FIFTEEN - WILL

IT’S STRANGE NOW TO THINK back. I’d been off work for ages. The place was coping fine, Robert was doing everything I needed. I’d turned off all of my phones. I wasn’t taking any calls.

What I was doing was nothing. I was sitting at home and feeling utterly miserable. Was this the price of falling in love? If it was then there was no wonder the guys at the club preferred fucking around.

Jen had broken me. I’d gone from bored and empty to full of emotions and I hated it. I just wanted to feel nothing again.

I wanted to stay at home and lock the doors and never speak to anyone but I had to go out. Today was the day of the court case.

Lionel had of course sued me for assault and today was the day I had to stand up in court and tell the world why I’d punched an upstanding citizen in the stomach. He was suing for a million for physical and mental distress. I guessed that meant the friendship was definitely over.

I couldn’t believe his audacity. I’d found him about to do God knows what to Jen and he had the balls to turn around and sue me?

I shaved for the first time in weeks. There hadn’t seemed any point before.

I had only tried to get in touch with her once. Her mother had coldly informed me not to call again. I took the hint.

I needed to shut down my emotions. I needed to lock it all away, get back to being the person I was. I didn’t need her. I could survive just fine.

The pain in my heart said otherwise, a constant companion that was still there even as I walked into the courtroom that morning.

Seeing Lionel brought it all flooding back, all the memories I’d been working so hard to suppress. He’d done this. If he hadn’t made that bullshit bet with me, I wouldn’t have been feeling like the most worthless human being on the planet. I didn’t have Jen therefore I didn’t have anything.

It dragged on for most of the day but in the end the conclusion was as short as it was satisfying.

“He’s asking for one million,” the judge said, bringing my attention back to the case as I got distracted yet again. “What is your final response?”

“I’ll write a cheque for two million if you’ll let me hit him again.”

“Mr Bailey, I’m afraid that is not how the justice system works in this country, even if you are a billionaire.”

I pulled out my chequebook and wrote out an amount. I held it out towards Lionel’s lawyer. Lionel shoved past him and marched over, snatching it from my hand while grinning broadly. “Pleasure doing business with you.” He glanced down. “Hang on, this says two million.”

He looked up in time to see my fist connecting with his chin.

I left the courtroom a few minutes later to the sound of the judge chuckling and Lionel yelling after me that he was going to take me for everything I had. Good luck, I thought as I had nothing at all anymore.

“That was funny,” a voice said and I looked up to see a woman standing on the steps outside. It wasn’t just any woman. It was Jen.

The weight around my heart lifted into the air and vanished in an instant, I felt so light I thought I might take off.

“Jen?” I asked, not sure if it was a mirage. “Is that you?”

She nodded slowly. “Hello, Will. I heard you were in court today, thought I might come along and watch.”

“Did you now?”

She looked guilty. She also looked so hot, I wanted her more than anything. “I was going to get a drink, want to join me?”

“I guess.”

She walked next to me as we crossed the street to the nearest bar. She didn’t say anything until we were sitting in a booth together, two glasses of poor quality wine on the table between us.

“How’ve you been?” I asked.

“Not great,” she replied. “You?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

“Listen, Will, I need to know something and I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?”

I nodded, gulping as my heart started to pound in my chest. What was she going to ask me?

“Did you sleep with me to win a bet?”

“No. I…I had no idea who I was ringing and when I met you in person, I couldn’t go through with it but then…”

“But then what?”

“But then I fell for you.”

“You…fell for me?”

“I fell head over heels for you and I couldn’t stop myself. I’m so sorry, Jen.”

She held up a hand to silence me. “I don’t want apologies, Will. I want you to step up and be a man. Grow a beard, like model trains, that sort of thing.”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

“Never mind.”

There was a half smile on her face and the sight made my cock twitch. She looked so beautiful, even more so than I remembered.

“I had a beard this morning as it happens.”

“What I mean is if you want to give this another shot, I think it might be worth a try.”

“I do want to and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I realised something important and I never got chance to tell you before you left.”

“What’s that?”

“That I love you, Jen, with my heart and soul and everything that matters, I love you.”

A tear ran down her cheek and she leaned over the table, sliding her hands into mine. “I love you too.”

The wine glasses crashed to the floor as I bumped around the table to throw my arms around her. She pressed herself into my chest and then we kissed.

It was the best kiss I’d ever had because it spoke of three things at once, hope for the future, love for each other, and forgiveness for the past.

“We take it slowly,” she said when we parted. “Deal?”

“Deal. Don’t worry, I will spend the rest of my life proving to you how much you matter to me. If you want, I’ll even try liking model trains.”

“Then you’ll have a lot to talk about when you meet my Dad.”

She was talking about meeting her parents. It might have been a throwaway comment but it was one that showed me things were going to be all right. I wasn’t going to fuck up again. I might have been a bad person but I wasn’t going to be one anymore. I was going to dedicate myself to her, to us.

We sat together, the smell of spilled wine strong in the air. Outside the bar, the noise of traffic faded away. All I could hear was her soft breathing as she remained by my side. I planned on having her by my side for the rest of my days and every single one of those days would see me proving to her just how much she meant to me.