Chapter 11 #2
Spectacularly bad.
Historically bad.
Potentially catastrophically bad if that kid in the yellow jumper knocks into my leg again. I barely avoided crushing him into a greasy spot on the ice the first time.
If he rolls the dice again…
“Must not crush children,” I mutter beneath my breath. “Must not crush children or the elderly or break every bone in my body.”
“Look up, Olly,” Emily calls out from up ahead, where she’s skating backward, just like that cheeky little toddler.
Making it look easy. Effortless. Graceful.
Meanwhile, I’m hunched over, death-gripping the barrier while a group of French teenage girls glide past, filming my wretched lurching with a mixture of giggles and insults.
“No, I do not have two left hands. That doesn’t even make sense,” I call after them in their mother tongue. “And I speak excellent French!”
They only laugh harder before skating away, one of them lobbing a final kill shot over her shoulder.
I growl and mutter, “Cruel. The French are a cruel people.”
Grinning, Emily asks, “What did she say? I thought I heard something about a cow?”
“She said I sound like a Spanish cow,” I explain, sucking in a sharp breath as my right foot nearly shoots out from under me again. I cling tighter to the barrier as I add, “Meaning my French accent is shite, I suppose. Or that I’m trying too hard. Maybe both. You can never tell with the French.”
“Well, the trying too hard part is accurate, anyway,” Emily murmurs gently. “All this tension is only making things harder, Olly. Can you try to relax your shoulders? Just a tiny bit? And bend your knees?”
“No, I can’t, Emily. I’ve clearly lost all management of my limbs,” I shoot back, only half joking. “I think that should be obvious by now.”
My legs truly seem to have forgotten that they’re attached to the same body, each one determined to strike out in different directions when I least expect it.
Emily emits a sympathetic hum that somehow makes me feel even more pathetic. “Okay. But you can at least stop looking at your feet, right?”
“But, if I don’t look at my feet, how will I know what fresh betrayal they’re planning?” I shuffle forward another few inches, arms windmilling wildly as my legs go rogue at the same time, once again.
“Here, let me help,” she says, reaching for my hand.
Despite myself, I cling to her like a lifeline, allowing her to pull me a few inches away from the edge. “No, I can’t. What if I fall and—”
“Oi, mister!” A small voice pipes up beside us. “My baby sister skates better than you!”
I look down to see Yellow Jumper circling me like a tiny shark, clearly intent on making mischief with my legs, once again.
“Good for her,” I manage through gritted teeth. “Does she give lessons?”
“She’s two,” the boy says, with a hard roll of his brown eyes. He circles again, making my jaw clench so tight, I’m about to crack a molar when he asks, “Are you drunk? Is that why you can’t stand up?”
“I’m not drunk, and I’m standing just fine,” I insist, immediately making a liar of myself by going down.
Hard.
The good news is that I manage to release Emily’s hand before I crash to the ice. The bad news is that my elbows crack into the rink with enough force to ensure I’ll have no trouble remembering to keep them off the table at Christmas dinner.
Hell, they might still be black and blue on New Year’s Day.
“Bollocks,” I curse, wincing as fresh waves of pain continue to course from my arms into my shoulders.
The boy cackles with glee. “Drunk and a mouth on ya. Wait ‘til I tell my mum. She said proper gentlemen don’t curse, but you sure do.”
“Listen here, little mister, I—” I start, but Emily cuts me off with a smooth, “Let me handle this, Olly.”
She crouches down to the boy’s level, still ridiculously graceful on her skates, making me feel even more like a Spanish cow with two left hands who will never find his way back to an upright position.
“What’s your name, buddy?” she asks sweetly.
“Nigel,” the boy says suspiciously.
“Well, Nigel, let me explain something.” She maintains her sweetness, but there’s a thread of steel beneath her words as she adds, “Some people are good at ice skating. Some people are good at being kind. Guess which one you need to work on?”
