My ex turned up one dreary Saturday afternoon, drifting through the drizzle clutching a ridiculous bouquet of lilies, a nest of chocolate truffles, a bulging carrier bag, and wearing that silly grin I hadnt seen since the clocks last went forward. For a moment, I thought hed come to apologiseor perhaps at long last unpick the silent knots from everything left unsaid. Odd, really, since after our split hed acted colder than the Thames in February, as if I were a total stranger hed once nodded to on the train.
He barely wiped his feet before he launched into a wild, tumbling monologue about missing me, thinking too much, realising I was the love of his life, and wanting to fix his mistakes. It all spilled out so quickly it sounded less like honesty and more like something hed rehearsed in the bathroom mirror. I listened, arms folded, mystifiedhow could all this gentle affection reappear like a summer heatwave after months of iciness? Then he glided closer, wrapped me in a sudden awkward hug and whispered that he wanted us to reclaim whats ours.
Present after present appeared: a bottle of perfume, a shiny silver bracelet, a little box with a letter inside. Everything laced in syrupy romance. His words trailed after the ribbonmaybe we should try again, hes changed, he wants to do things properly with me at long last. I started to feel strangely uneasynone of this made sense, and hed never been this attentive, not even at the start when hed pretended to like my cat.
My suspicions crystallised when I invited him to sit and asked, straight out, What is it you want? Thats when he started to fidget. He mumbled about a slight issue at the bank, about needing a loan for a business venture for both our futures, and that everything would be sorted if only he had one more signature: mine.
All at once the puzzle snapped togetherflowers, chocolates, honeyed wordsall so Id sign my name.
I told him, firmly, that I wouldnt be signing anything. Instantly his face cracked. The grin vanished, he dropped the bouquet on the coffee table and snapped at me, demanding to know why I didnt trust him, claiming this was the opportunity of a lifetime. He talked down to me, as if I owed him for his effort. He even blurted out that, if I still cared, I ought to help him. All the sweetness soured in moments.
Then he changed tactics, switching to defeat. He muttered hed be lost without this loan, and that if I agreed, he would come back to me officially, and we could start afresh. He said it with the shamelessness of someone pawning an old watchtrying to sell reconciliation at a steep price.
I saw it clearly then: every gift, every petal, every borrowed wordsimply a mask to win my signature.
At the end, when I repeated that Id sign absolutely nothing, he swept up nearly every present: most of the chocolates, the perfume, yes, even the bracelet disappeared into his sack again. Only the lilies were left, abandoned on the floor like shed feathers. He stomped off, throwing a muttered ungrateful over his shoulder and telling me that Id be sorry when I remembered who tried to save what we had. He slammed the door as though he was the one wronged.
And so, that little reconciliation lasted all of fifteen minutesmelting away as oddly as it had begun, like some peculiar dream after too much Earl Grey.
