Chapter 11
11
By the time we reach the river, Ren’s laughing at how loudly my stomach is growling, and he helps me down the shallow bank and we slip-slide over the water-smoothed stones of the riverbed towards the gentle trickling of the water. The moon has risen in the sky and is reflecting on the surface as we find a stone perfect for sitting on.
It’s a big, curved boulder that you could recline on if you wanted a very uncomfortable recliner, and rather than squeezing onto it next to me, Ren untangles his arm from my hand and sits down on a smaller rock beside it, right at the edge of the water, close enough to dip our toes in.
The basket is between us, and while I go through it and pull out packets of picnic goodies, Ren gets out the two mugs I shoved in and opens the wine.
‘Cheers.’ He hands me a mug full of bubbling rosé, and then holds his own up to clink against it. ‘To new friends.’
I tap my mug against his and take a sip. ‘To unexpected friends.’
A wide grin lights up his face and he meets my eyes in the dark evening light and his are positively shining, and his smile is a thing of beauty. He doesn’t feel like a new friend. It feels like I’ve known him for years, not less than three weeks.
I rip into a packet of mini muffins and he opens the sausage rolls and we stuff our faces in comfortable silence, interspersed by throwing bits of pastry into the water and watching the ripples as tiny fish surface to gobble them up.
‘I didn’t do this with the intention of you inviting me to join you…’ He looks up at me with eyes gleaming in the moonlight. ‘But I’m really glad you did.’
I’ve kicked my shoes off and my feet are in the water, and I lift my foot until I can poke his knee with my toe. ‘Me too. You really know how to apologise.’
‘Maybe that should worry you about how often I have things to apologise for.’
Maybe it should, and it does . It niggles that this probably won’t be the only time we’ll ever clash, but I also appreciate that he’s human and we all overreact sometimes and say things we don’t intend to say, and when most of the food is gone and my stomach has well and truly stopped growling, I get out the box of posh chocolates and pick an almond praline crème, and then set the box on the rock where we can both reach it.
He shifts nearer, puts his arms up and folds them on my rock and lays his head on them, right beside me as he watches the water, and the temptation is just too much.
I let my fingers give his dark hair a quick ruffle. ‘I like your hair like this. Usually it’s so… stiff.’
‘Like me, you mean?’
‘No, like it has too much product in it.’ I probably shouldn’t, but I stroke through it again, tugging gently on the longer part to the right of his parting that’s usually stuck down, letting the dark strands slip between my fingers just one more time. ‘You’re perfect exactly as you are.’
I hear his breath catch and he lets out a shaky exhale of a sigh, and I know I should stop, I shouldn’t be touching him like this, but he seems to be welcoming it. With every breath, his shoulders slump, shifting his head closer to my hand, so I carry on, gently brushing his hair to one side, trying not to watch the relaxation seeping through his usually taut body while trying not to overthink how good it feels to be this close to him.
‘Sorry.’ I go to yank my hand away when rational thinking returns with a vengeance. You don’t stroke the hair of someone you barely know, especially when this, whatever this is, ends at the friendship we toasted to earlier. It has to.
‘Please don’t think you have to stop doing that.’ He reaches up blindly until his hand wraps around my wrist and stops me from pulling away, and he swallows hard and lets out another breath. ‘Please don’t stop doing that, ever.’
His voice is a shaky whisper and the vehemence in it makes me smile. ‘Well, you’re going to have to give me a second because there’s wine left and it would be a shame to waste it.’
I hold my hand out for his mug and he passes it up to me, and I empty the rest of the bottle equally between our mugs and pass his back, and then I shift nearer the edge of the rock and settle back, letting my fingers play with his hair again as he nestles his head against my thigh and his eyes drift closed.
It’s the most gorgeous summer night. It must be about 10p.m. by now, the air is warm but the breeze is keeping it pleasant, and there’s no sound at all apart from the burbling of the river against the stones.
‘I never used to be like I am now.’ His voice is barely louder than a breath in the silence. ‘Stiff. And uncompromising and dull, strict, a bore-fest as Ava would describe me. I used to be fun and spontaneous. I used to laugh.’
