Before You Say Goodbye

Chapter 4

He possessed her every thought that morning. Her entire body felt invaded by him. Everywhere she went, despite the stench of petrol fumes and food, Autumn could smell Bowie on her skin. It was incredibly distracting and she could think of hardly anything else except when she would see him again. It made her mad. She needed to be sensible. She had not been exaggerating the importance of this meeting. The UK branch of her publishers was in love with her, but the American branch might not be so easily influenced. She needed to focus.

The coffee shop they’d agreed to meet in was swanky, not at all like the places she usually frequented. She felt out of place and was relieved when a man arrived.

His name was Jim. He was tall, with dark hair and a pretty smile.

“I’m pleased to note your strong Instagram following and that you take advantage of social trends,” he said, replying to a text message as he spoke. Autumn tried to tell him her writing was not about taking advantage of anyone, but she could tell he didn’t care, so she stopped talking. He was paying her to write and putting it out there. That was all that mattered.

When she finally had Jim’s full attention, she told him the details of her next project, which he’d asked to see before she showed it to any other publishers. He was a little disheartened to learn it was about chickens and not the stray dog story she had pitched to his assistant on the telephone, but she told him it would likely be better received by fans of her work. Since they were her biggest supporters, it made sense to make them happy. He listened intently, then ordered an egg sandwich to take away with him for lunch. He agreed Autumn should write about what inspired her and gave her permission to submit a first draft. She was thrilled to negotiate a significant advance should her manuscript be accepted, which would give her plenty of time to write her book without worrying about eating too far into her savings. She felt proud of herself. She was powerful.

She checked her phone the second Jim said goodbye, certain she’d have a voicemail from Bowie. There was nothing. Her heart sank. She chided herself. It had only been half a day. Tired, she moved to cross the road to take the subway home, where she planned on snatching a few hours of sleep.

“How did it go?” someone asked from behind her. She recognised Bluebell’s voice. Bluebell, sister of her lover, who had been on her mind, dancing in the periphery, all day. Guilt and shame coursed through her body. She fought hard to hide them from her features as she turned to face her friend. Bluebell looked flustered. She was fishing through her purse. It gave Autumn the ten seconds or so she needed to hide her jitters. “Sorry I’m late,” Bluebell added.

“What are you doing here?” Autumn asked. She was sick with shock. Bluebell, who was still faffing with her bank cards, replied absentmindedly.

“I said I’d meet you here,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

Autumn shook her head. She urged herself to act naturally — to hug her friend and express her delight at her presence like she usually would — but she felt too guilty to manage it. Plus, she was quite sure Bluebell would not want Autumn’s grubby sex hands all over her. She felt awful. In the light and sensibleness of the morning, she was now even more certain that Bluebell would definitely not be OK with her doing what she had done with Bowie, the brother her friend adored, five times in just less than seven hours. She swallowed audibly. Bluebell heard it. She tossed her purse back into her bag, pouting.

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” she said.

Autumn focused very carefully on the inflection in her answer.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because I forced you to come out last night then bailed on you for Adam?”

Autumn had completely forgotten.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not mad.”

Bluebell had actually done her a favour, although she didn’t know it yet.

“Well, I’m sorry.” Bluebell sighed. “It was a shitty thing to do.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Autumn shook her head again. Bluebell smiled sweetly and stepped forward, taking Autumn’s hand and swaying playfully from side to side.

“Well, I feel bad,” she said. “Let me buy you a coffee to apologise? You can tell me about your meeting and I can tell you how annoying Adam is.”

Without waiting for an answer, Bluebell gracefully turned their handholding to arm-linking, leading Autumn in an unfamiliar direction.

“And thank you for understanding,” she added. “I knew you would. You really are a truly great friend.”

* * *

Bluebell was still regaling Autumn with tales of the evening before when their coffee arrived twenty minutes later.

