“She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you’re gonna throw it all away because some schmuck dared to say you looked happy…mellow or whatever the fuck he said. I mean what the fuck is wrong with you brother? Do you like being lonely and miserable because after today that’s all you’ll ever be unless you do some serious damage control right now.”
“I don’t need to do shit, she knows I didn’t mean it. She’ll calm down.” I wasn’t sure I truly believed what I was saying but I didn’t think too far into it, I couldn’t.
“If you really believe that then you’re more delusional than I thought.” Freddie banged his fists down onto my desk and leered down at me from the opposite side like an angry ogre.
“Do you know where I found Chloe yesterday?”
I threw my gold pen across the desk, I wanted to throw it in his smug ass face, but the desk would have to do.
“No, I don’t follow her twenty four seven.” I gave a fake grin but inside I felt like my guts were twisting into an unforgiveable knot.
“I found her close to tears, sitting on the beach. She looked miserable as hell.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel what?” I shrugged pretending I didn’t give a fuck when everything in my life was balanced on a knife’s edge.
“Well guilty for one? Sorry maybe? I don’t know how about concerned?”
“Just spit it out Freddie, say what you gotta say then leave.” I snapped, tapping into my emails and staring at the computer screen hoping to block my sad sorry life out for a few minutes.
“She told me she felt vulnerable, said she was scared you’d hurt her.”
I glared back at him now, my teeth clench my jaw aching with the force of tension I was using to keep from exploding.
“I’ve never laid a finger on her not like that.”
“That isn’t what she meant dumb ass. She said she thought you didn’t love her. She thinks it even more now though doesn’t she after you gave her a whole heap of reasons to doubt you. Christ brother, for a successful business man you really are as clueless as they come aren’t you.”
I couldn’t speak, I had no idea what to say.
“So was she right? Don’t you want her? Is that why you acted like a dick this morning?”
I banged my fists down onto the table then put my head into my hands.
“For fucks sake this is all such a fucking mess.” I growled, I had the urge to break things, lots and lots of things. I wanted to hurt someone and take my anger out on them until I had no energy left to even think.
“Do you love her?” Freddie asked me.
“Of course I do. What sort of stupid question is that? Why would she ever think I didn’t?” I had no idea this was how Chloe had felt. I was so confused and messed up. I shook my head in frustration, even I didn’t know what was going on right now.
“Maybe because you never told her?” His righteous voice mocked me.
“I told her every fucking day.” I shouted back.
“You showed her, you might have even said something like it but you never actually said those three damn words, she told me as much.”
I sat back in my chair racking my brains to think if I had said the exact words. Maybe she was right, I hadn’t said it that way but surely all the other things I’d said had made it obvious. How could she think I didn’t love her after what we’d shared? I had her in my bed every night why would I do that if I didn’t love her?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Freddie said more calmly now as he sank into the chair opposite mine across the desk, “but even showing it, saying all the things you said, sometimes that’s just not enough. She still needed to hear it, to have it spelt out for her. We all do. Why couldn’t you say it brother?”
I cast my gaze to the floor, thinking about the last woman I’d said those words to; my Mother. I hadn’t said it since, and although I hadn’t thought about the coincidence before, it started to dawn on me that maybe I had held back. The last thing I’d said to my Mother was ‘I love you’ and she’d said the exact same back. In some deep subconscious of mine did I see that as a goodbye? Was that why I couldn’t bring myself to say it to Chloe, because I didn’t want to tempt fate and lose her?
I shared my thoughts with Freddie, opening up to him in a way I’d never done before in my life. He didn’t judge me, just sat and listened to my ranting taking it all on board.
“I think you’re right.” He said finally after I had offloaded all of my fears onto him. “I think you love her but your past is weighing you down brother. What you need to do is ask yourself do you want the past to destroy your future too or are you willing to do the one thing you’ve never really done for her…put yourself out there…tell her what she means to you and bloody fight for her.”
I couldn’t lose her. I’d meant what I said that morning I was addicted to her, I couldn’t live without her.
“She’s everything to me.” I admitted, “If I lose her I don’t know how I’ll get over it.”