Chapter 13 #2
‘You’re right. I am out of my depth. The whole place is a can of worms. Sometimes a can of literal woodworm having a munch through all my floorboards.
Every thing I try to fix uncovers – or creates – seven more things that need fixing, and every time I make progress, something else goes wrong and everything gets set back yet again.
The building is fighting against me every step of the way.
It’s a project I should have given up when… ’
He trails off without finishing, and I concentrate on securing the bandage around his leg, because for someone so sunny, he sounds so defeated whenever he talks about his work, and there’s a gaping hole at the end of that sentence, and I think whatever’s missing from it would answer a lot of my questions.
‘Can you talk to your boss?’ I get the sense that this is the first time he’s ever admitted this out loud.
‘No.’ He gives me that unreadable look again. ‘He bought it blind. He never did a viewing first, so he didn’t know just how bad things were. I should never have taken it on.’
‘Quite different to what you used to do?’ I venture, still intrigued by his career change between jobs that are worlds apart.
He lets out a sarcastic snort. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ I ask instead of pushing it further for now.
He opens tired eyes and blinks like he wasn’t expecting that offer. ‘Are you secretly a plumber, an electrician or an expert roofer?’
‘No, but as the campervan shows, I can paint. And I’ve always fancied trying my hand at plastering.
It looks fun, all that slapping and slathering.
’ I wave a hand around to demonstrate, glad when it makes his usual smile reappear.
‘What I mean is that I can learn, if you need an extra pair of hands.’
‘Thank you. But I’m nowhere near the plastering and painting stage yet.
The roof needs repairing, if not replacing entirely.
The electrics need rewiring. Every bit of wood in the place needs treating for woodworm, and I’m already over budget and out of time.
If I don’t get the roof sorted before winter, rain will get in and make everything worse, and all the other jobs will be pointless anyway. This whole thing… it’s bigger than me.’
I relate to that feeling of getting yourself into situations that seem unmanageable, and seeing how open he is makes me feel humbled that he’s trusted me enough to admit that.
‘Stealing a campervan and ending up here felt bigger than me, and do you know who made it feel manageable again?’ I chew on my lip as I look at him. ‘You.’
The beam that breaks across his face seems completely involuntary, the kind of smile that makes it impossible not to feel inside me as well, and it’s like a magnet is pulling me towards him.
I kneel up and he leans forwards. His fingers drift along my bare arm hesitantly, and my other hand lifts, brushing his wavy hair back, just once.
His eyes close and his head turns into the touch.
His blue jumper under my fingertips is as soft as it looked, and although it feels like we’re moments away from kissing, he makes no move to take things further.
His forehead dips to rest against mine and he breathes, in and out, and I do the same.
I let my eyes close and enjoy the simple touch, the closeness, and the feeling of someone who understands… not just me, but everything.
I lose track of time, ignoring the not-unpleasant burn of my thigh muscles from leaning up, the feel of his arm that’s slid around me and his fingers tracing mindless patterns on my back, and get lost in the moment that doesn’t need to be anything more than it is.
And it’s perfect, until my nose catches a whiff of burning meringue and I jump back with sudden clarity.
I’m making a lemon meringue pie and dressing a wound, not nearly almost-kissing builders who I’ve known for less than a fortnight because it wasn’t even an almost-kiss, not really, but it definitely could have led somewhere.
He lets out a shuddery breath and sits back to pull his trouser leg down while I scramble over to the oven and open the door, filling the small space with steam.
The burning smell starts to fade as I set it on the countertop to cool slightly, and the van is filled with a scent that’s sweet, tart and utterly nostalgic. After five minutes, I cut two huge slices, put them on plates from the van’s cupboard, and hand one to Reece, along with a fork.
He looks at the plate for a moment, but I’m holding my breath. This matters, somehow. Not just whether the pie tastes good, but whether I’ve managed to recreate something that evokes fond memories, exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.
He takes a forkful and closes his eyes as he tastes it.
The silence stretches long enough that I start to panic. Maybe I got the balance wrong. Maybe the pastry’s too thick or the filling’s too runny or the meringue’s too charred. Maybe I—
‘Oh, sweet niblets.’
‘Is that a good type of “oh, sweet niblets” or the “oh, sweet niblets, I’m going to die of food poisoning” type?’
‘Oh, sweet niblets, that is magic.’ When he opens his eyes, they’re wet with unshed tears, and my heart constricts in my chest.
‘It’s perfect.’ His voice is rough and he sounds like he’s holding on to his emotions by a thread.
‘It tastes just like my mum’s used to. The meringue is sweeter than you find in shops, the filling is perfect, and the slightly burnt bits are what make it authentic because my mum always used to leave it in the oven just a bit too long too.
I haven’t had anything even close to this in years. ’
He takes another forkful and savours it, and I’ve totally forgotten about the plate I’m holding because I’m transfixed by the evocative joy playing across his face.
I take a forkful of mine too, and although I don’t have the memories attached to it that he does, it’s better than I expected, being my first attempt and my first try at baking in Campervan.
I don’t realise I’ve closed my eyes until I open them to find he’s looking at me with an expression that makes my knees feel unsteady.
‘No one’s ever made me anything like this before.
No one’s ever made me get emotional over a pie before either.
’ He lets out a wet laugh and transfers the plate and fork to one hand so he can swipe at his eyes before putting another forkful in his mouth.
‘I feel like a kid again, like my mum’s still alive and I’ve just come in from school with an A+ result. This tastes like my childhood.’