Nigel’s face goes red. “He looks stupid. Really stupid.”
“And you sound mean,” Emily counters. “Which do you think is worse? Looking silly while trying something new, or teasing someone who’s struggling?”
The boy opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, then ends with a wrinkle of his pug nose and a sigh. “Okay, fine.” Glancing back at me, he adds, “Sorry, mister. You look like a right wanker, but I should have kept that to myself. Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas, Nigel,” I say, a bit of my hope for the next generation restored as he skates away.
Emily helps me to my feet and back to my emotional support barrier, while I fight a fresh wave of completely inappropriate affection.
But there’s nothing fake about the warmth in my voice, as I say, “Thank you, Ms. Darling. No one’s ever taken on a cheeky child for me before. I’m touched.”
“My pleasure.” She grins. “I’m glad he seemed to see the error of his ways. Now, let’s get you to safety before you break a bone. Or your face. Or someone else’s face.”
“Told you,” I accuse. “I’m the worst.”
She laughs. “Not sure about that, but you’re up there.
If my sister were here, she’d be having an aneurysm.
” She pauses, glancing up at the sky as if in deep thought.
“Makes me wish I’d done some filming. Maybe I can ask the French girls to air-drop me a few of their videos.
I mean, I can tell Izzy all about your ice-skating stylings, but it’s really something that must be seen to be believed. ”
“Wicked woman,” I accuse as she puts her arm around my waist, bolstering me for the final stretch to the exit.
“Very wicked,” she agrees, still grinning. “But I’ll make it up to you with a hot chocolate, Twitchy.”
“As you should.” I sniff, playing up the petulance in my voice as I add, “And I’ll be wanting extra whipped cream. For my dignity. It requires extra whipped cream to recover.”
We make it to the outdoor café beside the rink through a combination of Emily’s patient skill and sheer luck. By the time I collapse into a chair and Emily goes to fetch drinks, I’m just grateful to be alive.
And to have holiday skating behind me for another season.
“Here, drink up,” she says a few moments later, pressing a mug into my hand before settling into the wrought iron chair beside me. “You look like you’ve been through something.”
“I have,” I announce, wrapping my frozen fingers around the drink, which is indeed topped with extra whipped cream.
She really is an angel… “You were there. You saw. It was even worse than usual. This might be it, Em.” I stare dramatically into the distance as I add in a softly wounded voice, “This might be the year I take genuine trauma away from that ice.”
“Understandable, considering the near-death experience of it all,” Emily says solemnly, playing along as I suspected she would. “But the way you crawled to the barrier on your hands and knees after that first big fall? Inspirational, really. I wanted to clap. Slow clap. For a long, long time.”
“Now, you’re taking the piss,” I say, glaring at her over the rim of my chocolate.
“No, I’m serious,” she says. “I would have clapped. But I was too busy reassuring a little girl that you weren’t actually dying. You just sounded like you were, with all the moaning and groaning.”
“I hate you,” I mutter.
She giggles. “No, you don’t. And she was so sweet!
She was really worried about you. And her mother—” Something buzzes in her pocket, and she breaks off with a smile.
“Oh, I bet that’s Isabelle now. We always joke that she has a skating sixth sense.
She always texts when I’m …” Her words trail off as she scrolls through her phone, the pink slowly leaving her cheeks.
“What is it?” I lean closer. “Bad news from home?”
“No, from here.” She shifts the screen toward me, her lips pressing into a tight line. “I set up a Google alert for you, too, so…”
Once again, the headlines are plentiful, and as cheeky as Nigel before Emily gave him a good talking to:
Featherswallow Heir Falls
from Grace (and onto Ass)
DISASTER STRIKES NOBILITY AGAIN:
Oliver Just Can’t Keep it Up…
Watch: Britain’s Clumsiest Aristocrat Endangers Children at Holiday Event!