“So, basically, we’re exactly where we were before. I want to sleep with him, but I don’t want him to be my boyfriend, but he only wants to be with me, so he says he won’t sleep with me again until I agree not to sleep with anyone else, which is ridiculous, because I really couldn’t care less who he puts his dick in, and I don’t see why he cares so much about who puts their dick in me, do you know what I mean?”

Autumn did know what she meant, so she nodded. She didn’t mind Bluebell’s rambling. It was a welcome distraction from her own torturous thoughts. Bluebell continued.

“We had amazing sex, then a massive fight, then amazing sex again. I don’t know why he won’t just do what I want him to do. Men are so frustrating.”

Autumn checked her phone. Still nothing.

“How was Marley?” Bluebell asked.

Autumn snapped to attention. “Marley?”

Bluebell’s eyes went wide and she gasped.

“He didn’t hit on you, did he? Was he pestering you? He swore that he sat in the front seat of the cab and you sat in the back.”

Bluebell stopped suddenly and stared straight at Autumn.

“But I know he had a girl home last night,” she continued in a foreboding tone. “I heard him ushering her out this morning. It wasn’t you, was it?”

Autumn was quick to reassure her. “No, it wasn’t me. Marley was a perfect gentleman.”

She felt bad for withholding the truth, but guessed it was imperative she play along with whatever Marley had told Bluebell. Bowie must have asked his brother to lie about how she’d gotten home and who she’d gone with, which meant he wasn’t ready for Bluebell to know about them yet. She was relieved to have an excuse to be secretive besides her own cowardice.

“Oh, good!” Bluebell looked relieved. Autumn tried, unsuccessfully, to push rude images of Bluebell’s other brother out of her mind. “I was worried there for a minute. We’re not supposed to sleep with each other’s friends anymore. Marley screwed every one of my school friends when we were younger and it caused no end of drama. And Bowie, actually, though he was a little bit better behaved. Marginally.”

“You’re sleeping with Adam,” Autumn said pointedly.

“Yeah, exactly,” Bluebell said. “We fight about it all the time. They aren’t really friends, they’re just in the same band, but when it’s convenient for Marley he says they’re best mates, so you would be fair game as far as he was concerned. You’re just his type, too.”

In the interest of acting normal, Autumn forced herself to laugh. It took great effort. She checked her phone. Nothing.

“Did you meet Bowie last night?” Bluebell asked. “Mum said he went in the end.”

Autumn nodded.

“He’s lovely, isn’t he?” Bluebell asked.

Autumn agreed. “Quite lovely.”

“He’s one hundred per cent my favourite brother.” Bluebell grinned. “Don’t tell the others.”

Autumn forced herself to smile. To her relief, Bluebell changed the subject.

* * *

Autumn was angrier with herself than she had ever been with anybody else ever. She seethed as she swigged from a bottle of the beer she’d bought for them to share, glaring at the clock on her mantelpiece. It was midnight. It felt much later, but it was still late enough.

Until ten minutes ago, she had been hoping Bowie might still turn up. She’d finally realised he wasn’t coming. Not only that, he hadn’t even bothered to call and tell her he couldn’t make it. She felt pathetic. If he had been any other man she’d have given up hours ago. She’d have gone out in search of someone else to have fun with, or stayed in to catch up on the sleep she’d lost the night before. For Bowie, Autumn had wasted time sitting at home and stewing. It made her exceedingly angry. Not with Bowie, but with herself.

There was nobody to talk to about it. Bluebell, for obvious reasons, couldn’t know, and any friends she had in England — and there weren’t many — would think it was hilarious if she called to ask them for advice about a man. Her friends had learned at an early age that Autumn was drastically less than sympathetic when they discussed concerns of the heart. She had never been able to empathise with people who caught feelings and felt hurt when somebody rejected them. She’d suggest they find someone who wanted them and move on. She’d been so thoroughly unsupportive that they’d stopped coming to her with their romantic woes. She annoyed them. She didn’t understand because she couldn’t, they concluded. It must be so nice to be Autumn , they’d said. How easy it must be to attract and keep a man when you’re so beautiful. Autumn would blush and lie, telling them her prettiness had nothing to do with it.

