I barge through the people chatting and smiling and laughing in the living room until I’m out of the house and in the rain, and by the time I reach my car I’m soaked and shivering. I turn the engine on but I just end up sitting in my car for twenty minutes, maybe because I’m too scared to drive when I can still hear thunder in the distance, or maybe because I’m hoping Charlie’s going to run out the house and open the door and say that everything he’d said was a drunken mistake. But he doesn’t. So I just sit there.

Three

THREE

CHARLIE

I wake up because the sun is in my eyes – I forgot to close my curtains last night. I forgot to do a lot of things last night. Like be a decent human being.

I fumble for my phone before realising it’s still in my back pocket, and I’m still in my clothes. It’s quarter past ten in the morning. No texts, no Facebook messages, nothing. I don’t want to get out of bed to change. I don’t want to do anything.

Last night…

What was I even thinking?

The Elle and Tao thing freaked me out. That after all this time, they’d just be, like, ‘Cool. Yeah. We’re breaking up. Oh well.’

After two years. Didn’t they… didn’t they love each other?

No. Clearly not. They were bored.

And I guess I started to think, ‘What if Nick’s bored?’

We don’t do many exciting things. We just sit around at each other’s houses.

I’m pretty boring as a person.

So, I guess I wanted to test him, to check whether he wanted to break up, but I couldn’t even say it. I couldn’t even say it properly.

Stupid.

I’m stupid.

I’m a fucking stupid idiot.

I’d rather not have known. I’d rather have just carried on in blissful ignorance of what he thought, rather than this absolute mess. Now I have no idea what he’s thinking. Is he just angry at me, or does he actually want to break up?

The thought of texting him to find out makes me feel physically ill.

We’ve argued before, but nothing quite as bad as this. We’ve never woken up still angry at each other. I haven’t woken up feeling this shit in a long time, hungover and wanting to be sick and wanting to cry and that familiar emptiness I thought I’d gotten rid of a long time ago. That feeling that makes me want to stay in bed and never get up again.