My ex-boyfriend appeared one Saturday afternoon, as if conjured from the swirling mist, clutching an extravagant bouquet of roses, boxes of Cadbury chocolate, an armful of gift bags, and that old crooked smile I hadn’t dreamt of in months. For a fleeting second, I thought perhaps he had come to apologise, maybe to sift through the scattered ashes of what was left unsaid between us. It was all so peculiarthe way, after our break-up, he’d been as chilly and remote as the fog over the Thames, treating me like a stranger on the Northern Line.
He swept through the doorway and began to speak rapidlytoo rapidlygoing on about how much he’d been thinking, how terribly he missed me, declaring me the woman of his life, and rattling off mistakes realised in my absence. His speech tumbled out like verses from a schoolboy’s rehearsed apology, fluttering about the room. I stood silent in my hallway, wondering where all this sudden tenderness had come from after such a blizzard of silence. As if following some strange choreography, he came closer, wrapped me up in his arms and muttered that he wanted us to reclaim what was ours.
Sentence after sentence fell from his lips as he produced tokensa bottle of English rose-scented perfume, a delicate silver bracelet, a faded letter in a boxall presented with an air of unreal romance. He insisted we deserved another chance, claimed hed changed, that this time, if I let him, hed do things properly between us. The whole scene felt oddly artificial, as if Id stumbled into someone elses daydream. Hed never been so attentive even back when we were together; it was all curiously sweetened, too good for real life.
The truth unravelled when I asked him, as if it was the most ordinary thing, to sit and explain himself plainly. Caught in the lamplight, his words tripped. He confessed hed run into a bit of a banking snafu, said he needed a loan for a business opportunity for the both of us, and that the missing piece was just a single signaturemine. The haziness cleared. Of coursehe hadnt come bearing gifts and sugar-sweet chatter for nothing.
I told him flat-out that I wasnt signing anything. Instantly his mask slipped. His smile vanished, he flung the roses across my table, and his voice rose, sharp against the wallpaper, demanding how I could not trust him, swearing this was the chance of a lifetime. He spoke as if I owed him something, as if the price of admission to a future with him was my signature on some invisible contract. He even had the arrogance to say that if I still wanted him, it was my duty to help out. The whole elaborate pageant crumbled as quickly as it had appeared.
When it became clear I wouldnt yield, his tactics twisted. He pleaded, saying he was lost without this credit, promising that if I just helped, hed come back to me properly, that we could begin anew. His words mixed half-hearted reconciliation with desperate self-interest. Finally, realisation washed over methe flowers, the presents, the gentle wordswere only set pieces for a scene with a single goal: my signature.
At last, when I repeated I wouldnt sign a thing, he gathered up almost everything hed broughtswiped back the chocolates, pocketed the perfume, even took back the bracelet. Only the flowers remained, abandoned on the wooden floor. He left, calling me ungrateful, and insisted not to complain that he never tried to save our relationship. He shut the door with that unmistakable sound of someone who believes the world owes him a little too much.
And so, his odd little act of reunion lasted precisely fifteen minutesan unreal, dreamlike drama that faded the moment I woke.