They had warned her, too. One day it would happen to her, then she would know how they felt. Well, here she was. Admitting to them that a man she barely knew had made her feel this way was not something her pride would ever let her do. She did, however, resolve to be more understanding if they ever came to her to share their heartache again, though she knew they wouldn’t. They hadn’t come to her for sympathy for years. In fact, she hadn’t heard from either of them in quite a while. She wasn’t even sure they were friends anymore.

As her mind ran wild through the witching hour, Autumn realised she was actually embarrassed. She’d told this man he was beautiful. She’d kissed his scar and chased him when he’d tried to leave. She was becoming increasingly suspicious he had taken her to bed to irritate Bluebell. The thought had been torturing her since her friend’s words at lunchtime.

Also, Bluebell had very suddenly abandoned their coffee date. She’d stepped outside to speak to Marley on the telephone and when she’d returned, she’d told Autumn she had to go. She’d been shaking and frantic, but was gone before Autumn could ask what was wrong. Autumn had texted her a couple of times since to check if she was all right and hadn’t had a response.

Oh, God!

Bluebell definitely knew. Autumn could think of no other reason her friend would ignore her messages. The twins must have told her.

Autumn gave in to her tears. She’d lost the only friend who understood her. The only woman who’d ever treated her like a sister instead of competition. Unlike the friends Autumn had somehow acquired in childhood, Bluebell had never made her feel like she had to tone herself down. In fact, Bluebell encouraged her to be her very best self. She was a staunch advocate of women supporting women. Autumn had known and loved that about her since the day they had met.

“Why do men expect us to pretend we don’t know we’re beautiful?” she’d asked Autumn that very morning. Autumn had laughed, not sure what to say. “You’re watching a movie and the leading lady is beautiful. I mean, jaw-droppingly stunning. Incredible to levels that are completely unattainable by most mere mortal women. Then they get her on camera and ask her to play a woman who everyone else in the world can clearly see is perfect, but she’s not supposed to know it herself. It’s such a hackneyed narrative in movies and songs. Everyone wants a beautiful girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful. It’s all about insecurity. Men don’t want their beautiful woman to know that she’s beautiful because then she might leave. It’s fucking bullshit. If someone tells me they think I’m beautiful, I tell them that I think so too. You’d be surprised by how many men that enrages. Oh, I could go on about this for ages.”

Autumn was sure she would have if she hadn’t had to rush off. Now, Autumn might never get to listen to Bluebell verbalise the way she herself thought and felt ever again.

She sighed, tired of herself. This was exactly why she never let people in. It was too much hard work, too much heartbreak. She’d grown attached to these two people in an exceedingly short space of time and they had hurt her. She shook her head and scolded herself, trying to remind herself she was fine before and would be fine again.

“Stop it. You loser.”

She forced herself to go to bed.

* * *

Autumn barely slept and, without sexual endorphins to wake her up, getting out of bed was a real effort. She felt groggy and disgusting. She wasn’t sure what time she’d eventually fallen asleep, but she knew she’d spent several hours crying into her pillow before eventually succumbing. She was embarrassed about that, but trying, with real effort, to give herself a break. She had always been honest with herself about the way she was feeling and didn’t think she should be exceptionally cruel to herself because of the silly way her heart had behaved and how it had left her reeling. She should let herself cry if she needed to. It wasn’t as though she was being unnecessarily dramatic. She had good cause to be upset — she felt utterly alone. She’d thought those days were over. She wanted a hug, which was most unusual. It was almost torturous enough a feeling to wish she had never opened up in the first place, to Bluebell or to Bowie. Before she had known either of them existed, she’d been fine. Now, it seemed she was the same as most other people — her happiness relied at least a little bit on the way people treated her.

