Read Online Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning - Free Book Online Page B

five centimetres away from the other’s cheek couldn’t be classed as touching. But now her hand rested on his arm and stayed there. ‘Wilson? Look, I’m sorry.’
    He shook his head and pulled his arm away from her. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
    ‘No, I mean, I’m sorry that I’ve made this all about me when you must be feeling pretty cut up about it too.’ Hope swallowed past that lump that had taken up residence in her throat again. ‘It’s just … well, I know what you’re feeling right now, because I’m feeling it too, and it hurts.’
    ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been in this situation, probably won’t be the last,’ Wilson said brusquely. ‘Still, it’s not something you ever get used to, your girlfriend cheating on you. If she is … All you actually saw was a kiss. One kiss.’
    It wasn’t just one kiss. It had been so much more than that. There had been hands in places where they had no right to be and grinding and groping and breathy little gasps and moans. ‘Do you really think I’d be this upset if it had just been one kiss?’
    ‘But you did only see them kiss, and Susie said it was just a drunken snog and OK, so maybe they do fancy each other, is that so bad?’ Wilson didn’t sound like he wanted Hope’s opinion but as if he was trying to do damage limitation. Square away the facts until they seemed a lot less incriminating. ‘They fancied each other, they’d both had a skinful, stuff happened and you kicked off, and then Susie kicked off because that’s what women do, they love to kick off, and in a few days’ time, it will all have blown over, and Jack and Susie probably won’t even be able to look at each other. That’s what I think, anyway.’
    Wilson was a regular chatty Cathy tonight, Hope thought sourly. ‘Well, that’s not what I think,’ she protested. ‘You didn’t see them. I did, and I know exactly what I saw and it’s just about broken my heart.’
    The light was dim, but Hope was sure that Wilson had just rolled his eyes. ‘If this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, then you’ve led a very sheltered life.’
    She had led a sheltered life, Hope knew that. Both her parents were still alive and gainfully employed, so there’d always been food, heat and light, and a bit left over for luxuries like trips to the cinema and two weeks on a campsite in Provence every summer. She’d got ten GCSEs, four A-levels, a degree in History and her SCITT with the requisite amounts of revision-related tears but no major angst. She’d dated the boy next door. She’d only ever shagged the boy next door once she was past the age of consent. Then Hope had moved in with the boy next door after university, and bought a flat with the boy next door as soon as she was bringing in her first wage.
    At least she’d managed to get out of Lancashire and live in London, when most of the girls she’d been at school with already had kids. Some of them were even on their second marriages, but Wilson was kind of right: Hope didn’t just have a sheltered life, it was a very small life, too. ‘I’m sorry if my emotional distress is boring the pants off you,’ Hope said as she pointedly scooched across the seat so she was almost hugging the car door. ‘Maybe if I’d had a succession of crappy relationships, I’d be inured to the pain by now, but I haven’t. And well, it hurts like hell.’ Her voice throbbed and broke at the end of the sentence and Hope waited to see if she was going to burst into tears again, but no, she was resolutely dry-eyed as Wilson wriggled where he sat and then coughed a little bit.
    ‘I’m just saying that this is probably something and nothing, and it doesn’t help the situation if you’re going to completely overreact,’ he said in a much gentler voice. ‘You need to calm down.’
    There was nothing more likely to make Hope start to hiss and bristle than someone telling her to