She was halfway through chapter twelve when she realised the author had stolen her life.
At first she'd dismissed the similarities as coincidence, because what else was she supposed to think? The city was different, the names had been changed and the woman in the novel drank coffee when she'd always preferred tea. Even the hotel had moved from Florence to Paris, which she considered unnecessarily pretentious. But then she reached the bedroom scene and stopped pretending any of it was accidental.
The green dress was there. So was the ridiculous argument they'd had in the lift, right down to the insult she'd regretted before the doors had opened. And then came the scar on his left shoulder, the one she'd discovered considerably later that evening when neither of them had been wearing enough clothing to continue pretending they were still angry.
She lowered the book and stared at the rain running down the bedroom window. Nobody knew about that night. Nobody except her and Daniel.
The name printed across the cover was Elias Vale, which might have been amusing if she hadn't suddenly wanted to throw the bloody thing across the room. Instead, she reached for her phone and found the number she'd somehow never managed to delete. Four years without a single conversation, and there it was, sitting between her dentist and a restaurant she'd visited once in Edinburgh as though Daniel were merely another contact she might reasonably require one day.
His reply arrived so quickly she wondered whether he'd been waiting for it.”Took you long enough”.
She laughed, which annoyed her considerably more than the message itself. Of course he'd say something like that. No apology, no explanation, not even the decency to pretend he was surprised. She typed “Elias Vale? Seriously?” and watched the three dots appear almost immediately.
“
There he was. Four years disappeared in six irritating words.
“I liked Daniel perfectly well until Daniel disappeared without saying goodbye”.
This time the dots appeared, vanished and returned before his answer finally arrived. ““
Of course it wasn't. Daniel had always possessed the remarkable ability to make an argument sound like an unfortunate misunderstanding in which nobody, particularly Daniel, could possibly be held responsible. She put the phone down and looked at the book lying across her legs. Chapter thirteen waited on the next page, but before she could decide whether she wanted to know what other parts of her life he'd helped himself to, the phone vibrated again.
“Have you reached thirteen?”
She ignored him, although apparently he still knew precisely how long her resistance lasted because another message appeared before she'd even managed to congratulate herself.
“You'll hate it”.
The bastard knew her far too well.
She turned the page.
Chapter thirteen didn't begin with the hotel or the green dress. Instead, the woman stood barefoot in a kitchen at two in the morning while the man she loved leaned against the counter and watched her pretend she wasn't crying. None of it had happened, yet as she continued reading, something uncomfortable settled beneath her ribs because the fictional version of herself was saying all the things the real one had never managed to say.
She told him she was frightened. Not of him, but of needing him. She admitted that she'd spent most of her adult life expecting people to leave eventually and had become rather accomplished at making their departure easy before they had the opportunity to hurt her. It was infuriating enough reading emotions she'd never voiced, but then she reached his answer.
“I would have stayed if you'd asked me to”.
She closed the book hard enough to make the tea beside her tremble. Her phone was already in her hand before she'd properly decided what she wanted to say.
“That never happened”.
His answer took longer this time. “I know”.
“Then why the hell did you write it?”
Several minutes passed before the screen lit again, and when it did, the irritation she'd been enjoying suddenly became much harder to hold on to.
“Because I've spent four years wondering what would have happened if we'd stopped pretending we didn't care.”
She read the message twice. The first time she concentrated on the accusation hidden inside it, the second time, unfortunately, she noticed the confession. Anger would have been considerably easier to manage, so she settled for “You left”, pressed send and immediately wished she'd written something cleverer.
The phone rang.
Daniel.
She watched his name on the screen until the final possible moment before answering. "Hello."
"Still dramatic, I see."
His voice was deeper than she remembered, although perhaps memory had simply been kinder to her than reality. Either way, hearing him again did something annoyingly physical to her, dragging up the memory of his mouth against her neck and the particular way he'd once said her name when he'd stopped being interested in conversation.
"You wrote about me."
"I changed the names."
"You called me Catherine."
"You always said you hated your name."
"I hate Catherine more."
His laugh came down the line, warm and horribly familiar, and she closed her eyes because apparently four years wasn't nearly long enough to become immune to a man. She reminded herself that she was angry with him, although her body appeared to have received an entirely different briefing.
"You wrote things that never happened, Daniel."
"I wrote things I wished had happened."
"How convenient."
"No. Convenient would have been forgetting you."
There it was. He'd always done that too, slipping something painfully honest into the middle of an argument and leaving her with nowhere comfortable to hide. She picked up the book again and ran her thumb along the edge of the pages, suddenly wondering how many of them contained things he'd never had the courage to say when they'd actually been together.
"Why publish it?"
There was a pause before he answered. "I hoped you'd find it."
That caught her. She moved the phone away from her ear for a second and stared at it, as though his face might somehow appear on the screen and explain what the hell he was doing. "You could have called."
"So could you."
Annoying man. Even after four years he could still deliver four words and leave her wanting to argue with every one of them.
She climbed out of bed and walked towards the enormous window, folding one arm beneath her breasts while London blurred behind the rain. "What exactly did you expect me to do? Read twelve chapters, discover my former lover has turned our relationship into fiction and suddenly think, gosh, what a charming way to reconnect?"