She pulled on a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt and a pair of pumps. She hadn’t had chance to eat much since the piece of cake she’d shared with Bowie and she was starving. She decided to head to a café, grab herself a coffee and a sandwich, and sit on a window seat and write. Today was about self-care and this was her favourite thing to do. She knew it would make her feel better.

Getting there took every ounce of energy she had and felt like an extreme effort, but she was feeling much better by lunchtime. She’d spent several hours consumed by writing her second book. Intricate sentences flowed freely from her fingertips and she hardly thought of anything except the world she was creating, seemingly from nowhere. She paused only to marvel at the gift she had been given and how much it had done to help her. She’d been using it to escape reality since she had been a child, creating the most wonderful friends for herself, and, as she did, forgetting the pain that came with living in the real world. It had helped her ignore how little she was loved. It had helped her pretend she was not alone.

She paused in the early afternoon to write a poem, something she had not done in a while. Writing novels came easily to Autumn, no matter what mood she was in, but poems were different. She had to be feeling very strongly about something to pull words together in a way that made sense as poetry. She switched from writing on her laptop to a trusty pen and paper and, without much thought, wrote down the way she was feeling. She re-read it, crossed a few things out, then re-read it again.

You’ll never be mine outside of my mind and that’s all right with me.

I long too strongly to own your gaze.

I’m quite sure that you’re sweeter than a spring blue sky, but skies split sometimes,

and I already know I couldn’t weather the thunder.

If you were to love me with any less strength than that of a raging sea, it would destroy me.

So stay in my head, where I’m safe from your wide-eyed indifference.

Live in my imagination.

Save me the bitterness of your disinterest.

And I’ll plead with a star,

to keep the wonder of your universe,

far from me.

My perfect friend, my fanciful lover, may we never meet again beyond fantasy.

It needed work, but she was quite happy with what she had written. Apparently she was as inspired by heartbreak as everybody else seemed to be.

She didn’t think to check her phone in the morning or early afternoon, but glanced at it at around three o’clock. There was still nothing from Bluebell. This was the longest she’d gone without speaking to her friend. She felt her stomach twist with worry and stared, despondently, around the café. She could try to ignore it, but the real world was there: big, empty and waiting for her.

She felt, very suddenly, as though she needed sleep.

* * *

Autumn was so distracted by exhaustion she almost missed the note tied to the railing at the bottom of her staircase. She was on the third step when she spotted it, fluttering hopefully in the ever-present hallway draught. As she was untying it, her neighbour and landlord, Walter, emerged from his flat. He feigned surprise to see her but had, quite obviously, been waiting for her.

“A young man knocked on my door earlier and asked me for a pen,” he said.

“Oh,” Autumn said. “Thanks.”

She untied the note and guarded it with her hand, stepping pointedly up onto the first step. Walter was nosy enough to ask her what it said if she read it in front of him. It had to be from Bowie. Anyone else would have texted her. She started to climb.

“I’ve read it.” Walter blurted out the words.

She stopped, turned, and stared at him.

“I’m sorry.” He grinned. “I couldn’t help myself. I don’t know why he didn’t put it under your door.”

She was horrified.

“Don’t ever read my post again, Walter.”

She was also amused and he could tell. He laughed.

“He was a nice boy,” he said. “Better than those other boys you bring back here sometimes. He talked to me for ages. Mainly about you. I told him stuff.”

“Oh God.” Autumn whined, rubbing her free hand over her face.

“Only good stuff. He likes you — I can tell. He wanted to know all about you.”

Walter would have plenty to tell him, too. He and Autumn had spent a lot of time together since she had arrived. Despite his blabbermouth and how often he moaned about the news, she couldn’t bring herself to dislike him. Walter was good-natured and funny. He’d spent thirty years of his life working as a security guard and then inherited a fortune from his late cousin. He had never been married, but spent thirty-five years taking care of his best friend’s widow, Margaret. She’d passed away only eighteen months before. Walter had waited until then to admit to himself that he had always loved her. Now, he spent his days regretting the things he’d never said. Autumn wanted to write that story one day. She was waiting for the right time to ask his permission.

