44. Bash
44
BAS H
Nothing moved fast enough. Not his fingers which laced up his shoes and zipped up his coat. Not the Piccadilly line hurtling underground and the four stops he waited through. Not his legs as he burst out of Covent Garden station into strobes of mild sunlight that broke through the shifting clouds.
Bash dodged the busy midday foot traffic and sped his way towards Baked By The Dozen. The front windows gleamed with the shine of earlier rain, and as he saw the queue inside and the full tables and chairs, his nerves gave themselves another jump scare. Another shot of adrenaline to his already galloping pulse.
So many people, at least twenty, were inside where Faye was supposed to be, and Bash had the urge to rub his knuckles on his chest, rake fingers through his wild hair. He hadn’t thought to grab a hat so his ears were as frozen as his nose.
What he was going to do didn’t need strangers’ eyes, but Bash physically strained to contain his thoughts from spilling out. The New Year’s Eve party wasn’t until tonight; he couldn’t wait half a day to respond to Faye’s question.
So he sped up along the pavement in yet another race through London for her .
Baked ’s door pushed open with a rattle of the glass and Bash had just enough thought of mind to stop it from slamming the wall.
Several heads whipped his way.
One woman squeaked in her shock and he stumbled to a halt.
Chandra behind the counter startled into high alert like a coffee making meerkat until she saw it was him who’d made such a loud entrance. Leaving the giant beverage machine, she scurried into the kitchen.
All of the forty-odd eyes were on him – the nightmare of Bash’s childhood, which explained why his mouth turned into a desert.
More gently than he’d entered, he closed the door, nodding his apology in that very typically English way to the abundance of customers glaring at him warily. He would do too if he was in their seats.
The fact that the crowd’s attention didn’t go back to their plates and conversations, but let the tar-like abrupt silence remain, didn’t help Bash’s jitters in the slightest.
He might look crazy, but there was something that he had to say before the right words on his tongue dried up under the pressure. So he pushed down those uncomfortable feelings enough for him to squeeze between tables and have the gall to – very apologetically – slide up to the counter in front of the queue.
You can do this. The reminder in Bash’s pocket of why he was here settled one or two of the butterflies twirling in his stomach.
He mustered his courage right in time for when Faye poked her head around the corner to the back rooms, features pinched, until her worried gaze landed on him.
They came face to face and Bash’s heart leapt all over again, right over this counter space where he was rooted, aware of how round his eyes were, how his lips parted and his shoulders loosened just from her presence.
Faye looked like his future as she hesitantly stepped forwards. Her hair was drawn back like it would be when she taught their children how to bake. Her apron had smudges of icing like from how messy they’ll get when they paint late into summer evenings. The small creases at the edges of her eyes were only the beginning of how they’ll look when they’re both old, watching their grandchildren open presents on a Christmas morning. Pieces of who Faye was that Bash couldn’t wait to savour and witness unfold.
His pulse flitted in his throat.
The blown wide look in Faye’s eyes said she hadn’t expected him to come here, heavily coated with concern for how hard and quick he breathed. His jaw ticked as he tracked her tiny step.
“Bash? Did you run?—?”
“Yes. Well from my house to the tube and then from the station up the road, anyway.”
Twenty minutes earlier he’d been in his kitchen staring at the box of doughnuts she’d sent to him, though it felt like only a second ago. Time had warped in Bash’s rush to get here and see her. Hear her voice.
Faye stepped up to the counter between them. She didn’t acknowledge anything else that had frozen in the space around them, not even the quiet, annoyed clearing of a throat from somewhere over Bash’s shoulder.
“Are you … okay?” she asked.
Turning up in a whirlwind like this would be startling, wouldn’t it?
“Yes. No . I hope so.” Bash stumbled through the world’s most indecisive answer. How he was depended upon how this next moment went.
He could almost feel how rigidly Faye held herself. “Bash?—”
“You asked me a question,” he cut in, just this once more, “and I’m saying no.”
His answer to her proposal rang through the buzzing in Bash’s ears. He hated the immediate disappointment that overtook Faye’s features, the small “Oh” which slipped from her lips as her fluttering lashes concealed falling eyes.
If he could take his eyes away too, he would’ve seen the furious frown pull above Chandra ’s threatening stare where she stood like a loyal guard behind Faye.
Bash ran his finger along the sharp edge of the note in his coat pocket, feeling the weight of twenty pairs of intrigued eyes simultaneously burning into his spine.
Would you like to one day, maybe, marry me?
Faye guarded her expression in the seconds of fragile silence, and Bash sensed in his bones that his answer wasn’t the one she’d wanted to hear, especially in front of so many people, which only made him even more adamant that he said what he did next.
