Chapter 3
invisible string - Taylor Swift
A
bby showered, changed, and swiped on a coat of red lipstick, but—entirely to spite her mother—did absolutely nothing to her eyes. She smoothed out her red dress where it clung to her waist before flaring lightly over her hips and settling above her knees. Her blonde curls, messy from a day tucked into a travel-appropriate bun, tumbled over her shoulders and she smiled as she assessed her reflection. Her mother would hate that too. Their battles over Abby’s hair went back almost two decades, with Susan begging her to use all manner of smoothing products and Abby insisting it looked better when it was roughed up a little.
‘Ready?’ Erik asked, stepping through the door joining their rooms.
‘Want to knock next time?’ Abby asked. ‘What if I was still half naked?’
A moment’s pause.
Then: ‘I should be so lucky.’
Erik’s tone was entirely deadpan, until a laugh escaped from him as Abby flipped him off with one hand, buckling her shoe with the other. When she finally looked up at him, her mouth went dry. He leaned lazily against the doorframe. A pale blue shirt stretched slightly across his shoulders, where small water droplets from his damp hair darkened the fabric. Hair that was now closer to its natural state than the neatly combed arrangement from earlier.
His styling routine had never been involved, exactly. Erik took his frustrations and anxieties out on his hair, causing it to stand in every direction imaginable. It was a look that somehow—inexplicably—he made work. She wondered idly what had caused that much tension so soon after his shower. Maybe he hadn’t been exaggerating the pressure from his mum. Well, if Nora was stressing him out, Abby was ready to be his buffer, like he would be hers.
All rational thought was swept from her mind when her eyes roved lower across his shirt, taking in the rolled sleeves and an actual honest to god vein running down his left forearm.
It was going to be a long week.
‘You okay?’
Abby started as Erik’s warm fingertips brushed the skin of her wrist. She’d become lost in thought as they walked to dinner. Trying desperately to distract herself from the reality of sitting down to dinner with her parents for the first time since Christmas, she’d been mentally running through the chapter she was working on. Flashes of the love interest’s impassioned speech were coming to her, but she was struggling to untangle his motivations. Still, he was acting particularly swoon-worthy. It made it difficult to focus.
Erik couldn’t know exactly where her head was at, but of course he understood the source of her nerves.
‘Hey,’ he murmured, pulling softly on her wrist. They slowed their pace as they approached the dining room. ‘I’m here, okay? I’ll be right next to you all through dinner. Ignore them. Just focus on me, Sunshine.’
Lips brushed lightly against her fingers. The action did not help to clear her brain.
‘Come on. Get through this with me, and we can get pissed at the bar after.’
A small smile tweaked Abby’s lips at the thought. Drunk Erik was a treat she rarely got to enjoy. The change wasn’t overt. He was already so affectionate and effusive when sober that he couldn’t tunnel much further into that. But she loved the way his shoulders and face loosened, tension melting away. His voice became lower, rougher. If she plied him with enough alcohol, he occasionally turned a little sloppy, finding his long limbs awkward and unwieldy. That was her favourite brand of inebriated Erik.
‘Deal.’
His hand ghosted over the small of her back as he ushered her through the dining room doorway. Heat radiated from it, pouring into her and steeling her for what was to come. As they walked the familiar path towards their parents, she kept her face impassive. In all the years they had visited this hotel for their anniversaries, they secured the same rooms and the same dinner table year after year. In an uncertain world, you could count on Nora and Peter, Susan and Andrew, and this table.
Abby bent to greet her father with a kiss on the cheek, and both Erik’s parents rose to envelop her in warm hugs. She did not miss the slight tightening of her mother’s eyes as she took in her appearance, clocking her unbrushed hair and mascara-free eyes. But as Susan was unlikely to openly criticise her appearance in public, Abby merely responded with an empty smile. It was replaced with an expression of genuine warmth directed at Erik as she slid into the seat he had pulled out for her.
Dinner was surprisingly pleasant.
Both sets of parents largely ignored their offspring in favour of entertaining each other, leaving Abby and Erik to discuss books, films, and the trashy reality show Sarah had got her hooked on.
‘So they just dump a bunch of people in a house? And you watch them go about their lives?’
‘No, they dump a bunch of extremely hot people in a house, and you watch them scheme and bitch and seduce and backstab each other. It’s America’s Next Top Model with less fashion and more sex. It’s The Apprentice if no one had any higher education and they all just gave into temptation.’
‘Right. And you enjoy this because?’
‘Because it is a wonderful feeling to be able to switch your brain off for an hour. You know when you do something and you can feel yourself losing brain power by the minute, but you don’t care because it’s fun ?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you do; you watch sports.’
Erik stuck his tongue out, grinning widely. Abby returned the expression, smile equally bright. That her mother noticed, and she was summarily scolded for her rudeness. Any annoyance vanished when Erik flashed her a wink. Abby had missed this. Missed talking a mile a minute, interrupting and chatting over each other and somehow not missing a single word that was said. Missed annoying their parents together, then sharing a secret smile. Missed the warmth and comfort of Erik’s knee brushing hers under the table as he leaned in excitedly, or the slight roughness of his hand on hers when he wanted to emphasise a point.
She’d missed him .
‘Still want that drink?’ Erik ducked his head to Abby’s ear as they left the dining room.
She hesitated for a moment.
The day had been long and stressful. She wasn’t ready to say goodnight to Erik, but continuing to sit in a room full of people, makeup on and this dress cutting into her side, was suddenly less than appealing. Rest, comfort, quiet, and the company of her favourite person in the world: that was all she needed.
‘I don’t think I’m up to it,’ she admitted, her heart tensing as disappointment flitted across his face. It crept into his voice when he spoke again.
