Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Ellie?’
I looked up from the bottle of Rioja I was about to put in my basket and glanced up and down the supermarket aisle. I could see no one I knew.
I hesitated for a moment before reaching for a second bottle. I didn’t know how many people Mel had invited this evening, but one bottle wasn’t going to go very far.
‘Ellie?’ The voice sounded closer this time. ‘It is you. I thought it was.’
A tall man with shaggy hair and the most lurid board shorts I’d ever seen was striding towards me, his flip-flops smacking on the tiled floor of the supermarket.
Not being able to immediately place someone still sent me into a mini panic.
It made me afraid that the memory loss I’d experienced after the lightning strike had returned with a vengeance.
Most of the gaps I’d experienced had slowly filled in over the last three months, but some still remained, as did the fear.
I was still struggling to recognise the man who’d hailed me in the wine aisle, but it wasn’t the lightning to blame.
It was the perfectly normal confusion you get when you bump into someone totally out of context.
The pieces slotted into place a millisecond before his ‘G’day’ gave him away.
Admittedly, the last time I’d seen Olly he’d been in hospital scrubs and hadn’t looked like he’d just wandered straight off the set of Baywatch.
‘Olly. What a surprise,’ I said, unsure whether I was referring to finding him in my local Tesco, or the huge bear hug he enveloped me in.
He released me just as I was beginning to worry whether my ribs were strong enough to withstand such an exuberant embrace.
I’d forgotten that everything about Rhys’s Aussie friend was somewhat larger than life.
‘You’re looking way better than you did the last time I saw you,’ Olly said with a grin.
‘Thanks. Turns out getting shocked with high-voltage electricity isn’t for everyone.’
It wasn’t my best quip ever, but Olly laughed out loud. ‘Rhys said you’ve got a good sense of humour.’
If I were a dog, that would have been the moment when my ears pricked up to attention. It had only been a week since I’d last seen him, but there was a big Rhys-shaped hole in my life which I had totally not been expecting when he’d taken Tasha away for a beach break holiday.
Without me even realising it, I’d become addicted to his presence.
It’s not that I saw him every day. But since we’d struck that agreement in the park café four weeks ago, he’d been a feature of my daily life.
Whether it was turning up unexpectedly at my office with takeaway coffees (which always reminded me of our first encounter), delivering a client’s sketch I’d commissioned from him, or just a random WhatsApp to say hi or share something amusing he’d seen on the internet.
I understood him so much better than I had before.
I knew about his passion for art, American sitcoms, and his love of silly puns.
I knew he adored mustard but hated ketchup, and how he voted.
I knew he phoned his parents every week and had cried unashamedly when their family dog had died while he was away at university.
On many levels it felt like I knew him intimately.
But we’d never been intimate. And behind all this new knowledge was the niggling concern that I’d somehow got myself so firmly entrenched in the friend zone there was no way I was ever getting out of it.
Because there’d been no dating per se; we’d had café lunches, park picnics, and drinks after work, but nothing that could be deemed romantic.
It would be ridiculous to blame him for following the guidelines I’d set out so exactly, but Rhys was sticking to them as though they were commandments set in stone.
I was desperate to ask Olly what else Rhys might have said about me, but that was a line I knew better than to cross. He glanced down into the shopping basket at my feet and gave a cheeky wink. ‘That’s his favourite wine, you know.’
Actually, I hadn’t known that, and I felt my cheeks grow instantly warmer for no good reason at all.
‘It’s for a barbecue my friend is hosting tonight,’ I said, the words bubbling out too fast, like water over rapids. ‘But Rhys isn’t coming.’
‘Still knackered after his week away with Tasha, is he?’
I bit my lip and wondered how I’d fallen into this potential pitfall of a conversation on a simple shopping trip.
‘No. It’s not that. I didn’t ask him.’
‘Why’s that then?’ Maybe it was an Australian thing, or possibly just an Olly thing, but I’d definitely not been expecting that question.
And could I even answer it? Why I hadn’t invited Rhys, when Mel had practically insisted that I should, was a big old can of worms that I really didn’t want to open right now in the middle of the supermarket.
