Chapter Seventeen
Jess
Jess is enjoying herself. She has the flutter in her belly she recognises from when she’s in the flow of writing a good review, or interviewing an author who’s giving some fascinating, unexpected answers, or taking a photograph for Instagram with the light falling just right on her bookshelves.
She’s treading as carefully as she can, not wanting to unnecessarily hurt Alex or even cause him to bristle, if she can avoid it, but in her enthusiasm, it’s possible she is not being careful enough.
She makes as much eye contact as possible.
She touches his arm gently to communicate, she hopes, empathy and kindness.
She gets Jaffa cakes from her bag and offers them to him on a regular basis, usually just after suggesting they delete a scene she can tell he’s worked hard on or questioning the existence of a particular character – the novelist, say, who seems to be a stand-in for Alex himself, the kind of meta thing authors do sometimes that works best with a subtlety he has not quite brought to it.
‘Cup of tea?’ she asks now, after winning a battle on deleting some paragraphs from an overly long description of the plane’s fuselage.
Alex stretches, his arms high above his head, his grey T-shirt rising slightly to reveal a sliver of skin below his belly button.
Jess tries not to look; it feels oddly intimate that she would know the pattern of his body hair or the exact colour of his skin beneath his clothes.
It occurs to her that out there on the bookternet, there may well be some young women who would kill – possibly kill her – to be in this exact position right now, breathing in the same air as Alex Maxwell, being able to name the elements that make up his particular scent.
Sharing Jaffa cakes and the home-made flapjacks her grandma slipped her when she called in on the way to get her train.
Never mind getting to work with him. In her googling, in her research of the many online pages bearing the suave black-and-white author picture where he rests his chin on his upward-facing palm and gazes thoughtfully into, presumably, his own glorious future, she has found evidence of past workshops where people have paid thousands of pounds to do just that: to sit not quite as close to him as she is now and absorb the wisdom that she is getting for free.
Because she is getting wisdom from him too.
If it was up to her, she would, for example, merrily cut most of the descriptions and get straight to the action, to the meat of the relationships between the characters.
When he explains his narrative choices, when he sticks to his guns as to why certain things belong where they do, when he insists that certain characters retain the backstory he has given them – or certain long descriptions have a purpose besides showcasing his brilliant prose – she has to admit that it all makes a lot of sense.
He is thoughtful – the more considered yin to her sometimes hasty yang – and she knows that she can learn from that.
‘A cup of tea would be great, thank you,’ Alex says now.
‘Milk, no sugar?’
‘Exactly. Because—’
She resists the temptation to gently whack him on the back of the head.‘Don’t say it,’ she says instead.
He pouts, playfully she thinks (hopes!), clearly disappointed to have the wings of his terrible joke about sugar and sweetness clipped. ‘Okay,’ he says, relenting. ‘Fair.’
The pre-boiling hum and bubble of the kettle fills the silence, and she lets it.
She knows she has a tendency to talk, talk, talk, and she is gathering from Alex that he only speaks when there is something to say.
That silence is his lifeblood. That a whole weekend with her talking non-stop might actually kill him.
And, surprisingly, she finds that she definitely doesn’t want to do that.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks him, setting the cup of tea on a coaster to his left.
He looks a little frightened. Perhaps talk of feelings is a little much for a privately educated Englishman, even one who has spent time in America, where, if films and TV are any indication, everyone is forever discussing their emotions.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
She resists the urge to tease him by explaining what an emotion is.
‘About the work we’ve done so far. Are you happy with it?’
He chuckles, two quick breaths through his nose. Jess finds this endearing. ‘I don’t know about happy,’ he says. ‘I’m feeling a little bruised.’
‘Bruised in … a good way?’
Alex frowns. ‘How can a bruise ever be good?’
‘Well, you know. I went snowboarding in the Alps with my friend Lily last year, and it was harder than I thought it would be, and I spent the whole week on my backside, it felt like. And I came home covered in bruises. But every bruise was a reminder of the fun I’d had.
Learning something new. Breathing in air so clean it tingles in your nostrils.
