Chapter Nine
Three years, ten months ago
Three years, four months until Hattie’s engagement party
Finn checked his phone for the millionth time where he sat at a candlelit table for two, off the beaten track but still in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
He was still five minutes early. He didn’t think he’d ever been early for a date in his entire life.
Just as he’d never put quite so much thought into it—spending hours googling the best date spots in Paris.
You two, Priya would say later, shaking her head at the two of them. Who has their first date in Paris, for God’s sake?
Though Mel wouldn’t even concede that to be their anniversary, over a year later, Finn liked to claim their anniversary was on New Year’s Eve.
Awww, Mel, look, they put on fireworks just for us.
And when she’d rolled her eyes he used to tease her, asking if they were, in fact, together, if she wouldn’t even agree on an anniversary.
She’d laugh at him. Finn, I can’t pinpoint the moment I fell in love with you.
Isn’t that the point? Love isn’t immediate, but when it’s there it’s there.
Mel had been impossible to pin down for a first date.
They’d been texting since Edinburgh, but although Bristol, where he was currently doing up a house, and London, where Mel was sharing a flat with Priya, weren’t all that far away from each other, they’d so far failed to be in the same city at the same time.
Instead, they’d been sending each other a lot of memes over WhatsApp.
Mark had been teasing him nonstop. This has got to be your longest relationship to date.
Maybe never meeting in person is the key for you.
That February, she’d told him she was heading to Paris for a weekend city break with Priya, and, after skiing with some friends, Finn had decided to head back home via Paris because why the hell not.
She’d agreed to meet him for one evening, setting a two-hour time limit so that she could still spend the rest of the evening with Priya.
He sometimes wondered if he’d have managed to get her on a date with him if it hadn’t been for that—and was seized with panic at the idea that it would have just fizzled out, like every other semi-relationship in his life.
He took a sip of his water—not wanting to order a proper drink until she arrived—and checked his phone again.
What if she didn’t show? What if she did show and they didn’t get on?
They’d both been drinking on New Year’s, and it was easy enough to feel chemistry in the middle of a street party with fireworks erupting overhead.
And why the hell was he nervous? He didn’t usually get nervous around women.
His phone lit up and he snatched it off the table, worrying it would be her, canceling last minute. But it was only a message from his mum, responding to a selfie he’d sent her of him under the Arc de Triomphe.
Weather looks glorious! We had a picnic near there, didn’t we? Hope you’re having a lovely time—it’s making me want to go back there! Beth at Book Club is suggesting a reading retreat somewhere. Maybe I’ll suggest a wine retreat to Paris instead. Love you lots. Xxx
He smiled as he laid the phone down. Last year, he, Hattie, and Mark had taken their mum to Paris for a few days for her birthday, organizing and paying for the whole thing.
They’d done all the classic touristy bits, had even made her try escargots, much to Hattie’s amusement.
They’d have to do another trip for her, take her to Budapest or something.
He sometimes worried about her, alone in that house, though she claimed to have quite enough of a social life, thank you very much.
He’d heard Mel before he saw her—surprising himself with how he recognized her voice.
“I’ve just got here,” she was saying. His gaze snapped to the entrance of the little restaurant where she was coming in, cheeks and nose pink from the cold, phone pressed to her ear.
“Not sure. I followed Maps. Near Rue Saint-Dominique, I think?” She clocked Finn, smiled, and waved.
She’d been nervous too, she’d told him later, but at the time the smile had seemed so natural that it had made him relax.
He stood up as she made her way over. “I’ve got to go…Yes, he’s here…Well, I mean, he doesn’t look like a serial killer, but I suppose you never know…Yes, two hours. I promise…Okay. I’m hanging up now.”
She did just that, smiled again at him. “Sorry. Priya checking I got here safely.” She’d given him a look up and down, then met his gaze head-on. “Thank God. You’re just as hot as I remembered.”
It made Finn laugh, and he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, smelling something citrus with a faint undercurrent of mint—like she’d thought about it.
She slipped off her coat, and he had to admit that his mouth went a little dry when he saw what she was wearing underneath—nothing fancy, but the red top clung to her in all the right places, the color making her seem just as vibrant as he remembered.
“You look even better in the candlelight,” he said. And it was true. The flame flickered over her face, highlighting high cheekbones against that gorgeous near-black hair.
She nodded. “Smooth. What else you got?”
He grinned. “Do you have a map? Because I keep getting lost in your eyes.”
She snorted out a laugh, then put a hand up to cover her mouth. When she dropped it, she was still smiling. “You don’t actually use that one?”
“No, but I’ve always wanted to, just to see the reaction.”
She tapped her fingers on the table. “What about…Is your name Google? Because you’re everything I’ve been searching for.”
“If you were a vegetable, you’d be a cute-cumber.”
“Are you a magician? Because whenever I look at you everyone else disappears.”
They were both laughing when the waiter came over. Finn ordered wine for the table in French, and Mel gave him a raised-eyebrow look.