‘You still laugh.’
‘Not like I used to. I’m always holding back, never letting myself enjoy anything because I know it won’t last.’ He lifts his head to take another swallow of wine and then rests it against my leg again. ‘I used to be like you. Easy-going, laidback, hopeful. I saw the best in people. I was the world’s greatest believer in the power of love and the possibility of magic, and now… I’m sharp. Hard. Harsh. I lash out, I say things I don’t mean to and see only the worst in people. I push everyone away, desperate to be left alone, and yet…’
‘And yet you crave human connection?’ I finish the sentence for him when he seems unable to find an ending for it.
At first I think he’s going to deny it, but he sighs and moves his head against my leg, nodding gently. ‘I didn’t realise how much until I met you.’
I knock back the last of my wine and set the mug aside, and then let my free hand trail along his shoulder, until he reaches up to tangle his fingers with mine, and the fingers of my other hand continue carding through his hair.
‘I know I shouldn’t be sitting here, but that affection is like a drug. I haven’t felt liked for so long. Ava holds so much against me. My relationship with her grandparents is strained – they blame me for their daughter leaving, even though we were already divorced by then. Friends pulled away – or I pushed them away,’ he adds before I can interject. ‘Every decision I make when it comes to Ava is the wrong one.’
‘No teenager appreciates their dad. Don’t take that personally.’
He sighs and untangles our fingers to take another glug of wine while being careful not to dislodge my other hand from his hair. ‘I just wish there was somebody on my side. Somebody to tell me I’m doing it right, or at least, somebody to get it wrong with together. I’ve never felt so alone.’
I can hear the pain in his words. I want to say something to reassure him again he’s doing a good job, but right now, it would seem like a pointless platitude. External validation makes very little difference when you’re floundering this much on the inside.
He downs another glug of wine and then shifts, turning so he’s leaning back against the rock, the back of his head resting on my leg as he turns his face to look up at the stars, and I go back to tucking his hair back and let the fingers of my other hand dance across his shoulder, because I don’t know how long it’s been since Ren opened up to anyone, but I have a feeling this is the very first time.
‘I didn’t ever expect to be divorced. I didn’t think I’d ever be a single father. I was happy. I loved my wife, I thought she loved me. I thought we were in it together. I stupidly thought that marriage might make us a partnership for the rest of our lives, not only until she got bored of having a husband and daughter. All I wanted was love and a family and I had that. What I did wrong was being happy. Being settled. Not yearning for anything more. Apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do in a relationship, just want more all the time. Nothing should ever be enough.’
‘Was there cheating involved?’ I ask quietly, because it sounds like there must have been, but he’s never said it outright.
‘A lot. And I put up with it because I naively believed we could work things out and if I just let her do what she wanted, go looking for the “more” she believed was out there, maybe she’d eventually realise that what she had was enough all along…’ He leans his head back and meets my eyes. ‘See? I used to believe in fairy stories too.’
I give his shoulder a squeeze, awkward at this angle, because that tells me so much about him. He’s been walked all over and then made to feel like he deserved it, and it gives me a real understanding of what I’d already worked out – that his straightforward manner stems from making sure no one else is going to get a chance to do that again. ‘No wonder you don’t now.’
‘I come from a place of instability,’ he says, like he’s trying to explain why he’d put up with so much to try to save a relationship that clearly wasn’t working for either of them. ‘When I was a child, my parents split up, then got back together again, then split up, then got back together, then split up, then got other partners, then had an affair with each other again, got back together, split up… the cycle repeated endlessly. I never knew whether they were going to stay together from one day to the next, or whether they were going to have a screaming row in a public place at any given moment. I could go to school in the morning and they’d be all lovey-dovey and happy, and then I’d come home to find my mum in the upstairs window, hurling my dad’s belongings onto the front lawn while he screamed up at her from the pavement outside. So I know what it’s like to come from an unstable background. I know what it does to a kid to watch their parents have a blazing row in front of their friends. I know what it was like to go to friends’ houses and see their normal, happy parents and want to stay forever. To wish I had a family like that. To never want to go home because I never knew what I’d be walking into. And I never wanted to be a parent like that. I wanted to find “the one” and be happy and settled and be enough for each other. I wanted her to want to come home and eat dinner together and go out for a family walk or cuddle up on the sofa and watch TV or read together. It’s not much, but those small, simple things are the little stabilities that meant a lot to me . Knowing that someone wants to spend time together is special.’
