4. Bash
4
BASH
The only lie he’d ever told himself was that he didn’t have feelings for Faye.
Okay, it wasn’t the only lie. But it was the most important one. The one Bash thought of every day. Just a tiny little insignificant omission that snowballed since not long after they’d met.
Eighteen year old Faye had been an unexpected gift, adorable with her long braids that’d been brunette back then and tote filled with supplies hitched on her shoulder. Bash hadn’t known it then, but his life had changed that day when they’d stumbled into one another. Some sort of fate had been on his side like two stars colliding when the only seat left had been the one next to his.
And now he couldn’t go a day without her; he didn’t want to.
He’d spent that first year falling out of lust (he wouldn't have called it love) with Kiera, his then-girlfriend, and sat by as she became more and more disinterested in him. It’d been the most amicable of break-ups in existence. Dissolving into nothing more than study dates, hello’s and goodbyes without either of them ever pulling the plug. They’d strung out the dregs of their relationship until that last thread had broken.
And the reason why he hadn't been heartbroken in the aftermath? Faye . She’d tended to his non-existent wounds and given him her friendship in full force, whereas before, he’d realised, she’d only been on seventy percent. Yes , he’d noticed how she would withhold herself whenever Kiera was around and they were in the same space. Bash assumed it was some sort of a ‘girl-code’ thing for when a boyfriend had another woman for a best friend.
It had taken him a year after that break-up to realise he wanted his friendship with Faye to be all in, and more. How much he wanted her had hit him like a train. He’d gone flying from the force, literally , when he’d sprung up from his bed to tell her and fallen over when his feet tangled in the straps of his backpack.
But he’d missed his chance.
That evening, he’d forgotten Faye wasn’t at home, so had impatiently waited as their other housemates came and went. He iced his sore knee from the tumble and finally, finally, heard the front door open and the siren song of Faye’s laughter.
In those hours, he’d prepared the exact words to say to her. Instead of writing an essay on the influences of European cultures on interior design in the mid-nineties, he’d written an essay on his feelings for Faye.
He’d mapped it all out in his head.
He’d left his bedroom, turned the corner at the top of the stairs and?—
He’d frozen.
Ice water had drowned his heart to find Faye’s dimly lit silhouette in their doorway with her arms wrapped around her new boyfriend, and that guy’s hand sneaking up her skirt. She hadn’t swatted him away, clearly wanted his attention, and Bash hadn’t been able to look. He’d wandered like a ghost with his tail tucked between his legs back to his room and slept until well after his alarm should have woken him.
That alarm jolted him awake today, ten years later. His schedule meant he’d be working from home on preliminary design concepts for a client, then reading over his business partner, Bennet’s, measurement report that he’d been on-site gathering in Spain this week, but he still wanted to pop down to his favourite place for his morning coffee.
He would normally wait until the evenings to call his older brother for one of their bi-weekly chats, but this time, as he walked to Faye’s bakery, he couldn’t wait.
“Hey, what’s up?” Matthieu answered the phone on the fifth ring.
“Hey. You’re not commuting are you?” Bash asked as he looked over at the lines of barely moving road traffic, The Green Park on the other side of the street not looking quite so green this December morning. “Sorry, I know it’s early.”
“I just got to my office. Is something wrong?” The concern lining his big brother’s tone was genuine; he never called whilst the sun still blinked awake.
Apart from Faye, Freddy, Maisie and Sienna, Mathieu was his best friend. He’d like to say he’d always been, but for a good portion of their childhood Bash had hated his guts. Matt was four years his senior and they’d never clicked, not until Bash followed in his brother’s footsteps and moved to London for university. Matt had been in his fourth year of medical school and likely instructed by their parents to make sure his little brother was okay – that he transitioned from living at home to surviving out on his own. Which explained why suddenly his brother became hard to shake off.
First, it’d been as a familiar face on early nights out. Then there’d been the random drop-ins with a takeaway in Matt’s hand. Bash would’ve been annoyed by his brother’s helicopter parenting if Matt hadn't kept him on the right path more than a few times.
He drew the zip on his coat up higher to ward off the cold. “I have a bit of a situation.”
There was a pause on the line, then a sceptical “What kind of situation?”
Tugging on his ear, Bash blew out a breath as he navigated his way along the main roads towards Covent Garden. He could’ve taken the tube in a third of the time, but decided the walk would do him good instead.
“I might have agreed to marry Faye.”
Silence.
Then Matt began to laugh. Not just laugh, but howl.
“It’s not funny ,” he insisted, though he’d half expected this reaction. Matt was the only one who knew how he felt about Faye – the only one who he’d told outright.
Yet another impulsive mistake.
