The 14 Days of Christmas

“Are you sleepy?”

“I wish I were sleepier,” I replied.

“So, why don’t we seize the moment?” he asked.

He can’t have been talking about sex. If he was, he’d have been kissing me or pulling me onto him or . . .

“Let’s go and make a fire in your garden and burn the contents of that bin bag.”

He sat up and swung his legs off the bed, stretching up his arms as I appreciated the dip and curve of his muscular back in the glow of the bathroom light.

“Do you know how cold it is out there?” I asked. He was bonkers to even suggest it.

“We have coats,” he said, padding into the bathroom. “And when the fire is going, it will keep us warm.”

“I don’t have materials for a fire.” I wasn’t sure what materials I’d need necessarily, but given I’d never made a bonfire in my back garden, I was confident I wouldn’t have what we needed.

“You have matches. And paper. And a bag full of your ex-boyfriend’s clothes and shit,” he said, appearing in the doorway like he was about to be captured in marble by Michaelangelo.

“No thank you, I’m perfectly happy here in my warm bed.”

“You know he’s not coming back, right?”

I really didn’t want to talk about this. I especially didn’t want to talk about it with Sebastian. He didn’t need to know that although I knew Carl wasn’t coming back, there was a part of me that couldn’t let go. “He might need those things,” I said.

Instead of sliding back under the covers, Sebastian started pulling on his clothes. “If he needed anything in that bag, he would have been back by now.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

“It’s rude to just bin something of someone else’s. I’m trying to take the high road.”

He tried to tug the duvet off me but I held it tight. “No, it’s rude to leave your girlfriend of six years on Christmas Eve without giving her any explanation. It’s rude not to take all your stuff. It’s rude not to treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve and it’s just fucking senseless to leave you in the first place.”

I exhaled, slightly exasperated. “I don’t disagree with you about any of that. I just don’t see how sending the village up in smoke is going to help.”

“I’m not suggesting you take up arson as a hobby. He was a dick. Allocate him the responsibility he deserves, get angry about what he did, and then free yourself. Move on.”

“You don’t think I’ve moved on?” I raised my eyebrows, hoping he’d get my silent message that he was living proof I’d moved on plenty.

“I don’t think anyone could move on while they hang on to a bunch of their ex’s shit in a plastic bag. And don’t give me that I’ve-moved-on-with-you bullshit. This isn’t about whatever’s going on with us. This is about you still thinking you need something from that man.” This side of Sebastian where he was dominant and possessive and wanted more for me than I wanted for myself was part of him I could eat up with a spoon. It was like nothing and no one could stand in his way. “I’ve seen your fire when we’re together. Harness it, let it rip and then refuel.”

Somewhere in the last year, my brain had stopped expecting Carl to turn up wanting the rest of his things. But my heart had still been hoping for something. And now? It wasn’t so much that I wanted him to come back, more that I wanted an explanation of why he left. That missing information was stopping me from closing the door and moving on.

“He should have told me he was leaving. He owed me that. Something changed for him and I deserved to know what.”

“Right,” Sebastian said. “He was an arsehole.”

“He was.” There were no excuses to be made. He’d not behaved like the man I’d been with for the six years before.

“He’s held you back while he’s moved on.”

Irritation pricked the back of my neck. God only knew what Carl was getting up to, and with who. I hadn’t been able to even look at another man until nearly twelve months later, when Sebastian appeared in Snowsly. “I deserve better than Carl.”

“You deserve a man who’ll communicate to you how he’s feeling. Not a boy who just runs away.”

I sat bolt upright. “Exactly. Even if he left because he just didn’t like me, he should have had the bollocks to say it to my face.”

“Yes,” Sebastian said.

“He never gave us a chance. He never had both feet in like I did. Because if he’d been committed to a future together, he wouldn’t have left without warning—without some kind of indication he was unhappy.”

I’d been so full of sadness about what I’d lost, I’d failed to look more closely at what had gone. I’d been grieving a lost future for the last twelve months without asking myself whether a future with a man like Carl was something that I really wanted. His leaving should have woken me up to the fact that Carl wasn’t a man who deserved my heart. And he didn’t deserve my grief, either. My future wasn’t lost because he was gone. It was still mine to create.