But it’s the last one that makes me go completely still…
Britain’s most Chaotic Couple Strikes Again: Could These Two Hot Messes be Perfect for Each Other?
The article includes a photo compilation: me crawling across the ice, Emily laughing so hard she’s doubled over, us clinging to each other by the barrier, and finally, that kiss from before.
The one that was supposed to be for the cameras, but felt like coming in from the cold on a long winter’s night…
She looks up, meeting my gaze, a question in her eyes that makes me hope she might be wondering what I’m wondering.
Could we be perfect for each other?
She pulls in a breath, but before she can speak, her phone rings.
Emily blinks, then glances down. “Sorry, I… It’s Isabelle.” A soft laugh as she shakes her head. “I told you, she always knows.” She lifts the phone between us as she half stands. “Do you mind? We’ve been trying to connect on a call for days and—”
“Of course,” I say, waving her off with a grin. “Go. Chat. I’ll be happy here with my cocoa and no ice under my feet. Or my ass.”
She grins, her eyes crinkling just for me, even as she answers the phone with a warm, “Hello there, baby sister. How are you? I miss you so much.”
Her words fade as she wanders away, seeking a bit of privacy for her conversation, but I can’t seem to pull my eyes from the ginger in the fluffy white scarf. She’s just…beautiful.
More than beautiful.
She’s beautifully familiar. After only a few days, I feel like I’ve known her for ages. Or like I’ve been waiting for her for ages.
With Emily, both might very well be true.
“Mum said I had to apologize again,” a petulant voice announces near my elbow, making me flinch in surprise.
I turn to see a runny-nosed Nigel pouting beside me, his own hot chocolate moustacheoing his upper lip. “What’s that?”
“Mum said I had to apologize again,” he repeats, a little more irritably. But then, I can’t really blame him. I don’t enjoy repeating myself, either. “Because you’re some big fancy royal fuss.”
I soften. “Nah, I’m not a big royal fuss. No need to apologize to me any more thoroughly than you would to anyone else. You did an excellent job apologizing the first time. Tell your mum she should be proud, and there are no hard feelings.”
Nigel brightens a bit. “Okay, good.” He glances around, searching for something before he adds, “Where’s your redhead boss?”
I grin. “My boss? Did she seem like my boss, do you think?”
He shrugs. “She’s way better at skating than you. And she’s pretty bossy.” He glances sharply my way again, seeming to rethink the wisdom of that last comment. “But I mean, not in a bad way.”
“Just a bossy way,” I supply.
“Yeah,” he agrees, clearly irritated again when I laugh.
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t laugh. She’s my girlfriend, actually, but I’m quite happy to have her boss me around. As you said, she’s way better at skating, as well as many other things.”
He sniffs, drawing the dangling wet beneath his nose up a millimeter before he exhales, setting the snot free again. “I don’t like girls.”
“Why not? Girls are fantastic. Your mum sounds very nice. And you yourself said your sister’s a demon on skates.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but they’re different. They’re family. I don’t have to kiss them like in the movies.”
“You don’t have to kiss anyone like in the movies if you don’t want to,” I say. “Kissing is neither obligatory nor necessary for a happy life.”
He snorts, a crooked smile curving his chocolate-stained lips. “Oi, you are fancy. And silly, I think.”
I nod in agreement. “Quite. Happy Christmas again, Nigel. Keep asking the hard questions.”
He laughs as he toddles away on his skates across the gravel, clearly thinking I’m at least a little mad.
And, of course, I am.
I’m pretending to be in love with a woman I’m actually falling in love with, all while also pretending not to be falling to the woman herself.
Something has to give.
And maybe it will soon.
Grandmother’s holiday party is right around the corner, an event with a unique mixture of heartwarming, welcoming, mapcap, and romantic vibes that doesn’t come along very often.
A man with his heart on his sleeve could do worse when it comes to setting the scene for a grand confession than a Victorian mansion with loads of tiny, intimate rooms and mistletoe hung in every one…