“I was wrong to rush suggesting those ideas onto you so quickly last night,” he began. “I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve been in love with the idea of you for so long, that I haven’t been able to separate that from how I feel for you now I’ve actually held you in my arms.”
Faye’s low eyes flicked towards the queue of people silently listening next to him, her teeth leaving marks on her lower lip that Bash wanted to reach across and soothe away.
Instead, he continued with what his heart begged for him to say with powerful little fists threatening to break out of his chest.
“There aren’t enough words in existence to explain how happy I am to even have the chance of loving you like you should be loved. I’m sorry I got so overexcited and eager to help you create all of your dreams that you’ve been wanting, that I asked you to marry me when you’re not ready.” His voice came out more rasped than he’d like. “I want a family and kids and a damn dog who chews up my rugs, but I don’t want them if they’re not with you, Faye.”
With a sharp hitch of breath in the air between them, Faye’s lashes lifted. She finally looked at him. Her big, beautiful, glossy round eyes full of anticipation delved right into Bash’s soul. He loved to hear her voice – she could recite the alphabet backwards and he would be enraptured, but he begged that she just listened to him for another minute longer.
There was too much counter top frustratingly between them for him to climb over an d take her hands, so he took the note out from his pocket and held onto it tight.
“I promised you that I would slow down – so this is me slowing down.”
Faye’s misty eyes cut down, recognised the card, then latched onto his again. Anxious or keen, Bash couldn’t tell, but they struck his heart with a match. She had every right to tell him to stop this and leave, and yet she didn’t. Her shoulders went loose and another flame of hope swelled within him.
“I want to be falling in love with not the idea of you, but you , Faye.” Drawing a deep breath, he said, “So … I’m going to wait for you. For as long as it takes that you’d like to date and figure out how this thing between us now is new. I’m not going anywhere that isn’t right where you are. You’re worth the time and the wait, Faye.”
Her chin trembled, and damn it Bash had to grab ahold of his nerves before he welled up too. He didn’t care that he was a man grovelling in front of strangers – which teenage Bash would be proud of. He would walk across fire to get to Faye if he needed to.
“I’d rather do that than lose you because I fuc—” Two round eyes of the wiggling child at the table next to him caught Bash’s attention for a split second. “ … Messed up.”
A quiet chuckle that she swallowed back broke from Faye – a sound like gold dust, as a tear dripped onto her cheek.
Bash smiled, so inexplicably in awe of her. “I know that one day I’ll get to say I’m Faye Whittaker’s husband. I don’t need to worry, and I don’t need to rush.”
He couldn’t believe how many months it’d taken him to convince himself of that. Life isn’t always about moving on up. Sometimes it’s about sitting and being happy where you are for a while. He owed Bennet a thank you for reminding him of that.
He watched Faye simply look at him in return, soaking up all of his feelings he poured out into this empty space between them.
The crowd studying them didn’t matter any more and he’d all but forgotten they were there until a telltale sniffle made him realise that so meone other than Faye shed a tear. Happy tears. Bash’s body ached to be close enough to wipe hers away and kiss her cheeks and her nose. Whisper how much he loved her right before their lips met.
He laid her note upon the counter and covered it with his steady hands, forming a bridge between them – all that Faye had to do was take it.
“We’re never going to be perfect, but I can promise that I will try ,” he said. “ I’ll show up for everything you do like I’ve always done. If you’re not in my arms then know that you’re safe in my heart, always . So go to Manchester, Peanut. Set up your new incredible bakery. And every second I’m not here working, I promise to be there with you.” His head tilted and a curl of hair fell into his forehead, peering more nervously. “That is … if you want me to?”
The longer Faye silently gazed at him, the more Bash had to fight the urge to swallow. He might not have blinked at all in the last minute. His chest filled and swelled and he couldn't breathe as he waited for her to say anything at all.
What if he hadn’t been enough? What if he’d blown this— them ?
Faye wrote that she’d been scared to lose control of the future, which he supposed was why springing marriage upon her hadn’t been a good idea; but now she had faith that together, everything would be okay. In this note beneath his hands, she’d given him her trust to not break her heart.
So here he stood, risking the chance that saying no might lead to the greatest love of his life.
Each of Faye’s ragged breaths were agony, gazes locked.
Come on, Peanut.
Bash was ready to burst. The sting behind his eyes burned and burned. He wasn’t short of begging on his knees if that’s what it’d take for Faye to end his despair.
Finally, she wet her lips and blinked. “Chandra? ”
Bash’s lungs seized, his pulse flying through the ceiling.
“Yeah babe?” Chandra’s presence had softened, but he didn’t doubt she would kick him out if Faye asked her to.
“I think … ” The tension around Faye’s eyes ebbed. “I’m going to take the afternoon off and have lunch with my boyfriend.”
