43. Bash
43
BASH
New Year’s Eve.
Most people, Bash imagined, already celebrated, or had at least begun preparations to welcome the turn of midnight tonight. Eleven hours were still left before he should be doing the same.
People usually felt some kind of joy or excitement at new adventures being so close, surrounding themselves with families and friends. Others, understandably, were more relieved for a fresh year to put the last one behind them. Apart from within his home office, Bash didn’t know where he stood.
Since the evening before, he’d felt too numb. His friends were supposed to gather in his living room tonight, hopefully with Faye amongst them, and yet he couldn’t bring himself away from his desk to smarten up the place like he usually would. The food he’d bought in specially all sat unprepared in his fridge, meanwhile he stared at a long list of specifications for a London penthouse without really reading any of it at all.
Because Bash couldn’t rip his mind off of Faye.
Faye. Faye. Faye.
It hurt too much to replay their words from last night, mainly because the way he ’d reacted so obtusely to make her call him ‘hot-headed’ had made Bash take a long hard look at himself in the mirror.
He couldn’t even blame his responses to her on tiredness, hunger, or general exhaustion. He’d tossed and turned in his sleep all night thinking of what had gone wrong until he finally ran out of energy at three a.m and passed out in his bed. Alone . Waking up to find his arms outstretched on Faye’s side where the bed lay empty.
He wasn’t going into PD tall frameworks of shelvings surrounded him and held architectural and design magazines, photo albums of places he’d travelled across the world to see, ornaments and portfolios for when he needed inspiration. The windows in the ceiling always gave him light to work with the rise and fall of the sun. One desk kept his computer and pads of notes. Another, the largest gridded sketchbook littere d with pencils, rulers, and drawing equipment that you might ever see.
The centre of the room was free space to think and wander. When Bash was younger, he’d underestimated the power of simply moving to help stir his imagination. Tracks probably marked the hardwood by now beneath the rug he ended up replacing every other year from how he never picked up his feet.
He wore into those grooves as he shook his body out and stretched his ribs to get his thoughts flowing nearer to the track that they should be on, instead of his love and what she was doing right then.
Tomorrow, PD turning down the offer had been heavily based upon his reasons for not wanting to move across the Atlantic. Though he didn’t know how just yet. An all-expenses-paid vacation wouldn’t be enough for a man who was always alone, and nor was it the right gift for Bennet.
His work partner had wanted the new adventure, new clients, and new business plans. Not a two week holiday to sunny Italy all by himself.
Coupled with how he’d pushed Faye yesterday when she very clearly wasn’t ready for marriage, Bash felt like a selfish prick.
Correction: he knew that he was. A big one. One that deserved to not have heard from her since she’d texted to say she’d arrived home safely approximately – he cast a glance at his watch – seventeen hours ago.
That really was disheartening.
Bash agreed to slow down their pace, but reducing themselves to ‘casual’ wa s like a slap in the face when his intentions with Faye were anything but that.
Perhaps he was wrong in his connotations, but ‘casual’ made him think of a relationship that had ‘no strings’, no promises, no long term future plan. Only passing flirtations and shallow attractions. Even after only a week, it couldn’t be any more obvious that those things weren’t them at all.
He’d wanted to reach out all night and call Faye, but he’d sensed she wasn’t alone. Maisie and Sienna’s absence in their group text when Freddy double checked plans for tonight had been painfully obvious, which usually meant that the three women were together if Faye was silent too.
So Bash had texted her instead, to little effect.
Bash
I’ve put the work clothes you left here in the wash for you (yes I read the labels) x
An hour later:
Bash
Our cheesecake place has a 10 flavour sample box. I was going to pick one up in the morning if you think that’d be cool for the party? Or I’ll get it anyway just for us ?? xx
After he took a shower and sank into his empty bed:
Bash
You’re probably already asleep, but goodnight, Peanut. x
The doorbell rang in an annoyingly chirpy chime throughout his house at the same time as Bash’s phone lit up with a notification from the front door camera. He hadn’t ordered anything to warrant a food delivery woman in an oversized green uniform coat standing on his front step, a flat-ish yet wide cardboard box in her hands.
