Forever Mine

My body tenses. “What for? Nothing’s changed, has it?”

“Promise me you will get in touch with her while you’re here. You owe her that.”

I shake my head. Owe her? I don’t owe her anything. It’s her that wouldn’t leave that husband of hers. “How is Steph?”

“She’s—”

“Stop. Don’t tell me anything.” I don’t know what I want to hear most, that she’s happy or unhappy. I can’t decide which would hurt the most. If she’s unhappy, there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it. Even if she left her husband, I live in Australia. If she’s happy, then I’ll know I did the right thing, but it will burn a hole in my chest because I’m not the one making her happy.

“She thought you’d blanked her.” Kelly glares at me with eyes of steel.

My chest tightens as the rope that binds me to Steph pulls tighter around my heart. I never thought she would try to contact me. “I’ll call into work while I’m here.”

She smiles, and that seems to satisfy her.

“How is everyone? How are you?”

“Cal, so much has happened. I’m getting married.” She waves a hand in front of my face, and I catch the glittering rock on her finger.

“Wow. That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

We both walk down the aisle and I grab a punnet of strawberries. “Who’s your fiancé, then? Anyone I know?”

“It’s Ryan,” she says, like I should know the bloke.

“And?” I gesture with my hand for her to elaborate on who the fuck Ryan is.

“You know, the guy I was seeing. You must remember me telling you about him.”

“Amsterdam guy?”

She giggles. “Bingo.”

“He asked you to marry him, then?” She used to talk to Steph about him all the time, but I was too wrapped up in my own world with Steph. I never took much notice.

“Yes, in Amsterdam, would you believe?”

“He took you?”

“After I told him I’d never been, after you and Steph painted such a wonderful picture of it, I thought I wanted to live a little. It was last year, and I had my first spiffy-thing.”

I place my hand on my chest as the laughter takes over. “But you don’t smoke.”

“I know and I couldn’t inhale, so he ordered me a cake, and then I felt ill. It wasn’t for me.” She giggles again.

“I’d love to have seen that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I vomited in the canal. It wasn’t pretty.”

I shake my head and chuckle away to myself.

“Steph couldn’t stop laughing when I told her either.”

I take in a deep breath as her name leaves her lips. “How is everyone else?”

“Sarah and James are dating, and Jerry is going through a divorce. He’s been knocking off Trish in finance.”

“Fuck.”