Chapter Five
Laurie
It was strange waking up without Theo beside me when I’d fallen asleep with him in my arms. I blinked and squinted, reaching my hand out wildly to pat the mattress as if he was somehow just out of reach.
The bed was still warm, suggesting he hadn’t been up for long, and when I lay still, I heard the faint strains of music coming from somewhere in the flat.
The old alarm clock sitting beside my bed said it was nearly half six and I frowned because Theo was never up early unless he hadn’t gone to sleep.
Sitting up slowly, I swung my legs out of bed and walked towards my bedroom door, grabbing my dressing gown off the hook on the back before pulling it open. It was slightly cooler this morning and I welcomed the freshness even though I knew it wouldn’t last long.
The kitchen door was pushed closed, obviously in an attempt to keep the noise down, because when I opened it I was greeted by thumping drum and bass that made my ears ring.
Theo was still in his pyjamas and dancing around the hob holding a flat spatula.
I watched him for a second, unable to take my eyes off the soft lines of his body.
I’d always thought Theo was the most beautiful person in the world, and every time I looked at him I found something new to appreciate.
Today it was the way the lace on his shorts highlighted the curve of his bottom and the softness of his thighs.
Theo was slim and not muscular, and the mint green and white of his pyjamas highlighted the tan his skin had picked up over the summer.
His thighs would look beautiful if they were tied, maybe in pink or baby blue.
Men in rope had forever been my weakness.
Theo turned and saw me, shooting me a beaming smile before reaching over to his phone to turn the music off. His hair was especially fluffy this morning, reminding me of duckling down.
“Good morning!” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, thanks. You’re up early. Did you not get much sleep?”
“I did, but I woke up absolutely starving, so I thought I’d make breakfast.” He turned back to the hob and flipped something over, sending a waft of warm bread and cinnamon towards me. “Plus you look super cute when you’re sleeping, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Thank you. That’s very sweet of you.”
“I know.” Theo shot me a grin over his shoulder.
“I’m making French toast because why the fuck not!
It’s just the regular kind, not the stuffed, because we don’t have any cream cheese, but I thought we could do this and use up some of the raspberries in the fridge before they go mouldy.
There’s golden syrup in the cupboard too. ”
“That’s perfect. Do you want tea?”
“Yes, please! I already filled the teapot. It should be stewed enough by now.”
I looked across to the opposite counter where our old red teapot stood on its mat under the knitted cosy I’d bought at the Castle’s Fright Night last year.
It was bright orange and shaped like a pumpkin, with a stem and curling vines coming out of the top.
Steam curled out of the kettle spout, and Theo had already put two mugs next to it.
“What time did you get up?” I asked as I crossed the kitchen and began to pour the tea.
“I don’t know. Half five? Quarter to six?
Something around then,” Theo said as he removed several thick golden slices of French toast from the frying pan and added several more from the dish of egg and milk next to him.
“These are the last ones, so it should only be about five minutes. Then you’ll have plenty of time if you want a shower before work. ”
There was something nagging at my brain as I finished making our tea and carrying it through to the living room where a small dining table pressed against the wall at one end. I didn’t know how to explain it or even what it was, but there was something weird going on.
It felt like the relationship between Theo and me had tilted even further off-kilter.
As much as I wanted to believe Theo had randomly woken up and decided to make breakfast, it wasn’t something that usually happened after Theo’s filming weekends.
I couldn’t remember the last time Theo hadn’t needed at least two alarms and me sticking my head around his bedroom door to nudge him awake.
Even if he was sharing with me, I normally had to prod and poke him to get up.
It made me wonder if anything had happened over the weekend. Whether Austin, or Jake, had said something about us.
I didn’t want to push, though. I knew if I mentioned it, things would get worse and I couldn’t deal with that. I just wanted things to go back to normal, but deep down I knew there was no going back after what Austin had said.
My feelings for Theo were complicated and always had been.
We’d connected online via Twitter six years ago, over some thread about embalming and being a mortician.
One comment had led to messages and eventually we’d become inseparable, talking all day and all night.
I’d been at university and Theo had been bouncing between relationships, but through everything we’d had each other.
And when the worst period of my life struck and I lost my grandfather and moved to Heather Bay to take over the business and care for my grandmother, Theo was there for me to cling to.
Every breath I’d taken made me feel like I was drowning, and when my grandmother had passed soon after, I’d thought the tide would sweep me out to sea.
Then Theo had come to visit me for the weekend. He’d slotted into my life so perfectly, like the puzzle piece I’d been missing for twenty-one years.
And he’d never left.
That period had been one of the worst of our lives, and we’d both been carrying a lot of grief and hurt with us, though from different things.
Mine from the sudden, stinging loss of two people who’d given me everything, and my rising struggle to continue their legacy.
Theo’s had been from his complex relationship with his parents and a run of emotionally abusive relationships where men had attempted to snuff out every spark that made Theo Theo.
