Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-nine
Lexie raised her knuckles to knock on the flat door but then lowered her hand again. She paced away in the little space at the top of the stairs, then turned around. She'd filled in the application form for the flat last night and had just found out this morning that she'd gotten it. She had to put the holding deposit down by the end of the day, but she wanted to talk to Theo about it first. She just wasn't sure exactly how to talk about it. Was she asking if he wanted to go all in—actually try to make this a relationship? Was she telling him that she wanted to keep the company? Her thoughts were panicked and muddled, and she took a breath to try to calm herself.
She knocked on the door, and Theo was smiling when he opened it. It was the type of smile to make the amber in his eyes light up. She felt her breath loosen a bit.
"Hey, Lex. What's up?"
"Hey. So, I wondered if we could talk for…" She trailed off as she caught sight of Mike over Theo's shoulder. She bit her lip. "Sorry. Is this a bad time?" She hadn't realized there was a meeting. Then again—surely it wasn't a proper meeting, otherwise she'd have been invited?
"Never a bad time for you." He opened the door wider, gestured her inside.
Mike gave Lexie a look she couldn't quite interpret, before turning back to Theo. "I should go, then."
"I'll walk you down," Theo offered. "Make yourself at home, Lexie."
Mike gave her a polite nod as he and Theo left—leaving Lexie alone in Theo's flat. It was weird—she'd been up here plenty of times for work, but now, since Ireland, there was something strangely intimate about it. Her phone buzzed, and she laughed as she saw a WhatsApp from Theo.
If you wanted to wait for me naked I wouldn't object.
She moved into the living room. There was a bunch of paperwork sitting on the coffee table, all with the R Mike would be in, like he clearly wanted, after having given her dad the start-up loan; and Lexie would be out completely.
She stared at the document, a lot of it in language that she didn't immediately understand. Bewilderment came first. How could they do this? Could it even be legal? But beneath that, and far more overpowering, was the thought that really mattered. He'd been planning this. The whole time, Theo had been planning it. When they were in Madrid together. When they slept together in Ireland. He'd opened up, got her to open up, and talked about future plans, and all the while, he'd been working on a plan to cut her out.
The front door opened, and Theo came back in. She stared up at him.
"Hey, so…" He trailed off, and she knew her expression must have been giving her away. He looked at the contract in her hand, and his face paled. And that was all the confirmation she needed. "Lexie—"
She stood up, letting the contract fall to the floor. "Don't."
He stepped toward her, but she moved back. "Lexie, please, it's not what you—"
"Not what I think?" She scoffed, clinging to the anger that was now rising—easier to feel that than the other emotions that wanted to boil over. "I don't think there are any other ways to interpret this, Theo, though granted I've only glanced it over."
And God, beneath the anger she was hurt. More hurt than she'd like to be. More hurt than she should have let herself be. This was why you shouldn't trust anyone—not completely. She'd been ready to go all in—was about to make herself vulnerable and tell him as much—and all the while he'd been doing this. She'd been ready to give up her way of life, to sacrifice that for him, but to Theo, she was just collateral damage.
"If you just give me the chance to—"
"No, do you know what? I don't think I will." She walked toward the door, skirting past him. Because she knew he'd try, she was prepared, and dodged out of reach when he tried to take her hand to stop her.
"Lexie," he said again, but she would not stop. She wanted to get away from him, as far away as possible—and she certainly didn't want to listen to excuses. So she ran down the stairs, moving faster as she heard him swear, then follow behind her.
"Harry," she said as she entered the office on the ground floor, her voice hitching on a near sob.
Harry looked up at her, hiding his phone swiftly in his pocket.
"Theo's coming down now. He asked if you could run him through the customer inquiries this morning."
Harry gave her a little salute, and she bolted from the shop.
Behind her, she heard Harry's voice as he lurched into action the moment Theo came down the stairs—and that gave her the chance she needed to get away. Sooner or later, she knew, she'd have to have a conversation with him. Would have to feel the full hurt of what he'd been planning and find out exactly how manipulative he'd been.
But not today.
—
Lexie was sitting on her bedroom floor, suitcase open and half filled by the time Fran came in. She heard the jangle of keys from the living room as Fran placed them in the designated key bowl on the kitchen counter, then heard Fran calling out.
"Lexie?"
"In here!"
Lexie stared at the clothes in her suitcase. Usually she was excellent at packing, after all the practice, but right now, she couldn't think of what she needed. Obviously the simplest thing to do would be to chuck everything in her room here into the suitcase and be done with it, but she knew she still had some things at her mum's, too.
"So, I've brought wine because I have some pretty big…" Fran trailed off as she came into Lexie's room and stared at the suitcase. "What's going on?"
Lexie bit her lip. "I'm trying to remember where I put my passport."
Why—why had she been so disorganized this time? It must be at her mum's. She glanced at her mobile, which was on her bed. She'd called a few agencies already, looking for seasonal work—after telling the estate agent that she was going to withdraw her application for the flat, of course. She was a bit late, but there was always last-minute availability—and a couple of the agencies had worked with her before, so knew and liked her.
"Your…What the hell, Lex? Where are you going? I thought you'd put down a deposit on that flat!"
"No, I changed my mind. And I don't know where I'm going yet." She pulled a hand through her hair.
"You don't know where you're going ? What am I missing here?"
Lexie closed her eyes, then sank backward onto her bed. "I'm done. I'm quitting the company."