He glances up at me, like he’s aware that he’s revealing too much, and I nod encouragingly because I’ve never been more desperate to hear something in my life.
‘I wanted to be who someone else wanted. I wanted to be enough. And I wasn’t. And now Ava has that instability and I’m trying, so hard, to be stable and steadfast, and maybe I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction, and now I’m too strict…’ He trails off with a shake of his head where it’s still leaning on my thigh.
‘This isn’t about Ava.’ I card my fingers through his soft hair again. ‘For right now, for this moment, we’re talking about you. When you’re a parent, especially a single one, you become nothing but a parent, but you’re still you, Ren, you still have feelings and needs and wants.’
‘Right now, I need to finish this wine and I want to hug you, and I’m pretty sure I know which one is the more sensible option.’
I grin as he sits forward to down the last of his drink and sets the mug down and then slumps back against the rock, and I lean over until I can slip my arms around his shoulders and give him a squeeze from behind.
It’s the most awkward angle in the history of awkward angles but he laughs tipsily and snuggles back, as much as you can snuggle while sitting against a rock, and lets out a sigh that feels like a lead weight leaving his body. His hands come up and slip over mine where my arms are around his chest, and we stay like that until my back starts to protest the position just a bit too loudly and I have to pull away and straighten myself up.
He murmurs an apology and shifts again to look up at me without moving his head off my leg, and I look down and meet his glazed eyes and his answering smile is wide and definitely a little bit looser than usual.
Eventually, a fish jumps and reverts his attention towards the river, and I touch my reddening cheeks to see if they’re as hot as they feel under his gaze.
‘It’s so beautiful here.’
‘Ever After Street is a gorgeous place. My dad fell in love with it the moment he saw it. The area, the shopkeepers, the customers, even Mrs Moreno’s cat.’
He laughs loudly. ‘While I’m sure Mrs Moreno’s cat is truly a delight, I didn’t mean that, I meant this , in general. Being here, being here with you , being stuffed full of good food and even better wine, feeling this good. I know it won’t last but it’s been a long time since I felt this sense of contentment. Thank you for forcing me to open me up.’ He holds two hands up and clumsily mimes opening a clamshell, and it makes me narrow my eyes at him.
There’s a slight lisp to his words that makes me brush his hair back and look down into those glassy eyes again. ‘Are you a little bit drunk, Mr Montague?’
‘No! Nooo, of course not, don’t be—’ He lifts a hand and it flops back down onto his lap with a heavy thud, and he lifts his head and looks around in a way that suggests the world is spinning. ‘Oh, bugger.’
I let out a peel of laughter. ‘Never in the history of the world has anyone’s reaction to getting drunk been, “Oh, bugger.”’
‘I’ve only had half the bottle! I can’t be this much of a lightweight!’ He sits forward and drops his head into his hands, scrubbing them over his face. ‘I never drink these days. I always worry about Ava and what if there was an emergency and I had to drive somewhere, so it’s been years since I drank anything at all. Oh, God! This is awful!’ He flops back against the rock again, and I’m laughing so hard that I feel drunk myself, even though Lissa and I share enough bottles of wine that my liver is fully acclimatised to putting away half a bottle most weekends.
‘You are adorable .’ I lean over until I can hug him again, and he turns into me and hides his face in my shoulder and makes a noise of shame.
‘I didn’t even think…’
‘You don’t need to think. It’s not a bad thing to relax and let yourself go. I’ll take full responsibility for leading you astray.’
He groans and pulls his legs out from under himself and stretches out, half-reclining against my rock as he lies back, his head on my lap again, and looks up at the night sky. ‘Is it hot in here or is it me?’
