her big brown beautiful eyes try to process what he had said. “You did not.”
“I did.”
“And I was here.” She still looked skeptical of his story.
“Yes. And I still think it’s a stupid film,” Addy started laughing at his pronouncement; such a Henry pronouncement, “and I’m not going to be the John Cusack character anymore,” he continued, smiling at her laughter. “I’m going to be the other guy. The one that writes the eulogies.”
“Jeremy Piven,” she offered.
“If you hadn’t been here, I would have gone and bought you two dozen yellow roses and I would have fought for you.”
She was staring at him again, and her eyes were even more beautiful than they had been a few moments earlier because this time he saw no skepticism in them, only a desire to believe. “Yah?”
“Yes. And I’ll still get you the roses even though you were here. That is if you’re willing to have me back.”
Addy launched herself at him, knocking him over onto his back and kissed him. His beard was soft against her palms and wasn’t that going to be a fun sensation to explore all over her body, but right now it was enough to just kiss him. He kissed her in return, one arm tightening around her back like she would disappear if he didn’t hold her as close as possible, and his other hand in her hair, cradling the back of her head. Her hair fell around them as they breathed in the other, desperately relearning the feel of the other. He kissed away her tears and she kept kissing him until she wasn’t crying anymore. He finally sat up and she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him and he burrowed his face through her hair and rested his lips against the delicate skin of her throat.
“I love you, Addy.”
“I love you, too.” She brushed her hand over his back to get rid of the bits of grass clinging to it. “I’m sorry for making a mess of your shirt.”
He smiled and kissed her again. “It’ll wash,” he said softly.
Who knew ‘it’ll wash’ meant I love you? Addy’s bottom lip quivered again and he caught it gently in his teeth. Her soft sigh as he tugged at it made him kiss her again, and again, and again until their private idyll was interrupted by a small child yelling, “Ewwwwww, they’re kissing.”
Addy’s cheeks took on a healthy flush of color, making them match her swollen lips. “So, are we going to fly this kite or what?”
Henry’s head fell forward and he rested it against her shoulder. “I know it’s supposed to be a romantic gesture but I can’t even figure out how to untangle the tail.”
She snickered softly and kissed him again. “I’ll help.”
It took several minutes to get the entire kite laid out and the cross pieces put in places but they finally got it straightened out. Their first attempt at launching it wasn’t that great. The dragon dipped and dove in fitful attempts at flight.
But the second time.
The second time it soared.