Everything I had

Part 112.

Tom's pov~

"Mummy looked upset," Parker remarked from the back seat as I pulled out of the drive.

"I know, baby."

"Maybe you should say sorry?"

"Perhaps..."

I glanced into the side mirror, changed lanes, and carried on.

"You should bake her a cake."

"A cake, huh?"

"Yeah. Cheesecake. She loves Clark's cheesecake."

That name. Of course it had to be Clark. I could feel the list of things she loved about him lining up in my head, one after the other, all the things she used to love about me and more.

~

On Saturday Jack rang me. Invited me to dinner with a couple of colleagues. I didn't want to say yes. Not at first. I've never liked social interactions, but in the end I thought—why not. I craved physical presence, even if it wasn't hers. And if it meant I wouldn't end up driving to Marry-Anne's, it was worth it.

Still, by Monday night, a murky feeling crept up on me as the route I was driving grew more and more familiar. At first, I couldn't place it—when, why.
Not until I was seated at the table, Jack to my left—my agent, eight years older—across from us two colleagues I'd seen before but couldn't bother to remember the names of until the names fell eventually. Joe, and Dickelson—though he insisted on Dix. Then the menus were handed out.

Black skirt. White blouse. Flat ballerinas. Blonde hair tucked neatly behind her ears, a red hairband the only thing on her that carried a shred of character.

Marry-Anne placed a menu in front of each of us. The others were still laughing at something Dix had said, but I froze in my chair as her hand brushed mine with the card, ears burning hot. That was why the road here had felt carved into my memory.

Marry, though, was perfectly professional. If not for the fraction of a tremor in her breath as she turned, I might have believed she didn't even know me. That she was just some polished replica. But she knew better than to address me in public—and that, at least, deserved reward.

She pivoted on her heel to leave when—
"Ah, waitress!" Dix barked, raising his empty glass.
Marry turned back, calm.
"Be a sweetheart and bring us some tap water, would you?" Of course. The cheap option. The kind you don't pay for.
She nodded, disappeared behind the corner, and I stared at Dix across the table as he unfolded the napkin across his lap.

I couldn't stand ninety-nine percent of men. He wasn't in the one percent.

"So, Tom," Joe began, smug, "a little birdie told me your ex-wife's got herself a new boyfriend?"

"Oh, Tom doesn't like to talk about—" Jack jumped in, but I waved him off.

"What do you mean?" My eyes fixed on Joe. Just Joe. Because unless it was plastered online, no one should have known—

"The pictures of Y/N with the blond bloke? Walking on the beach?"

The beach? The two of them?

I'd been off social media for two weeks, noticed how much it dragged me down. And yet here Joe was, describing the photo like I should have had it pinned above my bed.

Didn't matter that I was at a table with three others—I yanked my phone from my pocket and reinstalled the cursed app. Logged back in while they switched to another topic, and went straight to the photos where she was tagged. If she didn't want me looking, she should've turned off the setting that showed where she'd last been tagged.