At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

‘Nell.’ He sounded painfully enthusiastic. ‘I’m so glad you called. You got my text? I knew you’d come around.’

‘Joel.’ I stopped him before he said anything else that would shortly come back to bite him in the ass. ‘Yes, I got your text, but I’m not calling for the reason you think I am.’

‘Oh, are you all right? Did something happen?’ His tone was markedly more downtrodden.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Not completely true but not a lie either. ‘I’m in Ireland actually.’

I could almost hear the angry repositioning of the phone against his ear to check that he’d heard that correctly. ‘Ireland? Wha— erm, what are you doing there?’

‘I’ve come over to meet Charlie’s parents.’ I left out the part about Abi’s memorial.

He exhaled loudly, shakily. ‘Moving a bit fast, isn’t it?’

‘Look, Joel,’ I said. ‘I’m calling because … well, because what we’ve been doing for the past six months is wrong and stupid and something that we should have known would only end painfully for the both of us.’

‘That’s not how I saw it. I saw it as us trying again to fix something that we both know is best for us.’ I heard his purposeful pacing through the phoneline. He always paced when he got angry.

‘I’m so very sorry for my part in keeping open the wound that we should have let heal a long time ago, but I’m doing now what I should have done when all of this started and saying no.’

‘Nell, think about this for a minute.’

‘No,’ I said, pressure building behind my eyes.

‘You know what’s going to happen with this Charlie person, don’t you? Men like that are all the same.’

‘Men like what?’ I spat.

‘The good-looking, charming, cocky sort, that’s who. He’ll be all over you while you’re new and interesting. It’ll even make him feel good about himself, make him feel more wholesome because you’re grounded and funny and normal. But as soon as things calm down, he’ll realise that he’s bored with you and go straight back to dating hot girls. Ones who eat nothing but kale and wear suspenders for him.’

I physically flinched at his words and held a hand to my chest. My mind was whipped back to something that had happened in our third year as a couple. We were still sleeping together at this point but things had become a little stale. He’d brought me some sexy underwear for my birthday and asked me to try it on for him. I’d stood there in the bedroom, looking at myself in the mirror and feeling ridiculous, cheap. I knew it was empowering for some women to dress this way, but not for me. I felt like I was being forced to become the porn star that every millennial boy grew up thinking girls were.

I took it straight off again and instead, walked out there in my normal underwear. He’d thrown a fit, yelling at me about how expensive it had been and how I didn’t really love him because I wouldn’t wear what he’d bought. That, I think now, was the beginning of the end. But I stayed for so long after that. Why had I wasted all of that time?

‘Well, at least Charlie can bring himself to touch me. He can hold a conversation about something that isn’t self-serving and he even cares about how I feel. I didn’t even know men could be like him. But then I don’t have much experience with men, do I?’

He heaved a sigh and a growl escaped the back of his throat. ‘You know what? You’re tired, Nell. No doubt you got stressed during the flight and it’s left you confused. We’ll talk when you’re back.’

I opened my mouth to say that I would rather rip off all of my toenails, right here on this immaculately mown grass, than ever see his face again, but the line went dead. A few tears escaped my eyes and trickled down my cheeks as I tossed my phone onto the lawn and held my face in my hands.

You tell each other, while you’re in a relationship, that you’re best friends. That even if you should ever split up, you’ll still talk. But is that even possible when the ego is so easily bruised? It is funny how the smallest change in your relationship status can open doors to personality traits that you never knew existed within the person you thought you knew inside out. One moment, hating them seems about as likely as Dwayne Johnson becoming prima ballerina for The Royal Ballet and then suddenly, they’re talking differently, acting like someone you never thought they would be and the only cause for this is a case of injured pride.

I heard the door to the house slam shut, the argument clearly over with now.

‘Nell? What’s wrong?’ I heard Charlie’s voice nearby and the bitter, empty feeling inside me eased a little. I withdrew my hands from my face, wiping tears away as I did, and found him crouching on the grass in front of me.

‘I spoke to Joel,’ I replied, my voice a little more fragile than I wished it was.

‘Was he a bastard?’

‘He was.’

‘What did he say?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing with an anger I hadn’t seen in him yet.

‘Oh, nothing much. Just that you’re going to get bored of me eventually and go back to the hot girls you’re accustomed to. That I’m basically nothing without him and won’t survive out here in the big world by myself.’

‘Fecker,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘D’ya want me to hit him? Because I will, if it’s what yer want. Or we could go together, each have a swing at him?’

I smiled and sadly chuckled through my words. ‘No, I don’t want you to hit him.’ I quickly checked that there was no one around to see, raised my hand to his face and stroked my thumb gently over his cheek, which was still