I can feel emotion clawing its way up my throat too and I bite the inside of my cheek to force it down.
This is what my grandma wanted to achieve with her baking.
She always said that food could transport people to a different place, and watching that happen in real-time, making that happen for someone I’m realising I really care about, is giving me a sense of happiness bigger than I can ever remember feeling, and I’ve done that, just me and my campervan.
‘Thank you.’ Reece is taking his time and devouring every bite. ‘I never thought I’d taste that again.’
‘I had a little help. Madge hand-selected all my ingredients, the yellow paint job infused me with self-belief, and I think Campervan helped in her own little way.’
‘You and Campervan make a good team. If I had any money, I’d be your first investor.’
‘In what?’ I almost laugh at how off-balance that makes me feel. Both the feeling that the van and I are somehow in this together, and the fact that he feels that strongly about it. It’s a nice vote of confidence, even though I don’t have anything to invest in.
‘I don’t know. The Nostalgia Café in whatever form it may take in the future. Because this is special and you can’t give up on a dream like this. You could sell this pie out of the campervan window and people would queue up for it.’
Vickie and I were on our own with The Nostalgia Café, and it felt lonely, but since the moment I ran him over, Reece has made me feel like I’m not alone, and that is what’s making me realise how alone I’ve been until now.
With Jared, I felt isolated and ignored.
Maybe I invested too much into my friendship with Vickie as a way of counteracting that, but Reece effortlessly makes me feel like I matter.
Like he can read the emotions on my face, he stands up and crosses the small space between us, and then his arms are around me and I’m pressed against his chest, breathing in the fabric softener scent of his soft jumper.
It starts as a thank you hug, friendly, innocent enough, but his hand moves to the small of my back, and I feel his breath against my hair, and suddenly there’s nothing innocent about the way my body is responding to his touch.
I pull back slightly to look at him, and the expression on his face makes my pulse race.
His eyes are dark and focused entirely on me, and there’s something in them that makes the air between us feel electric.
If I pushed myself up and pulled him down right now, it would not be an almost-kiss.
We’re standing close enough that I feel the way his breathing changes, becomes uneven, and his hand comes up, his fingers grazing along my jaw, tracing across my shoulder and downwards, making goosebumps rise in their wake as he crosses from my T-shirt sleeve to the bare skin of my arm, all the way down, until his fingers tangle with mine, and he holds on to my hand for a delicious moment before finally, finally stepping back far enough that he can lift my hand to his mouth and press a kiss to the back of it.
His lips are blisteringly hot, and although he looks clean-shaven, there’s a fine layer of stubble that burns across my hand in the most tantalising way, and I have to take a step away until my hip is leaning against the sink unit to keep myself upright.
‘Told you I might have to kiss you.’ His eyes are filled with mischief as he lets my hand drift back down, my fingers still loosely held between his, and I’m certain he knows exactly how hot that was.
Admittedly, that’s certainly an interesting interpretation of what he said earlier, but it’s probably for the best. He could have snogged me senseless and it wouldn’t have felt as intimate as that.
He’s smiling, but I can see his chest heaving and his cheeks burning, and I know I’m not the only one affected by that seemingly innocent gesture. It feels like the air is zinging between us, silently challenging either of us to come up with the next move after that.
It’s Reece who comes to his senses first and steps away, pushing a hand through his hair, looking around the small space until his eyes fall on another purchase from the village shop this morning. ‘You have wine.’
‘Yeah, apparently I’m supposed to ply you with it to get the best gossip.’
He laughs so hard that the van rocks. ‘Better get started then, because I want another slice of that while it’s still warm, and then I might be too full to move for a while. If you don’t want that, throw me out now.’
‘I want…’ You. You. Don’t say that out loud, for goodness’ sake. I swallow hard. ‘…that.’
He smiles. Whether I said it aloud or not, he heard that ‘you’.
I edge around him to cut another slice for us both, and he opens a cupboard, looking for glasses, but only finds the mismatched coffee mugs. He opens the bottle and fills two of them, and hands one to me. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ I clink my mug against his. ‘And I won’t, you know. If you get tipsy and pour all your secrets out, I won’t share them with a soul.’
‘Somehow, I know that.’ His eyes are dark, and the urge to kiss him has not gone away. ‘And as the ladies have realised, it’ll take more than a mug of wine to get me to spill anything, but I appreciate their tenacity.’
He sits back down with his plate and his mug and settles back with his legs up on the table again, lifting them for me to get past and take the seat opposite.
‘You’re the only person to have ever understood why this matters,’ he says before eating another forkful of lemon meringue pie.
I want to ask about his ex-wife, because I’m sure there’s more to his divorce than he’s mentioned so far, but after tonight, it doesn’t feel like him opening up is a million miles away.
I sit back too and put my feet up on the same table, and just enjoy his company. I rest my legs alongside his, and it feels like part of a puzzle piece that was missing, even when I realise why his alien pyjama trousers looked so demure earlier. ‘Oh God, they glow in the dark.’
As darkness falls, the alien faces all over his trousers start gaining a distinct green glow, and there’s just something about a man who isn’t afraid of glow-in-the-dark clothing in a non-ironic way.
We’re both too comfortable to get up and turn a light on.
Reece looks like he could fall asleep at any moment, so relaxed that he’s slumped almost horizontally on the bench seat.
My right leg is pressed along the side of his good leg, my arm resting on his calf, his arm long enough for his fingers to draw mindless patterns on my thigh, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so contented or enjoyed an evening so much that I never, never want it to end.