Always, in December(2)
Josie held up a hand. “Don’t call me babe.” She sighed. “Please, just don’t.” She didn’t want to hear it. The offer of a shoulder to cry on, telling her that he still cared about her. Because surely if he cared about her that much, he wouldn’t have slept with someone else. And certainly not someone they both worked with, someone she had to face in the office, who walked around the place in completely impractical heels like she owned it.
“Right,” he said, and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, looking away from her and glancing around the dull hallway. One of the lights was flickering weakly down the other end, the effect somehow highlighting the ugly, stained carpet that contrasted sharply with the vinyl inside the flat that Josie made an effort to keep clean and shiny. He took a breath, looked back at her with those brown Bambi eyes, the ones she’d fallen for two and a half years ago, when he’d first swanned into the office, just confident enough for it to be attractive and not annoying. “Jose, look, I know I hurt you, and I know you don’t think you’ll ever be able to forgive me, but I hate the idea of you sitting here alone, trying to deal with this. I just think if we could talk, we—”
Josie shook her head. “Oliver, I can’t do this right now.” His hand dropped to his side and he looked so damn pathetic in that moment, shoulders hunched under his black North Face coat, that she almost gave in and rested a hand on his arm. Almost. Until she remembered that he was not the wronged party in this situation. He had no right to keep trying to worm his way back in, to make her feel like she was overreacting. “And I’m not alone,” she said, her voice clipped. “I have Bia.”
“Right.” He nodded a few times, looking like that bobbing-head dog she’d gotten in this year’s office secret Santa. She’d had it on her desk since, trying to show she appreciated the gesture, even though every single bloody person that stopped by bopped it when they left her desk and then she had to watch it slow down its nodding out of the corner of her eye while she tried to type. “All right.” Oliver cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at the party on Tuesday then?” He tried a hesitant smile, showing off the crooked teeth she knew he hated.
“I guess you will,” she said, trying not to sigh. The party that they all had to go to, despite the fact that it was on Christmas Eve.
He hovered in the doorway for a moment longer, and she wondered if he was waiting for her to give in and hug him, or invite him in or something. After all, throughout the course of the relationship it had always been her making the compromises, her staying out late because he wanted a night out, or agreeing to go on a hectic city break rather than a retreat to the country. They both knew it, both had their roles to play. But this was different. Oliver glanced up, saw the mistletoe hanging sadly above them, and turned a little pink. Josie grimaced. She was going to kill Bia.
“Well,” he muttered, “until then, I suppose.” He shuffled away from the door, but glanced over at her before she could shut it. “I’m sorry, you know.” His eyes, almost exactly the same shade of brown as hers, didn’t blink once. “I know it’s crap timing and I really…” He shook his head. “I’m just sorry.”
She hesitated for half a second, her lips pressed tightly together, wondering whether she should say something to make him realize that sorry wasn’t good enough, to ask him why, and why now, at a time of year he knew was difficult for her. To ask him if he’d slept with Cara again, if he would move in on her, now that Josie was out of the way. But she couldn’t bring herself to, wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know the answer. So instead she nodded once, then let the door click shut.
She allowed herself a moment to close her eyes and rest her head back against the door. She refused to let the tears come, though, taking slow breaths and screwing up her eyes to banish back the burning. He’s not worth it, she told herself. And she’d been through worse and survived, hadn’t she?
She pushed away from the door and sighed as she hauled the box of her stuff to her room at the far end of the corridor. The bigger room, because Bia had insisted she take it, even though they paid the same amount of rent. She grimaced at the purple tinsel Bia had put up around her doorframe. She had half a mind to tear it down, but wouldn’t because, despite her feelings on the subject, she knew it would upset Bia.
She’d only just dumped the box on her bed when she heard a key in the front door. Speak of the tiny she-devil.
“Jose? Josie!” The sound of Bia’s voice was followed by the sound of various objects falling, including the clanging of a set of keys, and Bia swearing, loudly. Josie huffed out a small laugh despite herself as she stuck her head around her bedroom door to see Bia’s multicolored handbag on the floor, contents strewn everywhere, and one of Bia’s arms stuck inside her coat as she flapped around to try to get it off. Bia caught her eye and held up a bottle of wine in her non-trapped hand. “I saved the essentials, and that’s what counts.” She carefully set the wine down on the step that led up to the kitchen, then maneuvered her way out of her coat and flung it into her bedroom without looking. “Come on, you look like you need a glass.”
Josie followed Bia obediently to the open-plan kitchen–slash–living room and perched on their secondhand sofa while Bia clunked around in the kitchen for glasses. The living room was currently cozy and festive—fairy lights across the top of the fake fireplace and around the windows, a bowl of nuts on the coffee table in the middle of the room and a small Christmas tree in the corner, decorated erratically with blue, silver, red, and gold baubles and tinsel, so that if you stared at it for too long you felt dizzy. All Bia’s handiwork, except for one decoration on the tree—a small wooden swan—which Bia had given Josie the first year they lived together and forced her to put on the tree every year since then.