Charlie's Web (A Romantic Comedy)

Chapter 12

“It’s probably time we had that chat.”

Thea looked up abruptly at Dave’s words. She had literally been going to say the same thing, but he’d beat her to it by mere seconds.

“Yes,” she agreed, avoiding his eyes. “It is.” 

“Not here though.” He stopped the car and she realised they were outside his flat. She hadn't even noticed, caught up in her own thoughts. “Let’s go and find a pub where we can relax a bit and where it’s hopefully quiet enough for us to hear each other.”

They strolled down the street in silence but Thea was convinced the sound of her heart beating must be audible not only to Dave but to anyone else they passed.

“How about in here?” he indicated a small wine bar to their left which looked relatively peaceful but with enough patrons already there to indicate it was a decent place. She nodded and followed him in. “Wine?” he asked. “White? Red?”

He sat down opposite her a couple of minutes later with a bottle of chenin, two glasses, and a nervous smile on his face. “Here you go,” he poured her a glass and passed it over. He laughed awkwardly. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Me neither,” she replied. “It’s been a weird two weeks.”

A silence loaded with expectation fell over the table.

“So I need to tell you something,” Thea said finally. It really felt like she needed to tell him this first. “About Craig.”

“Okay,” he looked apprehensive.

“Things with me and Craig . . . “ she gulped, “ . . . they’ve not been good for a long time.”

She wasn't lying.

Thea had been loath to tell anyone, even Charlie, about their relationship breakdown. It wasn’t just the fact that she had been nursing her all-consuming crush on Dave; things just hadn’t been good at all. They didn’t have fun anymore, they were always arguing and, when push came to shove, they just weren’t happy.

Charlie might make jokes about how they were always on the phone or texting, but she hadn’t seemed to realise that this was basically all they did. They hardly ever actually saw one another anymore, and their life seemed to consist on cancelling plans that they’d made.

For some reason though, they both didn’t seem to want to admit this to one another. But it just couldn’t continue to go on this way. 

“Wow.” Dave looked surprised at this revelation, which she was grateful about. She wasn’t sure if it was something that he might have already known about, but it appeared she wasn’t the only one keeping the cold hard truth from her best friend.

That also made her feel mildly less guilty about not telling Charlie what was really going on.

“So how long have things been bad?” he asked, leaning forward and touching her hand lightly, as if to encourage her to let it out.

So she did. “The best part of nine months,” she answered before the full story came out. 

The first hurdle had been a pregnancy scare, where Thea quickly realised she wasn’t ready for a baby at all and, even if she had been, she couldn’t imagine Craig being the father. He hadn’t dealt with the scare particularly well either, which had made her resent him even more, especially as she was already starting to feel a bit trapped. 

They’d both started to drift away from each other after that and they were getting further and further apart as the days and months went past. “We went to the cinema one night last week and we never used to do that - I always thought it was a bit pointless going on a date to a place where you then don’t talk to each other for several hours. But this time I was just so relieved we would be somewhere that we wouldn’t be forced to make conversation,” she confessed, halfway down her second glass of wine by this point.

“We need to end it, I know,” she continued, feeling her eyes fill up with tears. “But it’s so hard, there’s several years of history there and it feels like we've just wasted so much time and have nothing to show for it.”

He was still watching her, sympathy in his eyes. “It sucks,” he agrees. “It’s so weird hearing this too as I guess you guys were the kind of couple that others aspire to be. I wanted something like what you had.” He laughed briefly at that, a slight bitter edge to it. “Well, in actuality, I guess I just wanted to be with you, but I had to remind myself that wasn’t going to happen.”

“So what about you?”she asked, wanting to change the subject away from Craig, even for a brief time. Her heart was warmed by his small admission there, but she needed a  distraction. “We never really talk about your relationships. I know there was the date the other night, but have you had anything serious with anyone?”

He hesitated. “Not really. If I’m perfectly honest with myself, I was really struggling to move on from my feelings for you. The second you came back into my - and Craig’s - life, I felt like every girl didn’t measure up to you.” He couldn’t look at her as he said this, she realised. She could see the most adorable blush spreading across his sharp cheekbones.

“Good god, you’re cute,” she said involuntarily, her hand flying to her mouth in embarrassment as soon as it fell out of her mouth. Talking-without-thinking was a Charlie move, not a Thea one.  

He laughed again, and she couldn’t help but join in.

“This really is such a messed up situation,” he said finally. She nodded. It really was.  And there was only one thing she could think of to say in that moment. 

“Will we get another bottle of wine?”

Feeling her formerly orderly (but not as much as anyone would have thought) world spin out of control once again, Thea watched Dave walk up to the bar and wondered what would come next. What could come next. Would she let it? Could she? Could he?  If she thought she’d opened that Pandora’s box two weeks previously, tonight might be the point of no return . . .