“Hang on one moment, please,” he said to her through the app on his phone before quic kly saving the open document on his computer and rushing down the four flights of stairs.
When he eventually got to his door the woman looked bored, cold, but was friendly enough.
“Package for Mr … Phillips-Dumont?” There was some kind of label stapled to the box she cocked her head to read.
“That’s me,” Bash said, feeling the chilly effect of the wind as it gathered in his doorway. “But I didn’t order anything.”
“Your name is here and this is this address, right?” She showed him the label on the box.
That was his name. And definitely his address. But Bash hadn’t ordered any food. Could he have bought the round of sample cheesecakes somehow by mistake? The box didn’t look deep enough to?—
The delivery woman’s pointed features grew increasingly bored and cold as he struggled to make up his mind.
“It is. Must be my mum’s doing,” he said just for the sake of having something to say. “Thank you.”
She scanned the code on the box with a little machine attached to her hip, handed it over, and left. Bash brought himself back into the warmth before he could see where she went.
He took the box to his kitchen table whilst simultaneously ignoring his erotic memories from the other night, confused as hell.
The name was clearly his. The address was correct. There was a definite smell of food – something sweet.
Careful to keep the box flat, he took scissors from a drawer and cut the various packaging tapes to open it up. Like a scene from a movie, he expected golden light to stream from the edges and a chorus of sopranos to build up his intrigued suspense.
None of that happened, obviously, but the logo for Baked By The Dozen was on a bright rose and white box within, and the smell of fresh dough wafted from the seams.
“Faye?”
The plain outer packaging became a second thought, pushed aside so Bash could hope fully find some sort of explanation for why he had a tray of doughnuts in his hands. When he opened it up, how his heart squeezed and contracted and melted like butter gave him part of his answer.
They were his favourites; the good old fashioned sugar doughnut with apple and raspberry jam filling. Twelve of them. Sure, you could buy them anywhere at most supermarket bakeries, but Faye’s would always be the first on his list.
A decorative card the size of his hand sat atop them all with a hand written note, meaning Faye’d packed the doughnuts herself in their thin paper cases – Bash would recognise her handwriting out of a stack of letters any day.
His palms went sweaty with a mixture of nerves and excitement. As much as the smell of these delicious sugary doughnuts was tempting, he wiped his hands on his jeans and read the card first.
Dearest Bash,
Dearest Bash! His heart couldn’t possibly drum inside of his chest any louder.
There are a hundred things that I’ve never said to you, but I love you Bash. More than just as my friend. More than I have the capacity to put into words. I’ve fallen in love with your wonderfulness. Wholly. Madly. Completely.
You said I was the moon, but you, Sébastien, are the world. My safe place. My home .
He could hear her voice saying these things, his name like that, which might be why in the middle of his kitchen on a blustery afternoon, Bash’s eyes welled, and the grin on his face was the most aching, goofiest it’d ever been.
I’m so very sorry for how things unfolded yesterday. I know now that I’m not scared anymore of losing control of the future, because with you there I can trust that everything will be fine. We will be fine. I asked you to have faith in us, and now I realise that I have to have faith in us too (I’m sorry again that it took me so long).
Bash chuckled as a beam of sunlight from his windows landed on the card. She was always apologising when she didn’t need to.
So I’m promising to you now, Bash, that I will believe in us.
I should never have asked for us to be casual. Loving you isn’t something part-time. You make it so easy to trust that with you my heart is safe, and I should’ve listened to that feeling in my heart instead of running away from it.
I know this next year will be hard on us, but we’ve waited eleven years to be together … and I don’t want to wait one more.
Can you forgive me?
(P.S. Yes, the doughnuts are a bribe.)
(P.P.S. Would you like to one day, maybe, marry me?)
Yours forever, Faye x
We’ve waited eleven years to be together, and I don’t want to wait one more.
Something warm and wet blotted a patch on the edge of the card. God —only Faye confessing how much she loved him and wanted her life to be with him could turn Bash into such a blubbering mess.
He put the doughnuts in the fridge, not risking getting jam and sugar on this note he was going to treasure eternally, and read the letter again and again until it was memorised in his brain and he was sure that he’d understood every word.
Until he wondered to himself what he was still doing standing here?
He had to go and get his future wife.