Chapter 4 #2
“I know,” she said softly, finally, because it was the only productive thing she could say.
The other options were fight more, or admit all of these truths swirling through her brain.
Truths she’d never been able to find the right words for.
“For what it’s worth, it isn’t fair of Sorcha to push you that way.
It isn’t a decision you can just lunge into, and you’re anything but selfish for wanting to think about it. ”
Cam’s lips quivered with the promise of a smile. “Aye, that’s what I was looking to hear. Thank you. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to get very drunk.”
“And to remind Eiley how to flirt,” Harper agreed, tapping her glass against Cam’s in cheers.
Her watermelon slice plopped into her drink.
“Who shall we start with? That man serving smoothies over there?” She pointed to a tall, lanky man in a dark suit delivering a tray of drinks to a rowdy group of tanned women.
“Sorry, what?” Eiley reared back in bewilderment. “No. No, that’s not at all what we’re here for.”
“Yes, it is, because you had a vibe with big sexy Hercules at the tavern the other night, but you sort of squashed it.”
Cam almost choked on her straw. “Big sexy Hercules? You mean, the fella who hit on my wife ?”
Harper flapped her hands, as though brushing Cam’s point away. “Yes, but you have to admit that was very funny.”
“He told Eiley she has a stick up her arse!”
“I know!” Harper’s eyes gleamed. “Excellent inspiration for my next book, I have to say. Enemies to lovers, baby!”
Eiley rolled her eyes. “Nobody wants to read about a man like him.”
Even if she’d been stewing over his cocky, wolfish grin for days. He really had been awful, flirting with her like that. Like she was just some …
Well, woman he fancied in a bar. But to chat up her sister-in-law first!
It was so typical – a cliché really – that an excessively attractive guy turned out to be a superficial playboy, eager to flirt with anything that had a pulse.
He hadn’t been interested in Eiley. He’d been interested in satisfying his wee tadger.
Well, he’d have to keep searching. He likely wouldn’t have to try very hard, what with the muscles and the overconfidence and the chiselled face. Thank goodness she’d seen through them.
“Oh, yes,” Harper deadpanned, “because straight romance is full of kind, humble men who would never piss you off.”
She did have a point, but Eiley wasn’t in a romance book, and besides, she never found rude alpha males all that attractive even in fiction.
She’d always preferred Bingley to Mr Darcy.
Liked to know where she stood with someone.
And after Finlay, she’d never put up with disrespect again.
“Well, I’ve had enough of enemies to lovers.
If you want inspiration for your next book, I want friends to lovers.
With a kind cinnamon roll who would never hurt anybody.
One not inspired by my brother next time, preferably. ”
“Actually, my next book is sapphic.” Harper grinned. “Rival figure skaters.”
“Thank god,” Cam muttered.
“Even better. I need a break from men.” Eiley had never really delved too deep into her sexuality, but she enjoyed reading queer romance as often as she did straight pairings.
With Cam coming out quite early in life, she’d always known that her attraction wasn’t restricted to one gender, and the butch lesbians and sunshine femmes of lesfic novels, introduced to her by Harper, were just as enjoyable.
She’d actually harboured a crush on Andy for a good few years in her teens, a fact she’d never admit to anyone.
She’d never settled on a label, mostly because she’d never needed to.
Certainly not now, when she wasn’t dating at all.
“Seriously,” Harper continued. “Don’t you miss a bit of cheeky harmless flirting? It might be good for you.”
“Or we could get back in the pool and you could force my head under water until I drown. That might be less painful.” Eiley lay back down, sipping her drink only to find it was empty. “Anyway, tell me more about sapphic ice skaters.”
She didn’t want to think about relationships, or her lack of, anymore.
“Harper has a point,” Cam chimed in. “What if this nerdy cinnamon roll soul mate you speak of—”
“I never said he was nerdy,” Eiley cut in.
“Well, if he’s dating you, he’ll have to be. Anyway, what if he walks into the bookshop one day, looking all Clark Kent-like, and you think to yourself, ‘if only I’d practised flirting beforehand so we could have an actual conversation?’”
Eiley let out an agitated pfft . “On the off-chance Superman happens to turn up in Belbarrow, I suppose I’ll just have to miss my chance. After Finlay, I’m past believing in soul mates or any of that stuff. I don’t want another relationship. I just want a really good, uninterrupted night’s sleep.”
Harper pouted, and Eiley ignored her. For the first time, she realised her words were true.
She didn’t want another relationship. She was happy where she was, with people who loved her despite her bad days, just out of her comfort zone enough to feel proud of herself.
She certainly had no interest in flirting.
Especially not with Coffee Giant, who would have been an insufferable rake if they were in a historical romance novel, one unchaperoned interaction away from syphilis. She decided he was less Darcy and more Wickham.
No, she would keep to her harmless daydreams.
Harper fell back on her cushion with a huff, taking on the role of disappointed, melodramatic mother whose daughter was not in want of a husband. “Fine. I will have to find my muse somewhere else. I’ll just struggle along, inspirationless.”
Eiley smirked. See? She was already feeling much better. Who needed a sultry romance hero when they had a mad family like hers?
Well, she still sort of did; as soon as the girls waded back into the pool, she pulled out her current read and returned to a world where relationships were easy.
A world where people like her sometimes got happily ever afters.
A world where even the most conceited men turned out to be decent in the end.
The romance genre was beginning to feel more fantasy-like than Harper’s fairy tale.