“It’s hilarious! You’ve fancied Faye ever since you’ve known her and now you’re going to jump ship and marry her? How is this happening?”
“I don’t know.” Whining, Bash moved himself out of the way of the morning foot traffic and ducked beneath an eave of some Regency-style gentleman club’s front door. Out of the vague attempt at sunlight, the air dipped five degrees. “I was walking her to a taxi last night?—”
“Thursday jazz night?”
“Yeah.” He recanted the brief conversation about his empty life. “And she said, ‘if worst comes to worst, I’ll marry you’. Just like that. Out of nowhere.” Bash’s tone had inched higher and higher until he found himself squeaking.
The thought of being with Faye, let alone marrying her, had been an impossible dream. And she’d given him a way in, written in stone and presented upon the shiniest silver platter all of London’s elite could afford. He’d been jilted so out of his mind that he’d fallen right into the road and ruined a shoe.
“What did you say back?” Shuffling of paper on the other end meant Matt had put his phone on speaker.
“Nothing … ” Bash tugged on his unoccupied ear and pulled his beanie further down into place, clearing his throat. “I fell off the curb and into the drain. My white Converse are in the wash as we speak.”
“That was smooth of you.” Another arid laugh.
“Shut up,” Bash grumbled. Matt was going to mock him for life for the way he’d reacted. He should never have said anything.
But excitement swirled with disorientation from Faye’s offer and bounded inside of him like a bat out of hell, and he didn’t know what to do.
Even if she had only meant their potential marriage to be a platonic agreement, there was no pre-designed model for dealing with a proposal from the one woman you wanted but who didn’t want you in return. She’d said so herself. Friends saving friends from a life of misery. Emphasis on the F word.
Something heavy clunked down upon Matt’s desk. “If you wanted sympathy, you shouldn’t have called me, Seb.”
‘ Not for this ’ went unspoken. Like typical brothers, lighter topics were a ball tossed in the air and they were the two over-eager spaniels mucking around with it.
“I didn’t have anyone else to call. If I tell the guys about this, then they’ll rib me for days, if not the rest of my life.”
“Well if you really want my advice—” Bash started to regret it. “Then I’d say you can either wait it out and hope Faye never finds the love of her life so you can enact this marriage pact.” Which Bash knew was entirely selfish and unfair on Faye, but he half considered it. Matt added, “Or you could actually tell her how you feel and save yourself some time.”
Something cold above Bash’s gut swirled and descended down like he’d swallowed ice. Actually tell her how you feel. He could have laughed. If he had the balls to do that, then he wouldn’t be in this scenario at all.
He stood between the Georgian columns of the doorway, bundled in his padded winter jacket, and stared blankly at at least twenty faces who passed him by before he shook himself. This conversation was getting ridiculous.
“You’re right,” he snipped, “you’re no help at all.”
“I’m only telling you what you already know. ”
Bash hmpfed.
Keys jangled from the inside of the door behind him and a withered grey man in a pristine suit glared up at him through the glass.
It was time to go.
Swiftly, Bash inserted himself within the flow of pedestrians heading in the general direction towards Covent Garden.
“You still there?” The general sounds of foot traffic and vehicles almost overpowered Matt’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m here.” He tucked his arm further into himself and held the phone closer to his ear as he dodged chewing gum on the ground.
“Change of topic, if you’re done pining,” Matt said.
Bash withheld an irritated growl.
“I confirmed with Maman ? * that the four of us will be going home for Christmas. You’re coming, right?”
“I think my arse will be handed to me if I didn’t,” he replied, and the woman walking beside him gave him an unamused side-eye.
“True. Maybe you should bring Faye?”
Bash’s spine prickled. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re in love with her and you need to tell her.”
Bash rolled his eyes. It would be nice, if just for one minute, Matt could refrain from telling him the same thing over and over. The outcome wasn’t going to change.
“Plus it’s Christmas,” Matt added. “It’s romantic. The best time for you to tell her that you want to?—”
“I thought you had a lecture to get to?” Bash expertly dodged that bullet.
“I’m sure my students won’t complain if I don’t turn up.”
Bash’s brow cocked as he stopped to cross a side road and looked both ways. “I’m sure they will for having to get out of bed for a nine a.m lecture you yourself didn’t turn up to.”
“Alright, I’m going. Let me sort out this mess of paperwork in peace.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon,” Bash said as he moved between a couple of stationary cars.
“Right. Love you little brother.”
“Yeah, I love you too.”
Bash had known the way to Baked By The Dozen by heart since two months before it opened, when he’d been up a ladder painting walls pastel peaches and pinks and hammering floral-themed paintings from local artists above the windows. It wasn’t too difficult, since he only lived a few tube stops and a brisk five minute walk away, which was nice. There was peace in his mind knowing he could be here so quickly if Faye ever needed him.
