The Road Trip: The heart-warming new novel from the author of The Flatshare and The Switch by Beth O'Leary (books to read now TXT) 📕

my back on interchangeable beaches and failing to write, failing to think, failing to anything. I left her, here, looking like this: astonishingly beautiful, fay-like, perfection in miniature.

Her dress shows every curve. The desire hits me a few seconds after the envy, and as I watch her laugh, the lights catching the sheen of make-up on her cheekbones, I feel devastatingly out of her league. What kind of moron dosses around in Bali when he could be here with a woman like that? How could I be so stupid? Whatever misery has been gripping me over the past few months – the thick black dread, waiting for me every morning when I woke – feels more ridiculous than ever now that it’s cleared and I’m here, watching her. What was I doing?

‘I did warn you,’ Deb says, at my shoulder.

I messaged Deb last week to say I wanted to surprise Addie on Fireworks Night – she’d mentioned that she and Deb were excited for a night out. Well, it’ll definitely surprise her, Deb said. I think she’s pretty much given up on you ever coming home, to be honest.

‘I’m such a tit,’ I say, rubbing my face. ‘I thought . . .’

‘She’d wait for you for ever?’

‘She’s still waiting, right?’ I say, watching worriedly. ‘She’s not . . . seeing someone else?’

We’ve never talked about being exclusive. We fast-forwarded past that, right through to I love you – I assumed it was unnecessary. Now I’m recapping every Skype call, scanning through every word I can remember for a male name, that hot lick of jealousy working its way down my spine.

‘Of course she’s not seeing someone else.’ Deb folds her arms. ‘What were you doing?’

Hiding. Running away. Sinking. Drowning.

‘Trying to figure things out,’ I say weakly. ‘I thought . . . Addie said to come home to her when I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And then I kept staying, and kept not figuring it out, and coming home felt even, you know, even harder.’

Deb frowns. ‘That wasn’t very sensible.’

‘Yeah. I’m getting that.’

The man beside Addie ducks his head to speak to her and I want to whimper.

‘Can’t we tell her I’m here now? Please?’

Deb looks at me in an evaluating sort of way.

‘Do you really love her?’

‘I really do.’

‘Then why did you stay away for so long?’

I grind my teeth in frustration. I can’t tell her about the dread, the lethargy, the terror, and even if I could bring myself to share the shame of that, deep down I don’t believe it’s an excuse. That thick dread has hit me before, once, when I was a teenager, and back then my father made it very clear that it was nothing but weakness.

‘I don’t know. OK? I don’t know. Marcus kept saying I should stay, and my dad was on at me to come back and start work at his business, and Addie has this whole new life here and I wasn’t sure . . . how I’d fit in it.’

‘So you opted out?’

‘So I waited. Until I was, you know, the man she’d want.’

Deb looks me up and down. ‘And you’re that now?’

I sag. ‘Well, not really, no.’

‘No. You look pretty much the same, aside from the tan.’

‘Please, Deb,’ I beg, as Addie laughs again, lifting a hand to her hair to smooth it back. ‘I messed up. Let me fix it.’

‘All right,’ Deb says. ‘Fine. But don’t keep messing up, will you? You made her happy for a few days in France, I’ll give you that – but since then you’ve made her bloody miserable. Now go hide and I’ll lure her back to our table with alcohol so you can surprise her. If you’re going to do this, you had better do it properly. I want to see my sister smiling again.’

Addie

‘Addie,’ he says.

We’re at the table, pouring out cava from the bottle Deb conjured up from somewhere. I look at my sister before I turn around. She grins at me. She knew he was coming.

‘I missed that happy face, Ads,’ she says, as I turn in my seat, already beaming, and look at Dylan.

He’s swept me up out of my chair before I can say anything.

‘Christ,’ he says, ‘Addie Gilbert, do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?’

I mean, I don’t, really. He said I miss you plenty on Skype, but he always sounded so flat. If he missed me, why didn’t he come back? But the thought evaporates the moment he presses his lips to mine. This is my Dylan. A flop of brown hair, startling green eyes. Ridiculous as it sounds, he seems to smell of sunshine and vineyards even here in this sticky club. We kiss for so long everything melts away, music pounding around us. We break apart eventually, and he laughs, smoothing his thumbs across my cheekbones.

‘I’m so sorry I took so long to come home. I’m a fool. Forgive me?’

He apologises so easily. I don’t know any other guys who do that. It’s like he’s not got that male ego thing, the pride that’s always getting wounded. I love that about him. But . . . I’m not sure it fixes things. Can you get rid of a mistake with one easy apology like that?

‘Oh, God, Addie, please,’ he says, pressing his lips to mine again. ‘Don’t be angry with me. I can’t stand it.’

‘Where’s Marcus?’ I ask.

Dylan looks surprised by the question – it surprised me a bit too. ‘Home,’ he says. ‘In Hampshire. I told him I wanted to come straight here to see you, so he went back to stay with his dad.’

I nuzzle into Dylan’s chest as my mind whirs. As the months have gone by, I’ve wondered about Marcus. Whether he’s the reason Dylan didn’t come home sooner. I can’t imagine he was in any rush to get Dylan back to me.

‘And . . . you’re here now?’ I ask him.

‘I’m here now. For good. In full knowledge that I should