Page 48 of The Breakup Bookshop

I shiver, gazing out at sea, and feel his cheek close to mine. As I turn, I realize he is wrapping the tartan blanket around my shoulders. I look up into his eyes. He gazes back at me, his lips parted slightly.

He’s going to kiss me. Or maybe I’m going to kiss him, I’m not sure which. I haven’t kissed anyone other than Seb in years. Will it be a full-on snog, like Jen and Evan, around the back of our shops? Will I melt into him, as easily as I did with Seb on our first kiss? This is crazy. I thought Rory hated me, and now here he is, staring at me, moving closer to my lips. It’s this place. Being somewhere new, on the water, far away from everyone.

As the thoughts whizz through my head, a child screams at the top of his lungs, ‘I wanna swim with the dolphins!’

Rory’s gaze is immediately torn away from mine as the young boy bounces at our feet, snot flying from his nose. His mother comes hurtling up the stairs and grabs hold of him by the shoulders.

‘You do not run away from Mummy. Do you hear me?’ She kneels down beside him, then looks up at us. ‘I’m so sorry! He kept saying someone in his class swam with dolphins and he wanted to get in the water with them too. I thought he was going to jump overboard!’

‘I want to swim!’ he insists, as he stamps his feet and dissolves into a series of uncontrollable sobs.

‘I mean, I totally get where he’s coming from,’ I say with a smile. ‘I want to swim with them too.’

‘Five minutes until we head back,’ the tour guide informs us. ‘Please gather your belongings.’

The moment, if there was one, has passed.

‘That was… brilliant,’ I say, avoiding Rory’s eye.

He whistles, completely nonchalant. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. It was such an intense moment, in my head at least, but it’s possible that I’d built it up into something more than it was. I’d been thinking about Seb, stupidly, and our failed future. About children. And where I belong. Maybe I was trying to convince myself, for a second, that I could move on.

I hand Rory the blanket he’d wrapped around my shoulders. I hadn’t imagined that part, at least.

He nods and throws me a smile. ‘It was worth it to hear you squealing like a five-year-old.’

‘Ah, come on, that was incredible! We just saw freaking dolphins! Anyone who doesn’t squeal like a child when they see that is dead inside. Dead! Even you looked like you loved it, and you’ve got a black soul.’

‘Excuse me, I think you’ll find it’s more verging on grey,’ he says. ‘Like your ex’s walls.’

‘Verging on grey,’ I repeat. ‘That would be the title of his autobiography.’

He laughs at that. As we disembark from the boat, Lynnette and Melissa call a goodbye to Rory and I throw a wave in their direction before we walk back towards our shops. We stand outside, unsure how to end the day.

‘Back to reality,’ he says.

‘At least we managed to stop arguing for a while. So that’s a bonus.’

‘Verging on… friends?’

Friends. Sure, that’s better than hating each other. I nod.

‘Right. I’ve got to go and get ready. The breakup bookshop is meeting here this evening. Why don’t you pop your head in?’

He grunts. ‘No thanks.’

‘Ah, come on. I thought we were friends now?’

‘Verging on friends. Anyway, sorry, I’m washing my hair tonight. Good luck with it, though.’

17

‘And then Lewis told me he never liked Bonnie anyway,’ Donna reveals. ‘Can you believe hesaidthat? How can I trust someone that doesn’t like dogs?’

Beside me Eilidh stifles a laugh, and I nudge her. People’s heartaches come in all shapes and sizes. While Donna’s ex sounds like an utter prat, and she has more disdain for him than sorrow, she has the right to talk it through. Pete sits beside his daughter, listening intently to her rant, while Margaret mumbles to ask Fiona if there’s any wine on the go.

‘I mean, I should have known,’ she continues. ‘He refused to go out for walks with us. Said he could never pick up hot shit from the ground. I mean, it’s not like I pick it up with my bare hands…’

Eilidh covers her mouth, but her shoulders are trembling by this point. She lets out a discreet cough to cover it up. The rest of the group shake their heads solemnly.