Ford sighed, then shrugged. "It hasn't actually ended yet, so I don't know if I've earned the sulking," he admitted. He was watching the light on the surface of his wine rather than looking at Lestrange. He tipped the glass to move the liquid around so he could watch the light shift. Maybe by the time Macnair actually broke things off with Ford he'd actually feel better; maybe there was a finite amount of sulking to be done and this prolonged period where the breakup was inevitable but avoided would mean that he got it all out of the way and was ready to move on quicker. Probably not, though, if his history with such things was taken into account. Admittedly Ford had a very short history when it came to relationships, so he had no real experience to measure against, but earlier that year when he'd broken things off with Macnair he'd felt rather miserable about it for weeks, and that had been his initiative, and he'd had no reason to think Macnair had any feelings for him, and it had been before they'd gotten so deep into things. There was no reason to expect that this would be any easier. The one thing that might have made it easier — that they were out of the social season and there were less expectations on his time, and therefore more time he could devote to licking his emotional wounds in private — was offset by the upcoming holiday and Verity's wedding. Ford didn't foresee having a wealth of time to himself anytime soon.

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