Slowing his stride, he could see her through the pink and green fronted windows, shoulder deep as she reached into a glass display case to arrange her doughnuts. Faye’s presentation was the most aesthetically pleasing, non-furniture based thing Bash would see today.
One of those giant clips she liked to snap onto his clothes without him noticing held back her blonde hair, and she didn’t look a day older than when they’d met.
It physically hurt him to hear that she ( misguidedly ) believed no guy would ever look at her, but Bash knew every freckle on her face. He could pick out her exact eye colour from a paint swatch, like ripened acorns in autumn with their flecks of caramel and gold. And he’d never regathered that burst of courage he’d had when he was twenty to tell her again.
Still, he couldn’t fathom ever being able to rid his heart of her.
The door with the white frame that’d taken him a whole morning to strip back the grungy brown paint from the previous shop made no sound when he stepped in. Chandra, Faye’s assistant, served a pair of customers at the till, and he didn’t disturb the relaxed atmosphere as he took it all in.
Faye clocked him standing across the room of round tables and comfy chairs and smiled the way which made Bash remember why he adored her. He offered up his usual wave whilst she placed the last doughnut in the cabinet from the stack of empty trays beside her.
The paying customers took an empty table by the front window with their mocha-chinos concoctions and doughnuts, and Bash slid up to the vacated space, chirping, “Hello there.”
In the corner of his eye, Chandra – with a knowing smile he’d seen all too often – already turned to the fancy coffee machine and frothed up his usual latte.
“Hey,” Faye said breezily as the obnoxious coffee machine loudly steamed up the milk. She looked adorable in her green Baked By The Dozen apron, waving her gloved hand at the perfectly organised doughnuts. “Which do you want?”
“ Oof , none today.” Wincing, Bash flattened down the front of his jacket and held himself taut. “Will have to run an extra mile otherwise.”
Faye gave him a displeased look.
I know. I know. He gave himself that look too. But some habits died hard. Others needed a chainsaw and copious amounts of mortal peril … He was working on it.
“Speaking of, are we still good for tonight?” he asked her.
“Absolutely,” she said with a cheerier glint in her eyes.
It’d started last year in the darker months where he’d set out for his evening run and Faye would sometimes join him. They made a circle around the streets and through a park, delivering her back to her flat before returning to his own home.
They’d only begun running together when she’d thought she’d been followed home one night and panicked, calling him after locking every door and window she could and turning on every light. Hearing how terrified she was had broken Bash’s heart, so since then he’d changed his evening route for her so they could jog together in the winter. “I feel so much safer with you here,” she'd told him after that first night, and his anger had risen like a flash flood in the desert that she’d ever felt unsafe at all.
Still, with the extra miles he was putting in, he surely felt trimmer for it.
“And Bash?” Faye said.
“Yeah?”
Her lips began to lift, her voice soft. “Have a doughnut if you want one.”
If you want one. A choice that’d long ago controlled him every single day.
The encouragement in Faye’s eyes as she cast obvious glances back and forth to the display case made his held breath turn into a sigh and a smile. Bash couldn’t say no to her bakes in the same way he’d learned over time to say yes to himself, and the unhealthy thought of how much distance he would have to add to his next run receded.
In an odd way that probably wouldn’t make sense to anybody else, Faye was his chainsaw, and he didn’t even think she knew it.
“Okay.” He scanned the newest of the designs within the display case, ones he was yet to have tried. “I’ll have the Red Nosed Reindeer, please.”
Faye scooped the doughnut into a paper bag – she’d gone with the red, coated chocolates for the nose after all – and Chandra set an eco-friendly to-go cup down in front of him. Bash thanked them both.
“How’s your morning been?” he asked Faye, letting the heat of the cup warm his palms.
The rubber of her catering glove snapped as she said, “Crap.”
Bash’s brow pinched at that answer.
Faye sighed a noise that was far too heavy for nine a.m and tossed the old pair of gloves into a bin beneath the counter. “The bloody boiler has gone again and the whole building is cold. I asked the couple who live upstairs and they said they have the same problem.”
A little over one week before Christmas? Crap indeed.
Not even the prospect of a doughnut and latte could wipe the grimace from Bash’s face while Chandra silently ran up his order in the till. “You’re getting it fixed though, right?”
“Hopefully. Along with every other person in all of Greater London, apparently. There’s no one able to come and see to it for the next four days.”
“Four days! Gheez.” Bash pulled his card from his wallet and swiped it over the reader.