‘It’s you, my blootered friend, it’s you.’ I touch the backs of my fingers to his red cheeks, because hot doesn’t come into it. He’s by far the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met, with his ice-blue eyes and the dishevelled black hair, and that smattering of stubble shading his jawline, but it’s not just how he looks. It’s the beautiful, sensitive soul hiding underneath so many layers of pain and hostility and fear. Someone who wanted what we all want deep down in our souls – to be loved, to be wanted, exactly as we are – and there’s something gorgeous about someone who can show enough vulnerability to admit that, even if he’s got to be a little bit intoxicated to do so.
He scrubs a hand over his face. ‘Oh, God, I drove here. My car’s in the Ever After Street car park. I’m going to have to get a taxi home and come back to collect it tomorrow. I’m such an idiot.’
‘Ren, stop. It’s not the end of the world. People have done worse things than get a tad tipsy without meaning to. I’m within walking distance on the other side of the river, you can stay with me.’
He goes to protest but I interrupt him again. ‘You’ve got nowhere to be, nothing to do, no one to be responsible for tonight, and I’m your designated adult. Let yourself go. Enjoy giving up a tiny shred of control.’
‘Enjoy… I don’t think I’ve enjoyed anything for years…’
‘And that’s a problem.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ It’s a mumble as he reaches up and tangles his fingers with the hand on his shoulder, pulls it down, and brushes his lips across the back of my hand.
His stubble is soft rather than scratchy and it makes me feel even more overheated than I was feeling anyway, especially when he holds my hand against his lips for a long few minutes, and when he pulls away, he doesn’t let go. Instead, he keeps hold of it, resting it against his chest, right over his heart, as he lets out another sigh and tries to relax, his thumb rubbing back and forth along the base of my thumb, and I get the feeling he needs something to hold on to. I fight the urge to lean down and hug him again, because he is adorable, and I feel ridiculously privileged that someone who tries so hard to be in control of everything has trusted me enough to let that control slip just for a little while.
We talk about anything and nothing, likes and dislikes, getting to know each other better while his walls aren’t up, and time trickles past like the water, until it must be nearly midnight, but I’m trying to embrace this sense of peace too. Neither of us have anything else to do tonight, and there are worse ways to spend a warm summer’s evening than on a riverbank with a man who, no matter how much time I spend with him, it’s never enough, and this is the most serene and content I can remember feeling for a long time too, and I’d be happy if this night didn’t end anytime soon.
Eventually, he starts to move. He shifts around to push himself into more of a sitting position with a few grunts and groans, and then leans back until he can catch my eyes again. ‘You’re not really going to Wales on your own, are you?’
‘Yes. I’m not keen on driving, but the diary is important to me. I want to know the truth behind it, and if going there can help uncover something then it’s worth it.’
‘I’ll drive.’
‘What, right now?’ I raise a teasing eyebrow, about to jokingly lecture him on the laws of drinking and driving.
‘Hah hah,’ he mutters and leans back to meet my eyes again. ‘No. All three of us. Let’s do it. Let’s go to Wales. Not right now, obviously. Whenever suits you. Me and Ava are free until school starts again, but you’ve got the shop to work around. Figure out the best time for you and we’ll go, get a hotel for a couple of days, see what we can find out.’
I squeal and he winces at the pitch too near his eardrum, suggesting he’s sobering up way too quickly. ‘You mean that?’
‘Yes. It’s not the sort of thing I’d ever do, but you make me want to be less… me, so yeah, why not?’
‘For those of us who like you exactly as you are, I don’t think that’s a good thing. Being you is okay.’
He makes a disbelieving noise and looks like he wants to say something else, and I decide to lighten the mood. ‘But so is not making me trek all the way to western Wales on my tod, so I’m going to hold you to that, even if you regret this conversation in the morning.’
He takes my hand again and lifts it to his mouth. ‘Suspect I’m going to regret a lot of things in the morning.’ His lips move against my skin, his soft stubble skimming across my hand, and then he lets go and sits forward. ‘We should go, shouldn’t we? This riverbank is having a detrimental effect on my ability to think straight.’
‘I don’t think it’s the riverbank, do you?’
He laughs as he pulls his shoes over and puts them back on, which takes a few more attempts than it usually would, and then he groans as he pitches himself upright and I scramble up to wrap an arm around him in case he slips on the smooth stones.