He’d once said he’d gone from a terrible relationship with his parents into a series of worse ones with older men who’d started off as knights in shining armour but had slowly revealed themselves to be the villain.
They hadn’t had any magic spells or a tower to lock Theo away in, though, just deep wells of guilt, gaslighting, and emotional manipulation to throw him into.
Through our early years of friendship, I’d done my best to support and encourage him to break free of them, my heart aching for this beautiful man who deserved so much more than he was being given.
I may have been a lot younger than him, and had youthful inexperience on my side, but even I could see Theo’s light dimming with every day that passed.
The day he’d come to Heather Bay had been the day he’d severed the final link in the chain holding him down, and I’d never been happier.
Theo and I were nearly seven years apart in age, but it had never felt like it.
And it always amused me that people seemed to think Theo was younger than me rather than in his early thirties.
Theo found it hilarious too, playing coy when people asked and giggling maniacally when he told them the truth and their expressions dropped.
“Ta-da,” Theo said, his voice slicing through my spiralling thoughts. “Do you want me to put syrup on yours or do you want to do it?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. There was a limit to how much golden syrup I could stand on things, and it was not the several tablespoons that Theo used to drown both French toast and pancakes.
I walked back to the kitchen where Theo was artfully decorating the slabs of French toast with raspberries.
I’d almost expected him to use the fruit to draw smiley faces or penises, but instead he’d made little hearts on top of the golden cinnamon bread.
It made my heart catch, like someone had suddenly yanked on it while I was walking.
“That looks beautiful,” I said as Theo handed me the tin of syrup and a spoon. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome! I know it’s a bit extravagant for a Monday but why the fuck not? Even Mondays deserve nice things.”
I drizzled some syrup onto my toast, trying not to knock any of the raspberries over, before handing the spoon to Theo.
I knew he’d add half the tin to his plate before sucking the spoon clean and I didn’t know why I lingered to watch him.
At first I pretended it was because I needed to get cutlery out of the drawer, but that only took me a few seconds.
Then I just stood there staring while Theo drenched his toast and slid the spoon between his lips, humming happily.
Had Theo’s lips always been that soft and sweet looking? I couldn’t remember.
All I knew was they were plump and pink and curled into a contented smile.
I swallowed and blinked hard, trying to focus. But my eyes drifted back to Theo’s mouth and the drop of syrup clinging to the corner of his bottom lip. My tongue darted out to lick my lips as I imagined leaning forward and doing the same to Theo’s.
“Laurie? Laurie?” Theo asked. “Earth to Laurie.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. Hard. “I just spaced out for a second. I must not be awake yet.”
“That’s okay. I just wanted to ask if you had cutlery.”
“Yeah.” I held up the knives and forks in my hand. “I grabbed some.”
Theo looked at me for a second like he was deciding whether or not to ask a question and I braced myself for it. But all he said was, “Perfect, I’m so hungry!”
I tried not to let things be weird for the rest of breakfast, but now that I’d started noticing things about Theo, I couldn’t stop.
There was the way he ate the edges of his toast first, leaving the soft middle and the raspberries for as long as possible, and the way he unconsciously licked stray bits of syrup off his lips.
The way his eyes lit up when he talked about a new game he was excited about and how I needed to remind him to book holiday dates into the diary for when it came out so he could dive straight in.
“Although,” he said, thoughtfully spearing some raspberries with his fork. “They sometimes change the release date if they can’t get it all done, so I’ll wait as long as possible before I book anything. I don’t want to mess you around.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world if you swap a few days around.”
We weren’t the biggest team at Winchester & Sons, which made it easy to manage in a lot of respects, but some aspects, like making sure we had enough people to cover everything, could be tricky.
Although it wasn’t as if most of us jetted off for long tropical holidays every year.
I couldn’t remember the last time Theo and I actually went on holiday.
Theo usually used his days for filming or playing video games, and I very rarely used mine unless Theo prompted me to.
He had a habit of going back through the large diary on my desk to see when I’d last taken time off, and if it hadn’t been for a while, he’d write one in for the next day that I was free and forcibly eject me from the building if I tried to come in.
I had a suspicion he had roped Jonathan, our poor receptionist, into his schemes. Or at least used him as a lookout to sneak into my office.
“I know,” Theo said. “But I still don’t want to make your life difficult.”
“You could never do that,” I said, almost without thinking.
Theo grinned at me. “You know, part of me wants to take that as a challenge. But I’m not that mean.”
“That’s because you don’t want to know what would happen if you tried.” I’d meant for it to sound like an offhanded joke, but instead it came out almost teasingly. There was an underlying heat to the words I’d never felt before, and they hung in the air between us.
Theo stared at me, tilting his head to the side like he was trying to figure something out. And I heard his unspoken response echoing in my mind.
Yes, I think I do.