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“You know, it’s your fault too. If you didn’t want this, you should have said so.” It was a shitty thing to say. I cringed hearing myself.
“Get out,” he whispered from under the covers.
“Okay.” I hadn’t meant to say it so harshly, but I was angry.
“Get the fuck out!” he yelled.
So I did. Walked out his front door and shut it behind me. Then I got my key out of the bag and dropped it through the letterbox.
And regretted it immediately.
Pulling my new phone from my pocket, I pulled up my new best friend the Uber app and logged in—at least I knew how to do that. I punched in my parents’ address.
Yeah. That would cost me a cool five hundred quid. I’d paid less for a flight across the country.
Last week, I’d have just called for one of the drivers that management kept on a retainer, but we’d blown that now. All of it. No more Lauren. No handy little monthly deposits into my bank account. Did I even have a job anymore? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t understand half of what was happening right now.
And I once again owned a house I would never set foot in because I’d bought it for us. For Reuben and me.
For a future that had just been another of my stupid ideas.
Spoilt.
Stupid.
All true.
I stood there, outside his house, hoping he’d calm down enough to realise I was still there, take me back inside, make me a cup of tea. Hug me.
He didn’t.
My phone pinged. A driver was on his way.
Fuck.
It wasn’t long before the car pulled up. I got in the back, nodded at the driver, who seemed to sense my unwillingness to chat.
“Just drive,” I snapped at him for no reason. I was being a twat, but I’d lost the will not to be, so I curled up into a ball, and surprisingly, I slept.
The next thing I knew we were stopped at a motorway service station. The driver muttered something about needing a piss and got out, leaving me in the car. I needed a piss too, but I didn’t dare, not after what happened at McDonald’s. I could hold it.
The radio was tuned to a station in a foreign language, and it was soothing in a way, listening to words I didn’t understand. Ha, what was new? All the legal stuff we’d been through recently might as well have been in a foreign language for all the sense it made to me.
My bladder had other ideas about holding on until I reached my parents’. Ah, what the hell. It was dark anyway. There would be cameras, but I didn’t care. I skulked out of the car, left the door open, and brazenly pissed on the ground.
Whatever.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell the driver to turn around and take me back home.
Home. I didn’t have one.
Wiping a stupid tear from my face, I picked up my phone and opened my messages.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
It was way past midnight when I stumbled out onto my parents’ drive, slamming the car door shut like the entitled wanker I was.