You Belong With Me

chapter020

‘I know I’m a big ask and this is a big ask,’ Elliot said, ‘but I’ve realised it’s worse than that. I’m asking you to accept things I couldn’t tolerate if the situations were reversed. I don’t know what it’s like to date me, but I don’t think I could. Make that make sense.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. If you’d said, mind if I get off with some dude and put my mouth on his parts, it’s to make a living? I’d say absolutely not and “art” could get fucked. Great to know that, on top of being an idiot, I’m a raging hypocrite.’

‘Did you say this to your ex? Heather?’ Edie said. She wasn’t trying to set up a competition, more seeking illumination of his nature.

‘Ehm … I’m not trying to crawl for popularity, but it’s never come up because it’s never mattered to me like it would matter now. And I selfishly see you as safely outside of the nonsense I dwell in, so I’d not asked myself anything about equivalence. This is quite a learning curve for me.’

‘You haven’t dated a Normal before?’ Edie said, smiling.

‘Not since I was one, too, though I reject your Normal/Abnormal binaries,’ Elliot said, smiling back. He paused. ‘I didn’t manage good speech writing on the flight, but I did try proper thinking.’

‘Apology accepted,’ Edie said.

‘Can I hug you now?’

‘If you must,’ Edie said, with a small smile.

Once he was holding her, Edie was faintly horrified to find she involuntarily started sobbing into his navy wool shoulder. Relief, that’s why, she thought. You saw their handholding, and for a split second, you really thought that newspaper might be giving you news.

‘Ah fuck, I’m so incredibly sorry, sweetheart,’ Elliot said. He’d never used that endearment before, and the tenderness briefly made Edie worse.

‘S’OK, I’m exhausted more than upset, really,’ she said blearily, trying to pull herself together and absorb the moisture by wiping at her face with her sleeve. ‘Nick mixes strong margaritas, and they helped until they didn’t. Plus, you actually being here is pretty trippy. How the fuck are you here?!’

Now that they were repaired, Edie was free to be a heady mixture of incredulous and elated.

‘I honestly thought you might be finishing with me,’ Elliot said. ‘Fastest decision I ever made. Apologies to the planet.’

‘It’s very movie star.’

‘Yeah, well, I wanted to make the size of effort that showed I understood the size of the offence.’

Edie leaned up and kissed him, and Elliot responded like someone who’d been waiting for the chance and wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. He was very good at kissing that was gentle and romantic at the outset and built to something more carnally intentional.

‘Have you really got to go straight back?’

Edie was abruptly and specifically wishing it was at least a three-hour layover.

‘Yup. I had to plead family emergency to get away this long.’ He brushed her hair over her ear. ‘But then again, it was an emergency, and you are my family.’

Edie put her face in his coat and breathed him in, and he stroked her hair, and they spent a brief comfortable silence together, simply appreciating proximity.

Elliot glanced around. ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’

‘When you’re not howl-sobbing in the garden after reading scurrilous stories.’

‘You’re not serious? Are you?’

He looked so afflicted that Edie quickly added: ‘If I liked diamonds, I could make you buy me a guilt gift, couldn’t I? Is that a terrible gendered thing? Like a “push present”. Rat tax. A bastardy sparkler.’

‘A diamond ring?’

Edie hadn’t thought of that implication, and her scalp was suddenly hot with the force of cringe. She pulled away. ‘Oh God, no! Like … a necklace, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about diamonds. I was kidding.’

Elliot gave her an unreadable look and said: ‘Where are Nick and Hannah?’

‘Oh, they went on a tactical yomp when they heard you were descending.’

‘They must be properly disgusted with me,’ Elliot said, grimacing.

‘Annoyingly, no. They made your case.’

‘Oh. Now I wish I’d brought them something from duty-free.’

It was barely worth Elliot taking his coat off, but he did anyway, and they spent a foolish yet rewarding half hour entwined on the sofa, trying and failing to concentrate on a conversation.

‘Making out in someone else’s front room. This feels like teenage babysitting,’ Edie said.

‘Right, I knew leaving you this soon would utterly suck, but I best head back,’ Elliot said, checking a fancy watch.

‘This is the craziest thing anyone has ever done for me,’ Edie said.

‘I dunno, kissing you on a wedding day when you weren’t the bride was probably crazier.’

Edie put her palm over her eyes.

‘Seriously. All I care about is that you’re OK,’ Elliot said. ‘And that we’re OK. Also, I should’ve remembered from that fight in the street we had what a terrifying adversary you are. Apart from anything else, I’m too scared to fuck around and find out, I promise you.’

Edie fake-smiled because, on both occasions, the belief she was being rejected by him had turned her near-feral. Did he not understand the ferocity was in direct proportion to the fear?

They walked to the door and up to the end of the path, holding hands.

‘Oh – warning, Fraser called me when I was at JFK, so I had to tell him where I was going and why. He knows not to tell our parents and worry them. I also told him not to contact you even if he thinks he’s being helpful, which means he’s nailed on to contact you and make it worse.’

Elliot hugged her tightly one last time and whispered in her ear, words about how much he cared that made her blush.

Spun around and set back down by Hurricane Elliot.

As the Range Rover drove away and pulled Edie’s heart behind it like newlywed-car tin cans, she saw she had a WhatsApp from Fraser.

PLEASE PLEASE DON’T DUMP MY brOTHER HE WILL BE FUCKING UNBEARABLE AND WILL GET HIS GUITAR OUT AND TRY TO PLAY ‘LOVE WILL TEAR US APART’ AGAIN, AND HE CANNOT DO THE INTRO PART *AT ALL*. PLEASE PLEASE I BEG I WILL PAY YOU TO KEEP ON BEING HIS GIRLFRIEND, GIVE ME YOUR SALARY SCALE AND I WILL MATCH IT [folded hands emoji]

Edie snort-laughed and couldn’t resist typing back: too late x. Only after she pressed send did she realise the polite kiss turned a two-word joke into a potentially serious statement, in the strange way that smartphone interactions operated on miniscule margins. Like when OK! was friendly and OK was sullen.

Fraser

Shit, please tell me you’re joking? I was kidding, but seriously, I don’t think he’s looked at another woman since he met you. Those photos in New York are how he acts when one of my friends is all over him and he’s texting me EXTRACTION PLEASE under the table. He’s got really used to staying calm when people go weird around him.

Edie tried to reassure Fraser, but she couldn’t get the WiFi to hold steady for long enough. While she was pressing send in vain, another message arrived.

Fraser

I am only doing this because it might be necessary and NEVER tell him, because he’d kill me and it breaks bro code. But he’s not going to bother lying to me, is he?

Attached was a screenshot of their WhatsApp chat:

Fraser

Purely theoretically, are you in there with Ines then? Was all the ‘PDA’ an invitation to bang? It did LOOK like she’s keen on you.

Elliot

Yes, thanks, that was very much the problem. I’d prefer it if she isn’t. I don’t need the drama, and I only hope she’s not destroyed my life with the person I do want to sleep with. FFS you nearly had me typing ‘bang’ there.

Fraser

Ines needs a very stern talking to about being too erotic a creature. I should visit you and deliver it. I’d go so far as to call what I am planning ‘a proper dressing down’.

Elliot

What would I do without your wisdom and sagacious counsel.

Fraser

What’s a sagacious council?

Edie laughed out loud. She trusted Elliot; she really did. She realised some part of her had been holding out on that, waiting until it was tested. Now it had been.

The strangest thing was, trusting him felt barely less frightening than not trusting him.