I carry the basket in one hand and keep my other arm wrapped around his waist, while his arm stays around my shoulders, and as soon as the ground is solid again, he stops and pulls away far enough to hold both arms open, inviting a proper hug.
I step into his embrace instantly, because the half-squeezes and awkward angles have been nowhere near enough tonight. His arms slide around my waist and he pulls me tight against him, so every inch of our bodies are touching. One hand reaches up so his fingers can tangle in the falling-down knot of my hair, and I lose track of time as we stand there, just holding each other.
He starts humming ‘Part of Your World’ and moving us around in a blocky, unsteady dance that makes me giggle and hold on even tighter in an attempt to stop us both toppling over. One hand stays on his back, while the other creeps up to tangle in the thick hair at the nape of his neck, and he lets out a shuddery, guttural groan and curls even further around me. His feet stumble at the touch so I keep doing it, letting my fingers stroke through the hair at the back of his head and dance across the nape of his neck, until he buries his face in my shoulder and squeezes me tighter.
‘That affection, I haven’t had that for years. There’s always an undercurrent of frustration running through me, and I don’t feel that tonight. Thank you for making me feel so loved, even just for a little while.’
I can feel my heartbeat throbbing in my head and my throat is tightening as words fight to get out. He’s so open that it’s heart-rending and I have never wanted to wave a magic wand and erase someone’s pain more than I do right at this moment. It would be so, so easy to lift his head and pull his mouth down to mine right now, and I want to. Oh, how I want to.
And I know he’s feeling it too. ‘It’s been so long since I felt like this. I wish, just for a while, to feel wanted. Desirable. I wish you’d kiss me.’
He doesn’t know what he’s saying, I tell myself, as I let out a semi-hysterical laugh. ‘I’m not kissing you when you’re drunk. I’m not kissing you when you’re sober either, for that matter.’
‘Aww, why not?’ He lifts his head from my shoulder and meets my eyes, sounding like even he isn’t sure whether he’s serious or not.
‘Because you are wanted. You are desirable. And you are going to regret this in the morning. And so am I,’ I mutter to myself as I reach up and let my thumb brush over the hair darkening his jaw as I cup his face. ‘You have the softest stubble. Stubble by definition is prickly, but yours is like a layer of down covering your face.’ I turn my hand around and let the backs of my fingers rub over his cheeks. ‘And the most beautiful eyes. God, your eyes, Ren. They’re so blue and so sharp. I’ve never seen eyes like yours before.’
Maybe it’s me who should be more careful with what I’m saying. I don’t know what’s come over me tonight, but I suddenly want him to know everything I’m feeling about him.
His eyes are grey in the moonlight, and I know we’re on more dangerous ground than the slippery river rocks just now, but it’s physically impossible to look anywhere else. ‘You have the most kissable cheeks.’
I know I should take my hands off him and step far, far away, but I cup his face again, my fingertips grazing along his jaw. His eyes close as I push myself up on tiptoes until I can touch my lips to his warm cheek. It’s soft, lingering, and tender, and the tip of my nose rubs against his skin, and the noise he makes is full of longing. He slumps against me as his whole body goes boneless, making me wonder how long it’s been since someone kissed this man.
‘Didn’t think I’d ever feel like this again.’ After a while of holding him tight, he blinks wide eyes open and lifts his head so he can meet my eyes. ‘Peaceful. Content. Happy.’
‘Hammered?’ I offer, making him giggle.
‘I’m fine. Just a little bit… wonky.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ I mutter.
‘You’re not.’
‘Oh, I am. You know that. You’ve spent the past three weeks criticising my shop because of how wonky my approach to life has become. But the diary has inspired me. Whoever she was, she didn’t have it easy, but she still…’
‘…let herself believe in love?’
I pull back to look into his unfocused eyes again. ‘I did not expect you to finish a sentence like that.’
‘Seem to be doing a lot of things I never usually do tonight, and for the first time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.’
‘Neither do I.’ Against my better judgement, I lean up and kiss his cheek again. ‘Not at all.’