He says nothing.

“You can’t be angry at me if you can’t even tell me what I’m doing wrong!”

He makes a groaning noise and shakes his head in his hands.

“Fucking hell,” I say, sitting down heavily on the sofa opposite. “Well I don’t fucking know what to do then.”

“Stop shouting at me,” he mumbles from behind his hands.

“I’m not shouting at you!”

“You are.”

We sit in silence for a minute until a particularly loud thunder crash makes me jump. Charlie notices and raises his head.

“You can break up with me if you want,” he says.

It takes a few seconds to process that.

“What?” I say. I stand up again and feel myself really getting angry now. What is he talking about? Where the hell has this come from? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you… want a fresh start, or… something… if you’re bored…” His eyes are unfocused again, his words slurring. Lightning flashes overhead, brightening the room. Why is he saying these things?

“What? Is that what you want?” I huff out a laugh. This can’t be happening. “You want us to break up. Is that it?”

“I just… want you to be… happy…”

“Bullshit,” I spit out, my voice definitely too loud now.

“Elle and Tao are breaking up…”

“What, so we need to break up too? You’re not even going to try to stay in a relationship with me?” Part of me wants to talk this out rationally, but most of me is just pure anger and I don’t even know why. I think I’m just tired of all this. Tired of all this bullshit and all this university talk and remembering that I’ve only got a few months left with Charlie…

“Why are you saying these things, Charlie? If you’re trying to break up with me, just fucking spit it out.”

But I don’t want him to. I feel like I’m about to be sick.

Charlie just shakes his head and stares blankly at the space next to me.

“Is that why you’ve been acting like this?” I say. “You want to break up with me, but you’re not even fucking brave enough to say it? You want to force me to break up with you instead?”

He’s crying again now, his head shaking from side to side and his knees bobbing up and down. But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t deny it.

“Well fuck you then,” I say, and that’s when I realise that I’m crying too. God, how long’s it been since that happened?