Chapter Eleven #2
“If you want to see more, I’ll take you up to Will’s farm one night. He’s another mate of mine and he owns a sheep farm just outside of town—there’s very little light there. You’d be able to see everything.”
“I’d like that,” Henry said.
I nodded. “All right then, I’ll sort it.” I never thought I’d be offering to take Henry stargazing but here I was. There was just something about him that prodded at the squishy bit inside my heart that I’d been trying to keep away from the world. It terrified me, but I didn’t know how to stop it.
We kept on walking and it didn’t take us long to reach the front of The Everest, which was part of a row of shops and restaurants just off the town centre.
The waiter immediately recognised Henry, but after a moment of wide-eyed disbelief and a look from Cas, he went straight into professional mode.
He whisked us away to a small table in a corner, promising that he’d make sure we got some space while seating Cas at a nearby table where he could keep an eye on us without making it feel like we were being babysat.
Henry thanked the waiter with a charming smile, but as we sat down, I realised it was slightly different from the ones he’d given me the last few times we’d been together.
The one he’d used felt calculated and polished—the result of years of media training and interaction with fans—but the ones he’d given me had felt more genuine.
It made the lead butterflies return in full force.
“Are you okay?” Henry asked, looking up from his menu to peer at me. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just… I haven’t been out for dinner in a while,” I said, deciding to dive into the deep end of sharing and hope it drowned the butterflies. “I don’t get out a lot.”
“Too busy with work?”
“Something like that.”
“Or is it because you don’t date?”
“That too. Kinda hard to go out to dinner when you don’t have anyone to go out with. Noah and I did it a couple of times, but he’s a teacher and he’s always got shit to do. Sometimes I’ll get food at the pub on a Friday when we all hang out together, but that’s different.”
“You could go out for dinner by yourself,” Henry said. “I’ve done it several times and it’s always very relaxing.”
“Or I could just get a fucking takeaway and sit on my sofa and play God of War.”
Henry laughed and it felt like being caressed by a summer breeze. “Or you could do that.”
We ordered some drinks and food, and the waiter brought us some poppadoms and a selection of chutneys. I snapped off a piece as I tried to summon up the courage to start a conversation. My small talk skills were broken and rusty, if they’d ever existed to start with.
“So… What do you do when you’re not working?”
“It depends,” Henry said as he snapped off his own piece of poppadom.
“If I’m in the middle of filming but I’ve got downtime, like evenings and the occasional weekend, I usually just read, catch up on shows I’ve missed, try and call people, maybe even see them if they’re not too far away.
I’ve got a Switch too, so I’ve been playing a couple of games on that, but I’m not the biggest gamer.
I’ve taken to building LEGO sets too but that’s usually when I’m at home between projects. ”
“Where is home? LA?”
“London. I’ve got a nice flat there. I’ve got a place in LA too, but home is London. It’s where I grew up and it’s always been where I’ve come back to. I don’t like LA. It feels like work.” He smiled softly. “What about you? Have you always lived in Heather Bay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve thought about leaving—most of my friends did, at least for university—but it never appealed. I’ve visited big cities but I don’t like them. Heather Bay is home, and I can’t see that changing.”
“You don’t think you’ll get bored?”
“No, why would I?” I felt suddenly defensive.
Lane, my only friend who’d stuck around Heather Bay after school, and I had heard this over and over throughout the years from people who thought we were throwing our lives away by staying here.
“It’s small, but it’s my home. And it’s all well and good telling people to move to bigger places where things are supposedly better, but nobody ever thinks about what happens to the places they leave behind.
If everyone my age and younger moved away, there’d be nothing left here—the whole town’d just stagnate.
Better for people who want to stay to stay and make it a place worth living in. ”
“I’m sorry,” Henry said, holding up his hands. It seemed to be his instinctive defensive manoeuvre. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Sorry,” I said, jabbing a piece of poppadom into the mango chutney with more force than necessary. “I know I sound like a prick. You were just asking.”
“And you were just answering.” He reached for the poppadoms and broke off a large chunk. “I’ve never lived anywhere smaller than London before, so it’s not something I’ve ever thought about, and I got into acting when I was still quite young, so that’s always meant travelling.”