“Yep. And if no one fixes it in those four days, then it’ll be impossible until after Christmas.”
Sliding his wallet back within the recesses of his pocket, Bash popped the lid off of the coffee cup and blew steam away before he burned his tongue. The correct thing to do would be to offer up his spare room to her – his house was more than big enough – though he wasn’t going to be there himself over the Christmas period.
He didn’t know why Faye didn’t live with him anyway. Purely as housemates, of course, even though he would kick himself for tempting a bite of the forbidden fruit by living with her again.
His house was closer to Baked than Faye’s flat, and he’d subtly offered a few times that she could move in. Every time something went wrong with her flat, Bash was left wounded like a sick puppy that she wouldn’t let him help her out.
He’d bought the house after his first big – ridiculously big – client had hired him to design for a property with a budget of several million pounds. That project had earned him a substantial commission and thrust his and Bennet’s names firmly into the international luxury interior design market. It’d been more than any amount Bash had known what to do with. He still didn’t know what to do when payday rolled around, years later. To see the numbers jump in his bank statements the way they did was obscene.
He didn’t know what to do for himself, so instead he made sure his friends and family were secure. He spoiled his two nieces within the bounds that Matt and his wife, Saira, were comfortable letting him do. He’d paid for his parents to have a nice holiday when their fortieth wedding anniversary came around last year. He bought rounds of drinks when he was with his friends and tipped the staff at restaurants, and he donated to more charities than he could count.
Fixing Faye’s boiler wouldn’t put even a chip in his balance. But it wasn’t about the money, it was about her . He couldn’t go back to his Georgian terraced home in its cosy little square with its fully functioning heating knowing that she had none, and she wouldn’t likely let him help her, unless …
Matthieu was a genius.
Bash kept his eyes down and blew on the steam escaping from the latte’s replaced lid. With what his brother had said to him on the phone haunting in his ear, he wondered, “Why don’t you … come to ours for Christmas?”
The bakery silenced as if someone had gasped.
The cup whistled as he blew and dared to peer up at Faye. Chandra was the only one who blinked back at him.
“To yours?” Faye sounded more than a little unsure.
Here goes nothing.
Bash nodded as he ignored how impulsive he sounded. “I know I told you that I’m going up to see my family. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you tagging along. Matt and his girls will be there too.”
“Oh, no I couldn’t do that.” Faye’s nervous laughter didn’t convince him at all. She plucked up the empty baking trays from the counter. “Thanks for the offer though.”
“Why not? At least you wouldn’t be on your own and in a cold, heating-less flat.” He made it sound like she was an orphan child from the eighteenth century.
“You can’t just invite a stranger to your family’s Christmas.”
Now Bash was the one who laughed. “You’re not a stranger, Faye. You’ve met my parents and Matt.”
Her cheeks grew more and more flushed. “Yes, but I haven’t ever invited myself round for a long weekend with them at your family home.”
Bash gazed at her, because she had no idea, did she? How much she was his family.
“That house is unnecessarily huge,” he said. “There’s enough space, don’t worry. And you didn’t invite yourself, I did.” Faye spluttered a protest whilst Bash pulled his phone out of his jeans’ back pocket, already pressing the contact. “Look, I’ll just call Maman right now and tell her that you’re coming.”
“Bash – what? No don’t you dare?—”
He dipped back out of reach of her hand shooting for his phone, or his head. Both were debatable.
His mother answered quickly.
“ Salut Maman! Oui, tout va bien ? * . I was just wondering if there’d be room for one more over Christmas?” Met with curiosity down the phone, Bash tapped his foot on the floor whilst Faye stared at him like a guppy. “Yeah, just Faye. She’s going to be on her own otherwise and her boiler’s knackered, so I thought she could come and relax with us.” His mother might actually have squealed as she agreed. “Great, thanks, I’ll tell her … Oui , I love you too.”
He replaced the phone back in his pocket and looked up. Two pairs of eyes at the opposite ends of the spectrum of denial stared at him. His were only for Faye.
“You’re coming for Christmas.” His smugness overflowed in his broad smile.
Faye’s eyes roamed all over his face. “Don’t I have a choice?”
“Nope. I’m kidnapping you.” Bash’s smile widened purposefully, smugly enough to be met with a thinly veiled scowl. He took his bagged doughnut and latte cup. “Right, got to go. See you at seven?”
“Sure.”
“Bye Chandra!” he called along the length of the bakery, ignoring the few heads that turned to him with a great deal of effort.
“See you tomorrow,” Chandra called back.
“Bye Peanut.”
The door closed behind him slowly enough for him to catch Faye’s soft, “Bye you.”
* ? Mum
* ? Hi mum! Yes, everything’s fine