Though she had moved away from her little town to live in London, Autumn had been entirely unprepared for how big New York City was. She had not realised just how tiny she would feel when surrounded by permanent crowding and the tallest buildings she had ever seen. There were barely any streets that didn’t hum with activity all through the day and night. No matter where she was, she always felt crammed in, the way one might feel even in the quietest corner of a busy nightclub. She had been hugely overwhelmed by it at first, but was slowly getting used to the atmosphere here.

Still, she knew this was not her forever home. She’d been longing for a cottage with a vegetable patch for as long as she could remember. City life was necessary for her right now, but she planned to settle down somewhere with less grey and more green one day.

Walter, who was still loitering, had been born and bred in New York. He loved it here and didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave. Despite an issue with his leg that made it difficult for him to climb the stairs to his apartment, he refused to move. Autumn expressed her concerns about his health and safety pretty much every time she saw him — if there was a fire he’d have absolutely no chance of making it out of the building — but he’d insisted he would never leave his home, no matter how difficult or dangerous things became. He would starve and die up there first, he’d said. She’d argued with him a lot about it at first, but eventually realised there was no point. Walter’s opinions were as strong as his American accent. He would not be moved.

They’d had many heated debates, but Autumn continued to visit Walter, even if only for a few minutes, most afternoons. They settled eventually into talking mainly about things they agreed on. He had been good company as she’d settled in. For a while, he had been her only friend for thousands of miles.

She admired him now, his eyes sparkling with nosiness, and resolved to forgive him. He lived through her experiences.

“Thanks, Walter,” she said.

“Be nice to him, Autumn.”

He turned and went back inside. If only it were that simple, she thought, as she opened the note on the staircase.

I’ll come back later. I can explain. Bowie.

Her body flooded with the kind of anxiety-inducing dread she’d felt often in England, but hadn’t experienced since she’d moved to New York. Her heart quickened, her chest hurt and she felt like she couldn’t suck in enough oxygen. She didn’t want to see him. Sleeping with him had been the wrong thing to do. She might have lost a friend over it. Perhaps if she just never saw him again, she could go back to life before him. When she and Bluebell had been firm friends, in constant contact, when she had known who she was and what she wanted, and all had been right with the world. She had no desire to be around a man who made her feel so vulnerable. She’d never allowed anyone to have such control over her.

Panicking a little bit, she let herself in, tossed Bowie’s note in the bin and picked up the phone to call a man she’d been ignoring for a fortnight. They’d met in a bookshop and exchanged numbers, but she had been too busy having fun with Bluebell and meeting other people to return his calls. She asked him to dinner. Despite the short notice, he agreed to meet her in an hour.

Autumn didn’t feel remotely like going out, but she didn’t know how else to avoid Bowie. She thought about replacing the note he’d left her with another asking him to leave her alone, but suspected he’d ignore it. If he started banging on the door, Walter would come out and tell him she was inside. She couldn’t be bothered with the drama. It was a better idea to make sure she was unavailable until he got the hint and left her alone. She’d need a distraction in the form of a man to pull that off. She hoped that this one was handsome. She couldn’t remember what he looked like and when she tried, she only saw Bowie.

She put on a flowery mini-dress and blazer, brogues, and oversized earrings. Just before she left, she kicked the brogues off, slipping her feet into a pair of plain black heels, instead. She very rarely wore them, but they made her feel sexier, and she really wanted to feel good.

She had just set off down the first set of steps when she ran into Bowie. He was almost at the top, and looked rather dramatically breathless. They froze, each with one foot in front of the other, so that it might look to anyone who saw them as though they were intending to collide into one mass. He planted his gaze on hers.

“Autumn,” he said.

He said her name as though he could still taste her on his tongue. Her attraction to him overwhelmed her. In a conscious effort to put a barrier between them, she clutched her bag to her chest.

