17. Faye
17
FAYE
Nobody warned Faye that mornings in the P-D household began early – though not as early as hers normally would. Her body had woken on auto-pilot and she’d lain in bed staring at the sliver of curtain which hadn’t closed completely last night, watching the sun inch higher over a stretch of landscape for two hours before Bash rolled off of his stomach, groaning and stretching like a groggy child.
For five minutes they’d been face to face, albeit he’d still been fairly out of it in his consciousness, and Faye had been so awake that she’d thought about skipping her morning coffee entirely.
And now Bash acted strange.
He walked further away from her along the frozen-over tractor’s track, following rank behind Michèle and Arthur through the frosted fields like penguins on a march. Matt and Saira brought up the rear with their girls, all bundled in scarves and gloves and plodding along in bright pink welly boots. Faye spotted a small beanie-like cap on the rounded end of Maya’s wrist, too.
Nothing had happened to make her think that it – whatever had put Bash in this distant mood since they’d left the house – was because of her .
They’d been more physically close than usual last night. With Bash’s taller build and the natural logistics of sharing one duvet, they couldn’t exactly have kept five feet between them all night. Though there’d been no waking up to anything invading the space between her thighs this time (as if Faye needed the reminder).
Nothing since then had been out of the ordinary, either.
She quickened her pace and reached out to poke Bash’s arm through the padded, black sleeve of his coat. The tip of his nose came up pink as he looked over at her. His cheek didn’t look so bruised today from the tennis incident, which was a good thing, because ever since he’d shown up at her flat at one a.m sporting that graze, Faye had wanted to take care of him. More than usual, anyway.
“Why didn’t Uncle Mortimer join us?” She wasn’t sad about the fact but she couldn’t help her curiosity.
“Walking isn’t really his, quote , ‘thing’.” There was a definite eye roll as Bash straightened to watch his step on the uneven ground. “It’s probably best if he didn’t come anyway.”
The general attitude towards Mortimer’s rudeness yesterday didn’t seem to have been a one-off. Faye had an extensive list of family members, some who she’d grown up not getting along with out of awkwardness more than dislike, but she couldn’t ever imagine any of them looking down on her so cruelly, like she was a screw up, which was the whole vibe Mortimer gave off towards Bash for some unknown reason.
She dodged a lump of earth, deciding there was enough distance between them and the rest of Bash’s family to ask her questions softly. “It’s probably not my place to say anything, but wouldn’t you ever like to make up with him?”
“It’s not me who needs to change, Peanut.” Bash said it so wearily, as though the same conversation had gone round and around in his mind for years.
“But if he did, would you want a better relationship with him?”
He toed a stone along his sunken track, moving it on with little kicks. “I think that … sometimes removing someone negative from your life is more necessary than giving them a second chance.”
Perhaps it was the pessimist within Faye who always reared its head when talking about any kind of relationship, but she agreed.
“He’s had the time ever since my parents married to change his ways, and he won’t,” Bash added, then turned his face to her. The hood of his orange hoodie bunched around the back of his neck like a scarf, and some errant curls sneaked out from under his beanie. “Why are you asking all of this?”
“I rarely see you frustrated,” she said. “And he made you so angry yesterday. I don’t want you to have to feel like that.”
And Faye just wanted to understand. She was the outsider here, and if Mortimer was staying then she didn’t want to accidentally say something which might cause a rift between anyone.
“It’s easily forgotten. I don’t want to waste my spoons on feeling like that.”
Wires must have crossed the wrong way within Faye’s brain, because she could’ve sworn he’d said ‘spoons’.
“Your … spoons ?”
“Yeah. My spoons.”
“What are you talking about?” She laughed.
Bash’s pinched gaze darted between her and watching where he walked. “Spoons! Have you never heard that?”
“No.” She definitely hadn’t. Where did he come up with this stuff?
“Spoon Theory?”
Faye’s brows shot up, the expression saying she still didn’t understand.
“It’s like a metaphor for how much energy you have to give.” Bash shifted the back of his beanie, elaborating, “Though I think it’s more appropriate to people with chronic illnesses and such. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a term I should be using or not. It’s something I learned from Doctor Palmer” – his therapist – “but I like the idea of it.” He tossed her an unbothered shrug. “ Spoons. ”
Faye stared at him for a few more steps, because somehow that completely made sense.
