13. Bash
13
BASH
Bash shut the door to the lesser-used sitting room. Which of them had dragged the other in here didn’t matter: Matt had questions to ask, and Bash had warnings and thinly veiled threats to give.
The one person who explicitly knew of his feelings for Faye was now in the same house as her – that spelled “disaster” for him with a capital “D.”
He had approximately two minutes and a handful of seconds to persuade Matt to not be obvious about his knowledge for the next few days, before either his wife or their mother came looking for them.
“What happened to your cheek?”
Bash had lost count of the times he’d been asked that, and each time the answer got shorter. He wished the sting when he smiled too widely would fade just as quick.
“Tennis. Bennet. Ball.”
He moved them as far across the room into the corner as he could, away from the door, wedging himself between a displayed bowl of Arthur’s sea glass collection and an upright ladder draped with folded throws. With reluctance, Matt appeased him, then got straight to the interrogation Bash put off when he’d arrived.
“Why is Faye here?” Matt waggled his brows with a suggestiveness Bash wanted to wipe from his brother’s face. Instead, he repeated what he’d told their parents, and those waggling brows gradually lost their enthusiasm. “Why didn’t you just offer her your spare room?”
He scratched the back of his neck. That thought had been his first one, but his impulses had taken over. “This felt like the better idea.”
“An idea from your head or your?—?”
“You’re crass for a doctor – you know that?”
Matt opened his palms in a gesture at himself. “Do I look on call to you right now?”
Bash hmphed. But he couldn’t deny there was some truth to Matt’s cut off assumption. Ten percent at most. The remaining ninety sat chatting in the other room.
Matt carried on. “Faye’s smart?—”
“You barely know her.”
“She’s going to realise sooner or later how you feel about her.” Another foot of the space between them closed when Matt moved. “If you didn’t really want to tell her then you wouldn’t have invited her here.”
Maybe I was just being nice, Bash almost argued back, but what Matt said wasn’t entirely false.
They glanced at the door as a burst of laughter echoed from the kitchen.
Bash didn’t want any more ribbing about his feelings, or his lack of guts to express them. “We need to go before someone comes knocking.”
“Yeah. It’s not as if we need to make it obvious we’re talking about something,” Matt said, casually tucking his hands into his jeans pockets .
Bash dragged his hand down his face for the second time today. “If you say one word to Faye, I swear?—”
“Relax. I won’t say anything. But this secret of yours is giving me licence to hang it over your head until you sort it out.”
Bash didn’t doubt his brother would do that every single second he had the chance to. “Isn’t blackmail against your Hippocratic oath?”
“It’s do no harm , not do not embarrass your little brother about his crush .” That final word was said a little too loudly, given the bat ears in the kitchen.
“One word of this,” Bash huffed, “and I’m telling Saira the truth about that gift you gave to her for her birthday this year.”
Matt narrowed his eyes. “ One , you were supposed to have erased that from your memory. And two , you wouldn’t dare.”
Bash feigned ignorance, musing, “How does one ‘accidentally’ buy strawberry flavoured massage oil online?”
“I didn’t realise it was in the cart!” Matt hissed like a hackled cat. “It was just supposed to be the matching lace— You know what, we’re not talking about this.”
“Hm. Good.”
“ Good .”
They stared at one another. Then laughs burst from their chests.
“This is ridiculous.” Matt shook his head of hair sprinkled now with salt as well as pepper. “We’re too old for this.”
“And I really don’t want to be thinking about that gift.” There were some thoughts about a sister-in-law that a man should just never entertain. Bash had nieces and he was well aware of where they’d come from, but that was the ultimate extent of where knowledge regarding his brother’s marriage should end.
“Good. I don’t want you thinking of it either.” Matt patted him on the back. “Let’s go.”
They found the rest of their family squirrelled away in the kitchen. Bash’s gaze landed on Faye first. Across the marble island, she was propped up upon one of the stools, and he caught the flash of relief softening the edges of her features when their eyes locked, like she’d nervously waited for him to return. He knew it was a big ask to put her in with the wolves of his family, but his heart filled with the knowledge of how right she looked sitting amongst them.
“Where were you two hiding?” Saira asked, eyeing both brothers.
Matt wrapped his arms around her middle and cuddled up behind her. It was sickly sweet and Bash hated how much he envied it – the casual affection his brother didn’t have to think twice about giving.
“Oh, just … settling a bet.”
Matt’s reply was a bit too on the nose for Bash’s liking. The man could’ve said anything at all, and he’d gone with that ? Never mind socks, Bash was going to get him a lesson on subtlety for Christmas, since he’d clearly inherited none from their father.
He slotted in next to Imara, and whilst everyone else looked at the PDA, he slid the plastic tray of Chocolate Fingers on the counter closer to his niece. She rose on her toes giddily and her shoulder bumped his waist as she reached for them.
As natural as water flowing downhill, he sought out Faye again, and knew by her inwardly pursed lips that he’d been caught out.
“ Mamie? ? * ” Maya bounced around the island to Michèle, back from staring out of the sliding doors at the early sunset. “Can we hang up the socks now?”