For a second, Bash heard nothing but a ringing in his ears, and then exhaled as if he was ready to collapse upon the counter with how Faye’d strung him up in a twist of doubt for a cruel minute.
She pulled loose the knot on the back of her apron, beaming, glowing, as she handed the green garment off to Chandra and her likewise grin.
Bash tracked her movements around the counter and display cases like he was suspended in time, his heart racing for an entirely different reason as she came to him. Like a rush of new life now coursed through his veins.
The queue of customers boasted rightly confused expressions but moved out of Faye’s eager way. Bash’s arms were there ready to catch her as she barrelled into him, her soft lips upon his a split second later.
“It’s about damn time,” one of the elderly sisters, two of Faye’s regulars, muttered in his periphery.
“You owe me a tenner,” boasted the other.
It was strange to be applauded for a kiss, but there were whoops and applause as Faye crushed herself against him and kissed him over and over. Bash was almost scared he’d break her ribs from how tightly he kept his arms around her, but she circled hers around his neck and held his face with just as much fierceness.
“Are you sure?” Bash took a well needed breath.
Faye nodded. “I’m sure.”
Despite her breathlessness, there wasn’t room for any doubt in her answer. Her nose brushed his and Bash could’ve crumbled from the tender little gesture. He’d never needed to worry so much after all .
He peppered kisses to her flushed cheeks, so warm compared to the cold of outside that slowly melted away from his skin. Dissociating himself from their surroundings as he let the love in the touch of her lips rain over him.
His future, he held in his hands. It might be slower in coming to him than he’d wanted before, but Bash was overwhelmed with giddy joy at the promise that it would come.
He didn’t need to experience life all at once; pieces would add themselves into his little existence in their own time.
Living together. A dog. A wedding. A baby or two. Hell, he might go rogue and switch around the order a little, what would it matter? Faye was all in, and it felt so right.
Someday he’d call himself her husband, but for now he was honoured to just call himself hers.
Someone whistled, and Bash had the sense to ease their kiss and put an inch of distance between Faye’s mouth and his before the child on table three needed therapy.
His cheeks ached from the force of his smile.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked, right as Faye stroked her fingers at the nape of his neck – Bash couldn’t be held responsible for what he did in public if she touched him like that for another second.
Her eyes glittered brighter than the leftover tinsel on the cabinets, her cheeks the pink of cherry blossom, as if she’d all of a sudden remembered they weren’t alone.
“Yes,” she said, and Bash sighed in relief. But then her smile dropped. “Oh, wait, Chandra?—”
“Go.” Chandra waved them off with Faye’s long sandy coat and handbag outstretched in her other hand. “I’ve suffered the two of you being oblivious for years. Please just go and resolve it all.”
Grinning like an idiot, Bash let Faye slip through his fingers for the last time.
She leant over the counter to retrieve her things, teasing, “You’re my favourite employee, Chandra. ”
Chandra laughed. “Go already.”
“Thank you,” Faye said in all seriousness, layering her coat and scarf and setting her handbag on her shoulder like a woman on a mission ready to face the world.
She turned, and Bash held out his hand with a step back.
“Are you ready?” he asked her, more than one question being asked at once.
Faye’s eyes gleamed as she nodded. “I am.”
Her hand slipped into his, their fingers intertwining, and – after he grabbed her note – together they weaved through the crowd of customers who returned gradually to their days.
Bash opened Baked By the Dozen’s door with Faye by his side to a burst of fresh air and the blue sky sun upon his face.
The bakery might not have been where their story began, but it was where it was born again.
Faye’s grip pulsed on his hand and he sought her eyes, the glow in her cheeks and radiance in her smile that stretched out wide.
“Your hands are shaking,” she said.
Bash was too happy to care. “I was terrified of doing that. I didn’t expect there to be so many people watching.”
“I’m proud of you for saying those things in front of everyone.” Faye cupped his stubbly cheek and he turned his face to kiss her palm. “Where are we going?”
“Where would you like to go?”
Faye thought about it for a second, answering, “Home.”
Home.
Bash drew her into his arms and kissed her forehead, whispering, “I’m already there.”
Though they couldn’t stand within the doorway forever, so a minute later when the chill in the air caught up to them both, Bash took Faye’s hand again and led her down the street, retracing the journey he’d taken to get here, until they sank down into his sofa with croissants and a cheesecake, danced through the living room to their favourite jazz records, and let the rest of their lives begin .
“Do you want to know something?” Bash asked her that evening when she was wrapped up in his arms at midnight, their friends cheering all around them.
“What?”
He moved his lips to her ear. “You were the wish that I asked Santa for.”
Faye placed her palm down over his heart.
“And you were mine.”