“Do I need to buy you some spoons for Christmas?” she asked to keep things light.
Bash looked at her with a soft earnest in his eyes, the frost-touched field blurring behind him. “I always have all of my spoons when I’m with you, Peanut.”
Heartbeats all blended into one as a thread unwound itself from Faye’s heart and sent out to Bash’s. She didn’t completely understand what his confession meant, but a fragile, warm feeling at the show of his vulnerability simmered beneath all of her layers. It felt more significant than anything else he’d said to her recently.
Then her boot caught in a dip and her ankle snapped.
Bash’s hand shot out. “Woah—you okay?”
Faye caught her step before any damage was done. “Yeah. Just clumsy.”
What was it with the both of them and nearly breaking their ankles around one another these days?
“Faye? You good?” Matt called from the rear.
“Yes!” Though that’d teach her to not look at Bash and instead at where she walked when the ground was this frosty and uneven. The solid, earth indent of a tyre track was not the same as a London pavement.
“You’re surrounded by a family of doctors if you weren’t.” Bash’s hand still hovered near her, his attempt at joviality failing to hide his concern.
“I’m okay, really.” Apart from a little breathless from the shock, she was fine.
The train of Phillips-Dumonts and their honorary plus one caught up to each other at the end of the track, where a gate connected the field with the next; locked with a chain, unsurprisingly. Their only way through was up and over a wooden stile which looked older than Faye. On the other side, the continuing track was muddied from where the frost started to melt.
Bash’s parents went first, then Saira. Matt lifted the girls up and over the stile one at a time.
“It’s a little slippery, Faye,” Arthur warned as the others began to walk on through the next field. “Take your time.”
Faye hesitated before even taking a step. The next thing she knew, a hand hovered at her waist.
“Here,” Bash said from behind her. “Let me go first? I’ll help you over.”
She was capable on her own, but Faye eyed the thin sheet of white frost on every surface of the rickety stile and decided she didn’t mind accepting Bash’s chivalry. Intrigued more than anything of how he would ‘help’.
“Okay, thanks.” Rambling wasn’t in her nature, and no matter how much she loved the views, Bash was more used to navigating these wooden things than her.
He stepped over the stile in a swift rotating move, hiking one leg up and over, followed by the next. Legs which were considerably longer than Faye’s and had no right to make that action more attractive to her than the thought of hot chocolate and warm marshmallows right then.
On solid ground, he offered out his hand which gave her something steady to grip onto.
She stood up on the first narrow step, twisted, and lifted her other leg over so she straddled the fence, though not quite tall enough to clear it without having it press up uncomfortably between her legs. No one had touched her there for a while and she was far too sensitive to pressure for it.
Bash’s eyes thankfully remained on her feet until both were on the step on the other side.
Arthur was right: the foot-long plank of frosted-over wood was slippery. Faye’s boots moved even if the rest of her didn’t .
She went to dip one foot to step down, but the one she still stood on slipped, and the distance was further to the ground than she’d thought.
Faye barely had time to choke on her gasp when Bash scooped her up before she could land on her ass.
“You alright?” he asked effortlessly, an arm beneath her knees and the other around her back.
The volcanic rush of heat from Faye’s chest down to her stomach and beyond screamed no ; she was not alright. Breaking a bone wasn’t on her Christmas wish list, but she liked being in Bash’s arms, the weight of him against her – the dizziness swimming in her head from being so close to his mouth that she could feel the foggy cloud of his breaths. All of it. Far too much than she should.
Faye felt as though she was still falling, though just not the physical kind.
Bash’s eyes tunnelled into hers more with every second she sat in his arms without answering. His blunt nails dug into her thigh like he was trying to bring her back to the present.
What had he asked, again?
“Yeah.” If she was breathless, blame it on the shock.
She would think that after eleven years, her body might’ve gotten over how Bash made it throb and pulse at the most inappropriate times – when they were with their friends, when they innocently danced, when his lips parted around one of her doughnuts or his tongue licked cheesecake off of a spoon.
From on ahead, Matt whistled a tune that made Faye burn with blush, followed by the distinctive giggles of two little girls.
