Page 49 of Highland Getaway
‘And?’ Hunter raises his eyebrows comically. ‘There must be more than that?’
‘Well .?.?. he would sometimes finish watching a TV series that we’d started together without waiting for me,’ I say, warming to this game.
‘No!’
‘And then he’d talk about it in front of me. With spoilers.’
Hunter puts his face in his hands and pretends to weep.
‘Go on,’ he says through his fingers.
‘He was always late for everything. Especially when it was something we’d arranged to do with my family. Or my friends. He just didn’t seem to see them as particularly important. I once asked him to come to one of my sister’s birthday dinners, and he genuinely couldn’t understand why I expected him to come, or what it had to do with him. It was like he didn’t see us as a couple.’
Hunter lowers his hands, and I notice he isn’t laughing anymore.
‘Then, when it wasmybirthday this year,’ I tell him, ‘I decided to throw a party; which I never normally do, because I don’t like the attention. But my best friend talked me into it, and I thought, why not? Whyshouldn’tI get to feel special for once?’
I pick up the wine glass and take a huge gulp.
‘Adam didn’t turn up,’ I say into the glass. ‘Well, not until the party was almost over, anyway. Said he forgot about it. He just . . .forgotabout me.’
‘He forgot? Seriously? He forgot yourbirthday?’ Hunter almost spits out his wine.
‘Yup.’
I swallow the rest of mine in a single gulp.
‘Rosie, that’s shit,’ says Hunter quietly. ‘That’s really, really shit. I hope you told him where to go after that?’
‘That’s the thing,’ I admit, staring back into my wine glass. ‘I didn’t. I accepted his apology, and I tried to pretend it was fine; that it was my fault for thinking I needed some big celebration just for having been born. Then he dumped me anyway, for being “high maintenance”. That’s why he’d come round.’
‘He dumped youon your birthday?’
He says it quietly, but there’s an undercurrent to his words that makes me feel like I’m hearing this piece of news for the first time. And, when he says it like that, I can suddenly see how awful this actually is, and how little I deserved to be treated like that.
‘Rosie,’ says Hunter, taking the glass out of my hands and putting it down on the floor. ‘You know how messed up that is, right? You know it’s not stupid or weird to expect your partner to remember your birthday, or come to your party?’
‘I know itnow,’ I reply, blinking frantically to stop myself from crying. ‘But at the time, it was easy to believe he was right.’
‘Well, he wasn’t,’ Hunter says, taking both of my hands in his and looking me right in the eye, in a way that should be uncomfortable, but somehow isn’t. ‘He was completely and utterly wrong. Youdodeserve to be celebrated. And you deserve to be with someone who knows that; not someone who hogs the remote control and tries to make you think you’re not important.’
I blink, my breath catching in my throat. His hands are warm and steady, and he’s looking at me as if he actuallyseesme; which is unusual, to say the least.
‘There’s also the TV thing,’ I remind him, swallowing down the lump that’s risen in my throat. ‘That was pretty annoying, too.’
‘Very annoying,’ agrees Hunter. ‘I’m serious, though, Rosie. Never let anyone convince you that you’re not special. Not Bex, not Sabrina and definitely not this Adam eejit.’
‘I’m not totally sure what an “eejit” is,’ I confess with a smile. ‘But thanks. I’ll .?.?. I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘You don’t need to thank me,’ he says. ‘Just promise me you’ll try to assert yourself a bit more. Stop letting other people try to tell you who you are.’
‘Noted.’
We look at each other, the air between us humming with something unspoken.
‘So, what about you and Hannah’s mum?’ I venture at last. ‘Did she hog the remote, too? Forget to replace the loo roll when it was done?’
Tell me all the ways I should hate her, I’m begging you.
