“It means”—I huff—“that you bury your head in the sand, and that your eyeball is bigger than your fucking brain.”
“Listen.” He sneers, and the rain really begins to pour down now, bouncing up from the sidewalk and hitting us as we stand under the awning. It’s loud, and we have to yell to hear each other. “Okay, I asked you to come back to me. That doesn’t make me fucking stupid.”
“No. What makes you stupid is the fact that you think I would come back to you like this.”
He frowns and opens his mouth to say something, and then shuts it again. I’ve got him.
I book my Uber, and put my phone back in my handbag.
“What do you want from me?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“So how do we fix this?”
“I don’t want to fix this.”
He puts his hands on his hips. “I’m one minute away from dragging you back into the fucking bar, Eliza. Tell me how to fucking fix this?” He growls in frustration.
“I’m not looking for a boyfriend, Nathan. You can be my friend but that’s it, and with your track record, I’m not even sure I want you as that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ve been in a city where I know nobody for six months, and you haven’t fucking checked on me once. You’re a shitty friend, that’s what.”
He clenches his jaw as he glares at me.
“But that’s okay. I know you were busy.” I flick my hair over my collar as I stare straight ahead. I’m going for an Oscar here. I’m being overdramatic but to hell with it. He deserves it.
“Meaning what?”
My blood pressure rises to boiling point. “Let’s just say that your last six months look very different from mine.”
“Okay, right.” He throws his hands up in frustration. “So, let’s put each other through another six months of hell then, shall we? Because proving a fucking point is so much more important than being happy.” He yells as he loses control of himself.
I roll my eyes. “Go away.”
“I am away. I’ve flown all this way to see you and you won’t even talk to me.”
“And there it is again.” I smile to myself with a shake of my head. “Unfucking believable.”
“What?” he yells. “What’s that supposed to fucking mean?”
“It’s all about you, Nathan. Everything is all about you. For once…,” I yell, “just fucking once, can you put my wishes before your own?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to be friends. Listen to me when I speak. I can’t say it any clearer than that. I want to be friends.”
“I don’t want you as a fucking friend, Eliza. I want you as my wife!” he shouts.
What?
He steps back as if shocked that he just said that out loud.
“Well, that’s not happening,” I say quietly. “Because at the moment, I only want a friend. Having you as a husband is the very last thing on my mind.”
His eyes hold mine.