‘Oh. That’s fine. We’re here for a whole week, right? Plenty of time to hang out.’ He looked straight ahead as they boarded the lift heading to their floor.
‘I said I didn’t want to go to the bar. Not that I want to go to bed.’ Abby touched his arm gently, increasing pressure until he turned to meet her eyes. ‘You know, we never got to have our annual double feature at Christmas…’
That tiny smile—the one that always elicited a matching pair from her—appeared on Erik’s face. ‘Movie night? Fuck yes. Sounds perfect.’ Instead of opening his own door, he followed her into her room, watching with amusement as she wobbled on one leg, lifting the other foot to unbuckle her shoe. ‘In a scenario with three options, namely: sitting down, asking for help, or whatever the fuck that just was’—Erik knelt in front of her, making quick work of the strap she’d been struggling with before moving to the other shoe—‘why on earth would you choose the latter?’
The snappy response that had come to mind evaporated as Abby looked down, taking in the sight of Erik smiling up at her from his knees . She’d played off the handsome comment earlier, but he truly had no business owning a face like that, or those eyes that currently felt as if they were cutting straight to her soul. He’d been surprised by the way the woman on the plane was looking at him? Had he passed a mirror recently?
His eyes dropped away from hers, seeming to fall somewhere in the vicinity of the thumb still resting on her ankle. Erik pulled his hand back quickly, and the spell that had her wondering if he might drag his fingers any higher was broken.
‘My room in ten minutes?’ he asked, still avoiding her eyes as he stood again and crossed to the door.
Abby nodded slowly, willing her heart rate to return to normal as she dug under her pillows for the pyjamas she had stashed.
Unsurprisingly, it took them an hour to settle down enough to actually start a movie. In addition to their foregone double feature, they’d missed gift-giving at Christmas.
Erik’s eyes shone as he unwrapped his: a signed hardback of the fifteenth and final volume in a fantasy series he’d been obsessed with since they were kids. Abby had long since given up on it, finding the prose dense and dry. The author had somehow managed to make dragons boring, and that was simply unforgivable. Erik had stuck with it though, devouring each book almost as they released. While she no longer had any interest in the series, she loved his passion for the story.
As usual, Erik had gone overboard.
Her first parcel contained a care package of her favourite treats, including the imported cinnamon bun Oreos that were only available from specialist shops, and at a price so obscene that her PhD stipend rarely allowed her to indulge. It was followed by a beautiful silk pashmina in a rich emerald green—‘to match your eyes’. The final, smaller gift made her eyes prick. Abby snapped open the red velvet box to reveal a beautiful gold locket bearing a delicate etching of a sun.
‘Erik…’ she breathed.
‘I found it in an antique market. Couldn’t resist.’ That small smile was back, along with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘I know it’s a little tarnished; I had it cleaned and polished but I think that’s—’
Abby shook her head, still fighting to keep her tears firmly in their ducts. ‘It’s perfect .’
Her love of old things was well known to him. She could wile away hours imagining the stories behind jewellery, trinkets, and clothes. Couldn’t walk past a second-hand book without flipping the cover open to see if it had an inscription. The more worn an item was, the more proof that it had been used and loved. This pendant—with its shallow scratches and light scuff marks—had probably had daily wear. And now it would again.
Erik gestured for her to hand it over. She leaned further into him as she did, lifting her hair so he could fasten the dainty clasp behind her neck. It brought her close enough to smell him: the fresh linen scent of the fabric softener his mother had used throughout his childhood—the one he was still committed to, even seven years after moving away from home—and the light soapy smell that somehow clung to him even hours after a shower. It was gentle, familiar, comforting. Him .
‘Does it open?’ she asked, pulling back and fiddling with the clasp.
‘They lost the key,’ Erik said with a tight smile. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t. I love it either way.’
Despite Erik’s protests—‘They’re for you , Sunshine’—Abby unloaded her box of treats as the opening scenes of The Princess Bride played on the excessively large TV. However he did grab the box containing her preferred brand of Earl Grey and jump up to brew a cup for each of them, resting his head close to hers on the mound of pillows when he returned. They had journeyed as far as the Cliffs of Insanity when Abby’s eyes began to close, and she slowly fell into darkness.
Abby woke in a dark room, a comfortable weight and warmth covering her. It took her a second to find her bearings, but she remembered she was at the hotel when she considered that her duvet at home wasn’t this deliciously snug. It also didn’t…breathe? That point was more disturbing, as she drifted further into consciousness and became aware that the solid mass behind her was moving in slow, rhythmic motions. It seemed to be attached to the equally solid weight strapped tightly around her waist.
Erik , she deduced, her eyes snapping open and glancing down. This made more sense than a living blanket. His arm lay across her middle, fingers spread wide over the pink cotton camisole covering her stomach.
They’d fallen asleep.
And lying under the covers with him, cuddling , felt a world away from the brief nap they had shared on her bed earlier. This was intimate, even for them, and edged too close to that line they couldn’t cross.
Abby lay there for a moment, weighing her options. She could have slipped out of bed and gone back to her room. Maybe she should have. But he was wrapped so tightly around her that it would be impossible not to wake him, and deep, restful sleep was such a rarity to him that she couldn’t bear to be the reason it was disturbed. Besides, Erik was more than strong enough to carry her back to her own bed. She might have passed out, but at some point he’d been conscious enough to switch off the TV and lights, clear the bed of snacks, and tuck them under the covers. He obviously didn’t mind if she stayed. They were adults. It wasn’t that weird for friends to share a bed. It wasn’t as if they’d never done it before. And at this point, leaving might invite more questions than they could safely confront.
As if he’d read her mind, Erik’s arm pressed closer, drawing her more firmly against his chest.
Well.
That decided it then.