“Do you mind?”
“The travelling? Not really. Sometimes it’s a bit tiring to just live out of suitcases, but it does mean I’ve seen some interesting places.”
“I’ve never been abroad,” I said. “Don’t even have a passport.”
“Didn’t even fancy a lads’ holiday to Ibiza?”
“Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything worse,” I said with a wry smile. “Besides, the only people I’d have gone with were Lane, Oliver, and Noah, and at eighteen… yeah, that wasn’t happening.”
“Did they not get along?”
I snorted. “Sort of.” I quickly relayed to him the story of Lane and Oliver’s messy teenage breakup and Lane’s decision to basically wallow in self-pity for ten years. And Noah had never been the Ibiza clubbing type.
Henry chuckled. “Yeah, unleashing a broken-hearted teenage boy on Ibiza is never a good plan.”
“He’d have come back with a tramp stamp, alcohol poisoning, and a massive phone bill,” I said.
“Some people like tramp stamps,” he said. “Do you have one to go along with your sleeves?” He pointed at my tattoos and I glanced down at them. I’d had them for so long that sometimes I forgot they existed. They were just part of my skin.
“No.” I grinned. “But I have my chest done and a couple on my legs. I’d like to get my back done but that shit’s expensive.”
“It is! I didn’t realise how expensive they were until I got mine, and I’m pretty sure Izzy only charged me mate’s rates.”
“You’ve got tattoos?” I asked, my mind going suddenly blank. Fuck, I’d always found men with ink attractive.
“Just the one for now. Just here.” He ran a finger down his side, indicating both the place and size. “I got it done last summer.”
“Fucking hell, you got your ribs done for your first tattoo? That’s hardcore.”
“I know. In my defence, Izzy tried to warn me off it and told me it would be the most painful experience of my life, but I thought he was exaggerating! But I only cried once.”
I shook my head, not sure whether to be shocked or awed by Henry’s casual decision to get his ribs tattooed. “You really are something else.”
“Is that another compliment?” he asked with a shit-eating smile that I shouldn’t have found endearing. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling anything except cool neutrality for Henry, and yet my brain had decided to attach something like attraction to him, like a barnacle on a rock. Double fuck.
“It’s a statement.”
“It still sounds like a compliment.”
“Credit where credit’s due, I guess. I don’t know many people who’d sit through that. What did you get?”
“It’s a geometric pattern. Hang on, I’ve got a photo somewhere.
” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling through it.
When he’d found what he wanted, he turned the screen around and I was suddenly confronted with a picture of Henry shirtless, posing in a mirror and showing off the tattoo.
“There we go. That’s after it’d healed.” He zoomed the photo in so I could see more of the detail, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from lingering on the soft curves of his muscles or the dusty pink colour of his nipples.
God fucking dammit. I’d hoped my sex drive and desire for any kind of attachment would’ve died a slow, boring death by now since I refused to acknowledge either of them most of the time, but apparently putting one shirtless man in front of me was like waving a fucking steak in front of a starving dog.
“That’s really fucking pretty,” I said finally, not sure if I was referring to the tattoo or the man it was inked on.
“Thanks,” Henry said. “It was worth getting stabbed with a million needles.”
“Do you want another one? They can be kind of addictive.”
“I’ve definitely thought about it. I’m just not sure what to get.” He grinned and picked up his glass to take a sip of the beer he’d ordered. “Actually, that’s a lie, I know what I’d get. I just have too many ideas to choose from and I don’t know which one to start with.”
“That’s always the hardest part,” I said. “But maybe next time pick somewhere less painful.”
“If I do, will you come and hold my hand?”
His question surprised me and I found myself agreeing before I could think it through. “Sure. Maybe I’ll get one too.”
“That would be amazing! I think you’d love Izzy. He’s awesome.” He grabbed his phone again, pulling up his artist’s Instagram and talking me through how they’d met. It was so sweet and sincere, and it made me think about how I was with my friends.
I knew they’d have to meet Henry at some point, and I’d rather do it in my own way than let them catch me off guard. But I already knew it would need to be sooner rather than later. Then I’d have plenty of people to catch me when I started to fall for him.