The beautiful landscapes with all that bright white snow.
The belly laughs and late-night chats I’d had with my friend.
If I accidentally poked one of my bruises for a couple of weeks afterwards, it would hurt, but I’d also remember the good times, and it would make me smile. ’
‘I see,’ Alex says, nodding. ‘Well, this isn’t like that.’
This is a little disappointing. Jess had hoped Alex would be enjoying himself at least a little bit. Enjoying the flapjacks, at least. But she senses anxiety beneath his words and centres herself, resolving to be patient, to let him articulate his feelings.
‘I recognise we’re doing good work,’ he says.
‘I love your suggestion of breaking up long passages of description with some snappy dialogue. I think you’ve made some great points, and I admit that the book will be stronger for the work we’re doing.
But that’s not quite the same as, well … as snowboarding.’
‘Fair enough.’
This is progress, after all. A whole lot of progress when she considers how he clearly felt about writing with her back at the beginning of this whole thing.
He takes a long sip of tea, and she senses there’s more, that he’s formulating a sentence with his face hidden in his mug.
‘This isn’t easy for me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, Jess.’
She loves the way he says her name, the S almost imperceptibly there, gentle, like the softest tickle on the inside of her wrist.
Alex clears his throat. ‘I’m really impressed with what you’re bringing to this discussion. And I …’ He raises his head, makes eye contact. ‘I’m sorry that I was so rude to you during that first meeting. I’m sorry that I doubted you.’
Jess presses her lips together, aware of the blush creeping up her chest.
‘Second meeting, really,’ she says, deflecting.
‘What do you mean?’ The smile passes over his lips so quickly that it would have been possible to miss it. But Jess doesn’t.
‘I thought we had a moment in the bookshop. Then you acted like you’d never seen me before, and I thought maybe I’d imagined it.’
‘You didn’t imagine it,’ he says, his eyes still on hers. Her stomach flips over itself and, jolted, she has to look away, bury her own face in her own overly large mug of tea. ‘We did have a moment.’
This feels like another moment – here, now – but Jess is paralysed.
Without meaning to, she pictures herself walking over to his side of the table and leaning towards him, kissing his cheek.
She pictures him turning his face to her, finding her mouth with his.
She yanks her mind away from imagining him deepening the kiss, from thinking about what might happen next.
She wriggles in her seat, with pleasure and also to try to drag her mind and the responses of her body away from these things.
She takes another sip of the tea, hiding for as long as she can get away with, willing her blush to crawl back down her cheeks and her neck, down onto her chest, under her top.
When she can no longer get away with pretending there’s any tea left in her mug, Jess puts it down. She forces herself to look at Alex. He is watching her, a smile playing at the edge of his lips, and she can’t bear to look at him.
‘Moments like that aren’t very professional, I suppose,’ she says eventually, when she feels like she can trust her voice not to wobble and betray her.
‘No,’ he says. ‘But you know what they say about all work and no play …’
From the bottom of one of their bags, a phone rings. Neither of them makes a move to dig out their phone, to check who’s ringing. But the outside world has intruded, and this moment, like the bookshop moment, is over before it has even begun.
After all, maybe it’s Nathan, checking up on their progress.
They’ve barely been here a few hours; imagine having to tell him that they’ve got distracted, that maybe they’ll need a bit more time …
that, ahem, other things have got in the way.
Or maybe it’s Lily, who can read Jess like a book, who reads most of Jess’s life like a romance novel.
Jess would never hear the end of it if she was forced to admit to what is going on.
Besides, Alex is right. They are doing good work. It would be such a shame to knock that off course for the sake of a little fun. And how awkward would it be to criticise the sentence structure of a man whose bed you have just left – or whose bed you are still in?
They need to leave this cottage with a plan, with their heads held high, professional novelists worthy of the title.
Although Jess is beginning to think that maybe they shouldn’t be in a hurry to leave this cottage.
That maybe being stuck here with Alex for a few more days than originally planned would not be the worst thing in the world.
That maybe, despite the very reasonable points she is currently making to herself, it would be good if there was time for those, ahem, other things.