‘Oh, you know. We’re still taking things very slowly. We’re more just friends, you know. That works best for us right now.’
The laid-back surfer-dude persona, the one that fitted so perfectly with his current attire, melted away and I was left with what I assumed was Olly’s serious medical-professional face.
‘You do know he’s crazy about you, don’t you?’
‘I . . . I what? No. I mean there’s an attraction there – on both sides, that’s no big secret but—’
Olly held up a stalling finger, as though I was talking in class and about to get into a whole heap of trouble.
‘That’s bullshit, Ellie. I’ve known the guy for years and I know when it’s a casual thing for him and when it’s something more meaningful.’
I swallowed, not sure what to do or say with that information.
‘Well, you know, it’s not that straightforward. There’s Annalise and—’
Olly suddenly looked remarkably angry.
‘Please don’t tell me that’s what has been holding you back.
I don’t like speaking ill of a fellow Aussie, but that woman does not deserve him.
Not after what she did to him.’ He tapped his own chest forcefully.
‘I was there when the pieces all got broken. I was there when he finally picked them up again. Do not let her be the reason that nothing has moved on between you two. I’ve seen him get involved with people, I’ve even seen him fall in love .
. . but I’ve never seen him like he is about you.
Not ever.’ He shook his head as though he still found it an entirely incredible phenomenon that needed further investigation.
‘This means something to him, Ellie. You mean something.’
‘But he’s never said anything. The one time I asked where we were heading, he practically did a runner—’
Another warning finger felled me into silence.
‘The fact that he’s said nothing doesn’t mean it isn’t how he feels. And remember, he’s been burnt before, so it’s perfectly understandable that he wants to take things slow. Plus, he probably doesn’t want to scare you off. What that says to me is that he’s putting your needs ahead of his.’
Olly gave a very Antipodean shrug, as though such a concept was unheard of where he came from.
‘Now, do I go for the easy cliché and buy a box of Foster’s, or pretend that I’ve acquired a taste for British-brewed beer?’ he asked, in the most abrupt conversational one-eighty I’d ever known. He winked as he reached for an enormous box.
Olly’s opinion of how Rhys felt about our situation was just that: Olly’s opinion. It didn’t mean he was necessarily right. But it certainly cast enough seeds of doubt to make me suddenly wonder if our curious agreement was coming to the end of its natural lifespan.
I’d missed him, not just on his week’s holiday with Tasha. I missed him constantly, even in places where he’d never been: on nights out with my friends; sitting beside me on the couch watching TV; in my bed. He was in my head all the time, but that wasn’t enough anymore. Maybe it never had been.
‘You’d better not tell him I said anything,’ Olly said, suddenly realising that he might just have put his size thirteen foot in his mouth. ‘He’ll have my balls for earrings if I’ve gone and screwed this up for him.’
This time the hug was of my making. ‘Don’t worry. You haven’t done anything wrong. Far from it, in fact.’
‘Bonzer,’ Olly said, reaching again for the box of amber nectar. ‘Well, I ought to get going. Don’t want to miss the last of the rays. It’s a lovely evening for a barbie.’
I watched him head towards the checkout and on impulse placed a third bottle of Rhys’s favourite wine into my basket. ‘It certainly is,’ I said softly.
I didn’t wait until I got home to make the phone call. I called right there in the supermarket car park, my hands sweaty with nerves as I held my mobile.
‘Are you doing anything tonight? Do you have any plans?’
‘No.’ Rhys’s voice felt like a caress in my ear.
We didn’t do this. We didn’t see each other in the evenings.
It was as though there was an unspoken hidden agreement within our original one that meeting after darkness had fallen would be too dangerous, too much of a challenge for our self-control.
And from the state of my palms and the tingling excitement that was already thrumming through me, perhaps it had been just as well.
But something had happened today, something I hadn’t been expecting.
The tide had turned, not gently, but with a tsunami-like velocity.
‘Mel and Steve are having a barbecue tonight, and I wondered if you’d like to come with me.’
‘What time shall I pick you up?’