“You can … um … put me down now.” She struggled to get the unfortunate suggestion out past the knot in her tongue.
Bash blinked. “Right.”
He walked on a little out of the muddy patch beneath them before setting her down. Whilst Faye straightened out her coat and fixed her hat, she caught how he flexed out his hands before he buried them into his pockets.
Great. Thoughts of those rippling tendons on the back of his hands were just what she needed right then.
“Thank you.” Faced with him, she patted his chest.
Why on earth did she pat his chest? And why was it still so solid beneath all of this padding of his coat? How easily would he catch her if she jumped up now and wrapped her legs around his waist?
“You’d have made a great fireman.” Okay, now she just blurted any words that came to mind at all.
Really smooth, Faye. Well done.
Bash was entirely too close so she made a lunge back, drawing her hands into her coat pockets to resist patting any other area of him.
The corner of his mouth pulled. “Sliding down that pole would’ve been fun.”
“I don’t think they actually use those … Do they?”
Bash gave a shrug and a pout that said, ‘fuck if I know’.
He stepped up as if to move past her, and his shoulder brushed against her arm. Too soon. It was too soon to be touched again.
“I’m starting to think you just like the uniforms,” he taunted, throwing a murderous wink in for good measure.
Faye pulled her scarf up around her face to cover the flaming heat of her cheeks. Her body reacted so easily to him these days – it was torturous. To be trapped inside of herself unable to let this frustration out.
She couldn’t let him win like that. “I don’t object to them at all.”
Bash laughed – laughed – and reached behind him to tug her along.
The others slowed for them to catch up and they quickened their pace. Faye dipped her gaze as they got near, afraid someone could read her inappropriate thoughts if they looked in her eyes .
A look passed between the brothers that she couldn’t decipher – one of mischief met by that of annoyance before Bash strode out quicker, his long legs moving faster than Faye could keep up with, and put a hand firmly on his brother’s back. He pushed Matt forwards with something hushed that she couldn’t hear.
Men were strange. Brothers even more so. They spoke a secret language of only eye contact that Faye gathered was based upon the foundation of one ribbing the other and the other not being amused by it.
Saira dipped back with Maya glued to her side. “Are you okay?”
This family was always concerned with how she was, Faye was learning. Though she hadn’t talked much solely with Saira away from other ears before now.
“Yes, grand,” she said. “Just slipped off of the … thing.” Vaguely, she gestured behind them while Saira grinned.
“And straight into arms that were all too willing to catch you.”
And what mind-silencing arms they were. So homely without demanding anything in return whenever they were wrapped around her.
Against the raging heat inside of her body, Faye tried to play it cool. “I think Michèle might have rationed Bash’s supply of croissants if anything had’ve happened to me.”
“Bash would have berated himself, too.” Saira hitched Maya further up onto her hip. “That boy cares about you.” Her tone wasn’t infused with a tease, as though she’d just stated a fact.
Faye swallowed. “He’s a really great friend.”
“Easy on the eyes as well.”
She made a noncommittal sound as she watched her step more fervently. The brothers, their parents, and Imara were far enough ahead and engrossed in their own conversations to not be listening to the stragglers at the rear.
“I love my husband,” Saira went on, “but even I can agree the second P-D son is very dishy. ”
He’s a snack alright , Faye agreed. Something calorific and oozing molten chocolate. Something hearty for the soul with as yet inconclusive effects on the body.
Those wandering thoughts were the exact kind that got Faye into trouble with her hormones.
Her lips twitched before she could stop them. “He’s my friend. It’s a little weird to think like that.”
There we go – a safe answer.
And half a lie.
Still, it pacified Saira for a moment and Faye took the chance to look around her. Michèle and Arthur’s home wasn’t even a spec in the distance behind them between hedges and trees beyond the narrow countryside lane that led them to these white-tipped, hibernating fields. The next green waymarker sign peeked out of a bend in the hedgerow up ahead, right where the family neared, and the warmth of the sun still rising was just enough to blunt the edge of the crisp, clean air.
She loved this mid-morning hour, though Faye didn’t usually get to see it from outside when she worked every day, and especially not with such a glorious view. And there was that blessed silence that engulfed her the moment she’d stepped out of Bash’s car yesterday – the kind of tranquillity you wouldn’t get on any central London street.