Bash’s gaze still lingered in the vicinity of Faye to watch the befuddlement cross her face at Maya’s request.
“The stockings, mon chou .? * ” Michèle cupped Maya’s round cheeks and a thread of something like longing wrapped around Bash’s heart as his niece smiled a toothless grin. “And oui , if everyone is ready?”
After hums of ‘yes’, the Phillips-Dumont clan were on the move once more.
Bash hung back to walk beside Faye, expecting she’d have a question or two. They brought up the rear like two collies herding the flock of family members through the door, crossing the hall, turning into the main living room. Bash had never thought how odd it was to have more than one until he himself, did .
“What are we doing?” Faye asked him.
“ Maman likes waiting until everyone is here to hang the Christmas stockings on the mantelpiece.” Bash echoed the lowness of her voice. “The girls like it, and it's something to do other than eat, I guess. Prepare to leave this house fully satiated on Boxing Day,” he said, unable to think of the last time that thought had crippled him. “You won’t need to eat for a week.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” Faye smiled. “The food , and the stockings.”
Michèle opened up a fabric padded ottoman at the end of the sofa next to the Christmas tree and began to hand out stockings.
Since retirement from practice, she’d taken up every hobby under the sun; candle making, horticulture, basket weaving – which explained why the olive tree in the annexe had shown up. Bash knew it was to compensate for the insane weeks she’d worked for all of her life.
The stockings were only one of her many new creations. With matching linen-like material, she’d lined them with fleeces coloured the themes of the season, and around the opening and on the heel she’d trimmed them with different Christmas patterned fabrics.
The girls had cartoon gingerbreads and Christmas gnomes – not elves. Maya had put Bash in his place on that. His was decorated more simply with a pattern of illustrated Christmas trees.
His nieces made excited noises as Arthur helped them hang their stockings off of weights on the mantle’s edge. Saira cooed over the prettiness of the string lights and garland draped behind them. With a look from her and something silently mouthed, Matt had gone into ‘dad mode’ and taken his phone from his jeans pocket, holding it up with the camera moving from point to point.
And Faye stood on the sidelines watching everybody else.
Bash’s chest filled up with something sharper than sadness as he regarded her looking in like she didn’t think she belonged. She was so quiet and far away, like she wasn’t here at all. He dropped his stocking onto the nearest sofa and took one step for her when?—
“Faye,” Michèle called her over.
Hesitation washed over Faye’s face but she crossed the room in a few strides. Curious, Bash wandered to their forming group as well.
Michèle smiled and reached down into the ottoman again. “This one is for you.”
Sure enough, presented in her hands as she straightened was Faye’s own stocking, the letter ‘F’ appliquéd in red on the front just like everyone else’s had their initials too. In truth, Bash hadn’t known his mother would do this for her, but he had an inkling that she might, and something strange swirled within him. A pang of shock and rightness, like giving Faye a permanent place at the table.
Warmth settled in his chest and replaced his worry about how Faye might feel being here; his mother wasn’t one to allow someone to feel left out in her home. His gaze drifted up to Faye’s eyes and she looked as though she pulled back tears.
“Oh, Michèle,” she said, taking the stocking with tentative hands like it was priceless art. The trim on hers was aptly baking themed, with gingerbreads, mince pies, and mugs of hot chocolate. “It’s beautiful.”
“I could have made it even more perfect for you if I’d had a little longer warning,” his mother said with a pointed look over at him.
Bash spun away and feigned interest in the high beams, all the while smiling to himself. That feeling of rightness? He knew exactly what it was now.
He was glad all of a sudden that Faye had come; glad that he would get to give her the gift he’d stressed himself over for weeks on Christmas morning in person, and hopefully receive this same look on her face.
“No, no it’s perfect,” Faye said, pressing a bent finger to her under-eye. “Thank you.”
“Here, Faye.” Gently shifting the girls aside, Arthur offered out his hand to her. “Let’s get yours set up too.”
Too.
How could one tiny word and a handmade stocking suddenly hold so much meaning? In Bash’s aching heart, the gestures of his family reaching out felt like acceptance – a seal of approval about Faye that never needed to be earned, freely given in that one gift. It was ridiculous; they weren’t even dating.
He watched the joy on Faye’s face and it must’ve been infectious in some way, because when he stepped up beside her and added his stocking to the line along the mantle, there was no thought of America or work or anything else in his mind except for this moment.
That peace was shattered when the doorbell rang through the house. Every Phillips-Dumont plus Faye snapped their eyes to each other as if to count heads and see who wasn’t here.
Bash leant backwards and glimpsed the rear of a marked taxi screeching out of sight off of the driveway, but he couldn’t make out who the shadow belonged to by the front door.
“Are we expecting someone?” Matt asked the room.
The doorbell impatiently rang again.
Little did anyone know how soon their tranquil bubble would burst.
Arthur led the curious crowd out into the hallway. Like some kind of presentation, they all lined up behind one another and Bash lingered at the rear with Faye. His father opened the front door and?—
“ Mortimer? ”
The wall of silence deafened like a prelude to a thunderstorm.
“Well this looks like a party.”
* ? Granny?
* ? Sweetie