“I’m going out,” she said. Bowie made no effort to hide his disappointment. He stared at the carpet for a moment, then tentatively raised his gaze to look at her again. She knew he’d taken those few seconds to work through all possibilities, and willed him not to ask her to elaborate.

“Date?” he asked her cautiously. She nodded. She was acting much colder than she’d meant to. She heard his breath catch in his throat and willed herself to give him nothing but stiff posture and an expressionless face, but her pride was getting in the way. She waited for him to say something, but he was silent.

“I couldn’t let you know because I don’t have your number and you didn’t call when you said you would,” she said, a little snippily. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. His shoulders slumped low and he sighed. He had given up. Disheartened by his lack of fight, she started down the stairs again.

She hoped he might follow her, but he didn’t.

* * *

Autumn spent the next few hours trying to focus on what the handsome man in front of her was saying, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t because he wasn’t interesting — he was a humanitarian aid worker and had spent most of their evening together telling her about the most dangerous parts of the world. Autumn, who was not well-travelled, would usually be enthralled, but tonight she was too consumed by her lingering feelings for Bowie to care even a little bit about what Anthony had to say.

Seeing Bowie again had reminded Autumn that he wore his heart on his sleeve. He was not the type of person to hide how he felt about a person or a situation — his sister was the same. There was probably a perfectly valid reason he couldn’t see her last night, but Autumn had overreacted and made herself look like a fool. Her head had shoved her heart aside. She had been spiteful to him and that didn’t sit well with her at all. She was unpleasant to men only when they deserved it, but Bowie didn’t, he was kind and good. She was ashamed of herself.

She knew that the right thing to do was to be honest about everything. She should tell this lovely man her mind was on someone else. She should leave the restaurant, call Bluebell, explain what had happened, apologise for breaking their unspoken code of friendship, and ask for a way to contact her brother, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do that yet because she was afraid. Everything had gone too far. Bluebell adored Bowie, and Autumn would be in trouble not only for sleeping with him, but for upsetting him afterwards, too.

When the waitress asked them if they wanted coffee or desserts, Autumn politely declined. A coffee forfeit on a date like this would ordinarily occur in order to fast-track the inevitable: coffee and sex at her place. If it wasn’t for Bowie and the way she felt about him, she’d have taken Anthony home with her. He was well-dressed, intelligent and articulate. He had beautiful brown eyes and greying hair. There was a protective quality about him she liked. But she couldn’t wait to get away and she certainly couldn’t bear the thought of his hands on her.

“I have to go, actually,” she said. He seemed disappointed.

“Oh. OK. We’ll pay, then, please.”

The waitress smiled sweetly and nodded. She had been batting her eyelashes at Anthony all evening. Autumn couldn’t say she blamed her. He really was exceptionally handsome. In spite of her own lack of interest, she felt lucky to have had his attention, and a little sad she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to receive it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a really early meeting tomorrow, and—”

“It’s fine.” Anthony smiled. “You’re not into it. Don’t worry. It happens.”

His gentle words made Autumn feel guilty, but when Anthony hugged her goodbye a few moments later, he held on to her for longer than was necessary, and his hand was a little too close to her backside.

Perhaps he was not such a nice guy after all.

* * *

Autumn insisted she could flag her own taxi, waved goodbye to Anthony, then sheltered in the restaurant doorway to think seriously about what she should do next. She absently pulled out her mobile phone, contemplating calling Bluebell to come clean. She wanted to speak to Bowie and that was the only way she could get hold of him. She pressed the button that lit up the screen and recoiled in surprise. She had six missed calls from her friend. Autumn panicked. Bluebell never did this. She hated talking on the telephone and would absolutely choose to send a text message unless she had no choice. Something was wrong. With shaking hands, Autumn called her back, willing her to pick up. When she did, she didn’t even say hello.

“Where are you?”

Bluebell sounded frustrated.

“I’ve been out for dinner. Is everything OK?”

“I’m at your apartment with Bowie. Can you come straight here?”