“I find it hard to believe that Bash has never asked you out on a date.” Beside her, Saira sounded so certain, but how could she know that? Had Bash said something to Matt who’d then been the gossiping brother and passed it along?
No, no. Faye told herself Saira had just taken a wild stab in the dark. Bash and her had done so much together already, what would their version of ‘dating’ even look like?
The excited look on Saira’s face said she was already planning a wedding without using words. “Unless … he has?” She presumed like the cat that’d gotten the cream .
Regretting how long she’d been silent, Faye gave a firm shake of her head. “He hasn’t.”
“But you’d like him to?”
“I … haven’t thought about it.” She really needed to stop talking. If her answer was any thinner, she’d have been able to watch it float away like a wisp of candy floss.
Saira offered her a smile. “Your secret is safe with me. I was friends with Matt for a while before he gathered the courage to ask me out to dinner. If Bash hasn’t yet, then he certainly wants to. He’s so happy when he’s with you. And he has the same eyes as Matt, trust me, I can read them.”
Faye’s heart shouldn’t have done a little happy dance to hear Bash wanted to ask her out on a date, even if it was only Saira’s speculation. She liked to think he was happy spending time with her too. I always have all of my spoons when I’m with you, Peanut. Or else why would he have stuck around as her friend for so long?
If she said nothing, then Faye was adamant Saira might get the message that she was as uncomfortable talking about this as the stone stuck in the tread of her boot made her.
The lull in the conversation was saved anyway by how the others had stopped.
Matt narrowed an eye. “Everything alright back here? You two look like you’re conspiring against us.”
Faye got a flashing image of what their group looked like from the outside: three couples out for a morning stroll. Two wives lagging behind to gossip about their husbands. Like the end-card in a movie beneath the words “Happily Ever After”.
“Don’t rush me,” Saira rebuffed, “I’m carrying your child.”
Michèle spun around and – ohhhh dear .
Bash frantically slashed his hand in front of his throat.
“ Maman – no. She means Maya.” Matt peered at Saira and the quiet panic on his face made Faye have to smother her laugh by sucking on her cold lips. “Right? ”
“Yes.” Saira pointed at the girl on her hip for emphasis. “If I was pregnant again, this is not how I would announce it.”
Though she and Matt did make cute babies, Faye thought to herself.
“Are you trying?” Michèle asked too eagerly.
Faye caught the subtle roll of Bash’s eyes at his mother’s persistence, and now she wondered if the things he’d said to her about his feelings on wanting his own family were partly due to pressure from his parents? She wouldn’t totally rule it out.
“Two and done, I’m afraid.”
“That explains the condoms,” Bash muttered into the collar of his coat, receiving a shove from a visibly relieved looking Matt who uttered something in French in return. Bash gave him a stern look and Faye frowned at them.
Brothers were strange creatures.
The rest of the walk was easy and thankfully flat. Faye kept herself going with thoughts that brunch would be only half an hour away.
Despite living in the madness of London and being on her feet all day, she wasn’t a natural hiker – she’d been in the city for too long. But this was nice. If she had the luck of living in a place such as this, then she could see the appeal of wandering the public footpaths every morning across the landscape.
Maybe it was the air, the views, or the company that made her enjoy this time so much. Or a combination of it all.
In a village they came to, there were signs upon lampposts and convenience shop walls advertising various Christmas activities around the area. Faye had her head tilted and her eyes narrowed to try and read one across the road when Bash nudged her elbow.
“We could test out your fireman theory tonight.” He cocked his head towards a small banner on the side of the old vicarage hall. Faye was too far away to read it clearly, but from what he’d said, her mind jumped st raight to traitorous places. Ones involving poles and a certain someone up against them.
“Huh?”
Arthur doubled back along the narrow path and explained for her. “The local fire station drives one of their engines dressed in lights and tinsel with music and sirens playing through the lanes and villages, and Santa gives out presents for the children.”
“Santa!” Came two excited little squeals.
“It’s to raise money,” Bash hushed over his nieces.
Really? The surprises kept on coming.
“It sounds fun.” Faye was determined to be here and take advantage of a full Phillips-Dumont Christmas experience, so she was all in.