"But… why ?"
Lexie shook her head. She couldn't bring herself to explain. And to think, this morning she and Fran had been talking about her flat, and when Fran could come round, and planning a moving-in party with Theo's name up at number one on the guest list. Stupid. She was so, so stupid. Then her eyes flew open, and she frowned.
"Wait—you said you had some pretty big…what? News?"
Fran's eyes darted from the suitcase on the floor to Lexie, and back again. "Ah, well."
"Tell me!"
Fran jumped, and Lexie grimaced.
"Sorry, I mean, let's press pause on my crisis for a moment. Please tell me."
"Well, I, um, sort of quit my job."
Lexie stared at her. "Are you serious?" Fran nodded, and Lexie sprang to her feet. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Congratulations! Shall we have wine? You're right, this calls for wine." She left the bedroom and hurried to the kitchen, her movements a bit frantic.
"Lexie, don't you think we should—"
"No. I want to hear about you. Tell me what happened." She opened one of the cupboards in Fran's small kitchen and got down two wineglasses. "This is way bigger than my thing," she insisted, aware that she was potentially talking a little too quickly but unable to stop herself. "You've been in your job for years, I know how hard you've found it lately." She felt a weird pull at the base of her stomach, realizing she'd also quit her job today, but she brushed that aside, along with all her other feelings.
Lexie saw the bottle of wine Fran had left on the counter and opened it, looking at Fran expectantly as she did so.
Fran seemed to waver in indecision for a moment, before speaking. "Well, I quit. That's the story. End of."
"That is so not end of. What are you going to do ? Do you mean—are you, like, becoming a different sort of lawyer?" She handed Fran one of the glasses.
"No. I'm going to do something else entirely. I hated my job." She blew out a slow breath, then took a sip of wine. "Do you know what? I've wanted to say that for ages. I hate it. So I'm going to do something else entirely. God knows what, but I have savings and I'll figure it out." She put the wine down on the counter, then stepped up to Lexie and took one of her hands in hers. "And do you know what, Lex? It's because of you. You've been taking the time to work out what you really want to do—"
"Yeah, but that's really just because I'm a complete commitment-phobe and can't figure out what the hell to do with myself." The words slipped out, heightened by the state she was in right now. She didn't mean them, she told herself firmly. She loved traveling—and maybe it was a good thing that she'd seen the contract of Theo's, because it had reminded her that she didn't want to put down roots. That she'd have been sacrificing a part of herself—for someone who didn't deserve it.
"Well, I don't see it like that," Fran said firmly. "I see it as you figuring it out. And I think you might have figured it out these past few months—though I don't know what's happened to make you freak out like this. And I thought you'd like to hear that I was inspired by you, Lexie. That you're not the fuckup you seem to think you are. You've done what you needed to do for yourself, and you've made me want to do the same."
Lexie felt a lump swelling in her throat. "I haven't figured it out," she whispered.
"Maybe you—"
"No. I mean, it's not…" She swallowed, and then, on a deep breath, told Fran what she'd found in Theo's flat.
Fran looked at her for a long moment, then said, "Did you give him the chance to explain?" Lexie said nothing. "Maybe you ought to talk to him, Lexie." Her voice was calm, and full of sympathy, but Lexie still said nothing—because she wasn't sure she could face talking to Theo. Wasn't sure she wanted to be confronted with the truth of it. And perhaps worst of all, she didn't want to risk him coming up with an excuse, didn't want to risk believing him, only for this to happen again, later down the line. It was wrong of her, to be thinking about settling down—because relationships didn't ever work out to happy endings, did they? Not for her, not for Fran, not for her parents, not for Richard and Jody, not for Theo's parents…And this had been the wake-up call she'd needed.
Lexie knew her thoughts must have been playing out on her face when Fran gave her arm a little squeeze. "I know that if you keep moving around, there's less of a chance people will let you down. But Lex, it also means less connection with people. And that's OK," she added quickly. "It's a choice—and maybe it's been the right one for you until now. But you can also try something different—you don't have to run before you give people a chance. And I know it's scary, but if you never open up enough to give someone the chance to let you down, it also means you aren't opening up enough to give them the chance to be there for you."
By people she meant Theo, obviously. But had she not heard what Lexie had said? About what Theo had been planning to do—without even talking to her? All those conversations with Mike, behind her back…
"I'm not running," Lexie said firmly. "I shouldn't even have stayed as long as I did. I never meant to in the first place."
"It's just…this decision seems a little rushed. Are you sure this is the right thing to do? To leave without even talking to him about it?"
"Yes," she said. And when Fran gave her another look she said, "It is. "
Fran's eyebrows raised. "Are you trying to convince me—or yourself?"
When Lexie opened her mouth to insist again, Fran held up her hand.
"I'm just going to say one more thing about it, OK? Then I'll even help you pack, if you want."
Lexie gestured for her to go ahead.
"For me, being brave was quitting my job and throwing myself into the ether. It was forcing myself to take a risk—and who knows, it might play out badly. But I can still go back to the job if I want to. So my question is, what's being brave for you? A lot of people think traveling around, moving from place to place is a brave way of living. And it is. It's amazing. And I know you've loved doing it. But is it the thing you want now, even if it scares you?"
Lexie said nothing—silence seemed like a safer bet.
Fran gave her a small smile. "Do what you need to do. I'll always be here, OK? And just know that there's a place for you here if you ever change your mind."