"I imagined considerably more swearing."
"At least you got something right."
"And I imagined you in bed while you read it."
She went still. The oversized sweater she'd pulled on after her shower suddenly felt rather less substantial than it had five seconds earlier. "Don't."
"What?"
"You know exactly what."
"I haven't said anything."
"No, but you're enjoying yourself."
"Immensely."
She hated the smile pulling at her mouth, mostly because she knew he'd hear it in her voice if she spoke again. Instead she returned to the bed and picked up the novel, hoping the act of reading might restore some sense of control.
"Finish the chapter," he said.
She kept the phone against her ear as she opened the book again. The fictional couple didn't kiss, didn't tear each other's clothes off and didn't fall into bed for the sort of reconciliation Daniel would undoubtedly have enjoyed writing. They simply sat together until sunrise and finally said everything they'd been too proud, frightened or stupid to say when they'd actually had the chance.
Somehow that was worse.
The final line made her chest tighten.
If she ever came back, he knew there was only one question he wanted answered.
She frowned and turned the page, only to find chapter fourteen waiting for her. "There's no question."
"I know."
"So what is it?"
For the first time since she'd answered, his voice lost its teasing edge. "Are you happy?"
She hadn't expected that. Of all the things he could have asked after four years, it wasn't whether she missed him, whether she still loved him or whether she'd ever thought about that night in Florence. She could have lied to any of those, and they both would have known it. Instead he'd managed to ask the one question for which she had no prepared answer.
"I don't know," she admitted eventually.
"That's a terrible answer."
"It's an honest one."
"That's new."
She laughed despite herself. "Careful."
"There she is."
Something about those three words affected her more than it should have, perhaps because there was no accusation in them. He sounded pleased simply to have found the woman he'd once known beneath four years of silence, and she suddenly wondered whether she'd been looking for him in the book for exactly the same reason.
She moved back towards the window. "Where are you?"
"London."
Her fingers tightened around the phone. "So am I."
"I know."
She frowned. "How?"
"You posted a photograph yesterday."
"Of a teacup."
"With the skyline reflected in the window."
She looked at the glass in front of her and shook her head. "That's mildly disturbing."
"I prefer observant."
"I prefer disturbing."
He laughed again, and this time she allowed herself to enjoy it. There had been a period after he'd left when she'd heard that laugh everywhere: in restaurants, on trains, once in a supermarket where she'd abandoned an entire basket of groceries to follow a stranger down the cereal aisle. She'd hated herself for that one.
Then Daniel said, "Look down."
Her heart stumbled before her mind had time to object. She stepped closer to the window and wiped a small patch of condensation from the glass with the sleeve of her sweater.
Across the street, beneath the dark awning of the café opposite her hotel, a man rose from a small table with a phone against his ear. A book lay beside his abandoned glass, and even from several floors above she recognised the cover.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
"I've missed that mouth."
The words landed exactly where he intended them to. She felt heat climb her neck and was immediately grateful for the distance between them, although knowing Daniel, he'd probably managed to imagine that too.
"Daniel, what are you doing here?"
"I had dinner nearby."
"Of course you did."
"I may have chosen the restaurant rather carefully."
She stared down at him. "You knew where I was staying."
"I knew which hotel you'd photographed. I didn't know whether you'd actually be there tonight."
"So you sat across the road hoping I'd eventually look out of the window?"
"When you put it like that, it does sound slightly pathetic."
"It sounds completely pathetic."
"Yet you're still at the window."
Bloody man.
She almost stepped away simply to prove a point, but that would have been childish and, worse, he'd know exactly why she'd done it. Instead she remained where she was and watched him tilt his head towards the hotel entrance.
"What do you want, Daniel?"
His answer came without the slightest hesitation.
"Chapter fourteen."
For several seconds neither of them spoke. She became acutely aware of the rain against the glass, the book lying open behind her and the fact that the man she'd spent four years convincing herself she no longer wanted was standing across the street asking, in the most Daniel way imaginable, whether she'd like to find out if they could write a different ending.
"And what exactly happens in chapter fourteen?" she asked.
His voice dropped. "I thought perhaps this time we wouldn't write it first."
That was better. Worse, actually, depending on whether she was consulting her common sense or the rest of her body.
The call ended a moment later, leaving her standing at the window while Daniel remained beneath the awning, apparently confident enough to believe she would come downstairs. That alone was almost sufficient reason not to go.
Almost.
She turned towards the bed and looked at the novel she'd intended to spend the evening reading. Beside it sat her cold tea, her abandoned phone charger and the black dress she'd decided earlier was far too much effort for a night alone.
Four years ago she'd watched him leave because asking him to stay had frightened her more than losing him. She'd spent a long time telling herself she'd made the right decision, and perhaps she had. People changed. Desire faded. Some relationships belonged exactly where they'd ended.
Unfortunately, none of those comforting little truths explained why her pulse had been misbehaving since the moment she'd heard his voice.
She picked up the black dress.
If chapter fourteen turned out to be a terrible idea, she could always blame the author.
And this time, at least, she'd insist he use her real name.
Seraphine 🖤