Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ELLIE
It’s been two days since Douglas Fraser kissed me, and I have thought about it approximately four thousand times.
I’ve thought about it while shelving returns. While scanning barcodes. While preparing dinner for Mum. While preparing dinner for myself. While lying in bed staring at the ceiling at one in the morning, then again at three, then again at quarter past four.
What happened on Sunday has split into two distinct memories in my head, and they keep playing over and over like the same two songs on repeat.
Track one: He kissed me. Douglas Fraser sat at my kitchen table, stumbled through some reasons he and I couldn’t work, made to go, then turned back and kissed me. His hand on the side of my face. His scruff against my skin. The smell of the sea on him, because the sea is always on him . . .
Track two: He ran away. He pulled back, apologised, and was out my front door so fast I’m surprised the hinges survived.
I don’t know which track to give more weight to. The kiss says one thing. The running says another. And the silence since—no text, no visit—well, that says nothing at all.
The Mary Beth has left the harbour each morning and returned each afternoon.
He’s alive. He’s working. But our paths haven’t crossed.
I haven’t tried to engineer a run-in. Not because I’m not tempted—God, I’m tempted—but because I have some dignity left, and also because if Douglas wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me.
The ball is in his court. Only . . . maybe it’s rolled under a hedge and been forgotten about.
So I do what I always do. I go to work. I visit Mum. I eat dinner alone in my kitchen—at the table he kissed me at—and try very hard not to touch my lips and sigh like a woman in a period drama.
I fail at that last one, but only twice. Maybe three times.
By Tuesday evening, I am officially losing my mind. I can’t keep this to myself anymore, so I cave and message Blair.
A minute later, she texts back to say she and Ainsley are coming over with wine.
“Right,” Blair says, setting a bottle of white wine on my kitchen table and shrugging off her jacket. “I have been dying since your text, Ellie. Dying. Tell us everything.”
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m here too,” Ainsley says a little awkwardly. “But Blair messaged me after you messaged her, and—”
“Of course I don’t mind. Saved me doing it. Now let’s get this wine open.”
I fetch three glasses and we all sit down. Blair pours, takes a sip of hers, then leans forwards. “Well?” she says. “On you go!”
So I take a sip of my wine—a very large sip—and admit that I may have taken some photos of the Mary Beth. And of Douglas. And that Douglas saw them at soft play on Saturday.
I tell them about the knock at my door the next day. Douglas on my doorstep with his hands in his pockets. The tea I made that neither of us drank. The chat I thought was going to be unbearably awkward, but somehow turned into a kiss.
I try to keep it factual, measured, but my voice does something traitorous when I get to the part where his mouth was suddenly on mine. I have to pause and take some more wine.
“And then?” Ainsley prompts.
“And then he pulled back, said he shouldn’t have done that, and practically sprinted out my front door.”
“Jesus,” Ainsley murmurs.
“Aye. He kissed me, then immediately decided it was a terrible idea. And now I have no idea what to think.”
“Or,” Blair says, “he kissed you, then panicked. We don’t know that he regretted it. Panic isn’t the same as rejection.”
Ainsley nods. “Good point. It sounds like Douglas freaked out—probably because he’s spent years putting himself last and he finally did something for himself. I bet it was all a bit much for the poor man.”
Some of the tightness in my chest eases. That makes sense. He panicked, that’s all. He just got overwhelmed.
Ainsley sets her glass down. “As exciting as it is that he kissed you, I’ve been messed around by a man before, so I’d be a shite friend if I didn’t say this. Ellie, he is married. Maybe in name only, but that’s not nothing. I’m not trying to rain on your parade, but . . . be careful, aye?”
She’s right, of course, even if being careful feels a little academic when Douglas has made no attempt to see me since bolting from my kitchen.
“Thanks, Ainsley. I know the whole situation is complicated, but . . .” I shrug. “I like him. I can’t help it.”
She gives a small sympathetic smile, then tilts her head. “Can I ask you something? And I mean this in the nicest way possible. But why Douglas?”
I blink. “How do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s a nice man. I’m not disputing that. But those twins are hard work. He’s still married, he’s exhausted half the time, and he’s about as emotionally forthcoming as a brick wall.”
“Wow.” Blair arches an eyebrow. “We’re being very honest tonight.”
Ainsley winces. “Too much?”
I chuckle. Ainsley can be blunt, but I like that about her.
“It’s all true,” I admit. “The thing is . . . God, this is going to sound ridiculous, but: ‘I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.’”
Blair and Ainsley stare at me.
“Jane Austen,” I explain. “Pride and Prejudice.”
A beat. Then they both crack up, and I can’t help grinning.
“Sorry.” I shrug. “What can I say? I’m a librarian.
But to answer your question about why Douglas, it’s a lot of different things.
Like, you said the twins are hard work, and aye, they can be.
But the way Douglas is with them? The patience?
The fact he shows up every single day, no matter how tired he is, and holds it all together?
That’s . . .” I bite my lower lip. “Well, that’s really attractive. To me, anyway.”
“Okay,” Blair says. “That I get.”
Ainsley nods.
“I know what his life looks like from the outside,” I continue.
“The complications, the baggage, all of it. But there’s this warmth to him.
This kindness. He carried me through freezing water without a second thought.
He brought me prawns to apologise for something he said at the pub.
He might not look it, but he’s . . . sweet.
” I sigh. “I can’t tell you when it started.
That’s the honest truth. It just crept up on me over time, and now I really, really like him. ”
Blair puts a hand over her heart.
“God, Ellie.” Ainsley shakes her head. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I know.” I press my hands to my cheeks. They’re burning.
Blair tops up our glasses. The wine is going down fast, but this conversation requires it.
“The thing that scares me,” I say, quieter now, “isn’t that he might not want me.
It’s that he might want me and choose not to do anything about it.
Because of Leah, because of the twins. Before Sunday my feelings were .
. . contained. A quiet wee ache in the background that I could manage.
But now that I know what his mouth feels like, I don’t know that I can fold those feelings away again. ”
“Oh, Ellie,” Blair says.
I look down into my glass. “I’m sure I’ll get over it, eventually.
And Douglas, he’ll bury the whole thing under his usual routine—boat, school run, dinner, bedtime—and that’ll be that.
And maybe that’s for the best.” I attempt a smile.
“I’ve got my books. My library. My wee cottage. I’m quite happy, really.”
I say it like I’m trying to convince myself. Because I am.
“Maybe what Douglas needs,” Blair says thoughtfully, “is a little nudge.”
“A nudge?” I repeat.
Blair nods, and there’s something in her expression, like she’s hatching a plan. “You need clarity, Ellie. Either he wants this or he doesn’t. But this limbo thing? It’s no good. We need something—or someone—to nudge Douglas into making a decision, one way or another.”
Blair smiles at Ainsley, then adds, “Conveniently, our men happen to be friends with Douglas.”