He shrugged. “A-level French.”
“Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”
It had been so easy talking to her. They chatted about Edinburgh, what they’d done on New Year’s Day, other New Year’s Eve stories. They ordered food—a charcuterie sharing board to start, followed by scallops for Mel and bouillabaisse for him—mainly because he’d never had it before.
When Mel talked, her head moved from side to side, making her earrings catch the light.
“Those your design too?” he asked, gesturing at them.
She’d faltered a little, wineglass halfway to her lips. Later, she’d told him she was surprised he’d remembered.
“Yeah,” she said. “I, well, I know it sounds stupid, but that’s what I want to do for a living. Design jewelry. But, in the absence of being able to do that, I make things for myself instead. And Priya,” she added as an afterthought.
“I don’t think it sounds stupid.”
She shook her head. “It’s a pipe dream. How many people get to do what they love for a living?
My mum reckons I should do something sensible.
She’s not a huge fan of me sacrificing my twenties to work in a shop—says I can do better than that.
Though it’s a clothes shop, and I get us both discounts. ”
“But you love designing stuff?”
“I really do.” She’d told him exactly what she loved about it—the creativity, the excitement when you held a finished piece in your hands, the idea of making something that made someone else’s day just a bit brighter.
He nodded along, but he couldn’t help but be distracted by the way her blue eyes lit up, by her emphatic gestures, the way she looked directly at him the whole time.
Driven. Passionate. Two words he’d always used to describe Mel—and he had loved that about her, almost from the outset.
“Well, I for one think you’ll get there,” he said.
He’d believed it—even then. “And I think it’s okay to have a pipe dream.
I do what I love for a living, after all—it’s not impossible.
” He told her about flipping houses, how he loved that it meant he could always move around—how he hated sitting in one place for too long.
“How long does it usually take?”
He shrugged. “Varies. The shortest has been three months. And the longest so far has been a year—but that’s because I liked it a bit too much.”
“Where was it?”
“In Devon. Right out in the countryside. That’s why I liked it—the, I don’t know, freedom?
” He felt stupid saying it, but she was nodding like she got it.
“Of being far away from everyone, not having to live up to expectations, that kind of thing. It had an amazing balcony—I used to wake up every morning and sit outside and drink coffee and just be. And that,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “sounds incredibly wanky, I know.”
She’d laughed. She used to laugh so easily, brightening up the room every time.
He wasn’t sure when she’d stopped doing that.
He worried, if he let himself, that it might be him, dampening down her light.
“I don’t think so. I’d love to live in the countryside, one day.
So that’s your favorite thing about it? The freedom? ”
“I guess. And the physicality of it.” Her gaze met his, and he swore his pulse actually jumped. “Ah…and the sense of achievement. You know, turning something old around, giving a place a second chance rather than leaving it to rot.”
She smiled over the rim of her wineglass—a Bordeaux red that was a bit too easy to drink. “I love that.”
“I like imagining the type of people who might live there, the life they might have.”
“Tell me about the place you’re doing up now.”
So he did—a small Victorian terrace house on the outskirts of Bristol, which so far had needed an entire new roof and the kitchen completely stripped out, to be put in a different room. She titled her head and he could see she was trying to imagine it.
“So who are you imagining living there when it’s done?”
“Maybe a couple? Like a couple just starting out—their first house. And there’s a big garden, so they could have a cat.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Or how about it’s a middle-aged woman who has left her husband and doesn’t have any children and has bought her first house and feels like she’s independent for the first time ever? And she loves the stone floors in the kitchen and—” She frowned. “Are there stone floors?”
“There are indeed.”
“Okay. So she loves those, and she especially likes walking around barefoot on the floor drinking wine while she cooks and she gets to cook the type of meals she wants for once, and she can look out into the garden and see her dog, Gnomio, and her cat…”
“Juliet?”
She laughed. “Right. Her cat, Juliet, playing together because who doesn’t want both a dog and a cat, and both of them are rescues and get along with each other like something out of those Instagram reels.
And, in fact, she films Gnomio and Juliet together in the garden and it goes viral and she makes loads of money and is super happy, but she doesn’t ever buy a new house because that’s where it all started. ”
“That,” he said, lifting a glass to toast her, “is both brilliant and scarily detailed.”
At some point, the plates had been cleared—he hadn’t even noticed. The candle had burned low, struggling for life. She brought out her phone, biting her lip as she checked the time. He knew he was staring at her mouth, the teeth grazing there. Couldn’t seem to stop.
“Shit, I have to go,” she said.
He didn’t argue but moved round to help her back into her coat, his fingers brushing against the smooth skin of her bare arm. He saw the way goosebumps rose there.
She sucked in an audible breath as they headed outside, waving goodbye to the waiter.
“It is freezing, ” she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around herself.
He moved closer, rubbing her arms up and down—a move he’d played so many times before.
She stilled, looking up at him out on the street.
He leaned in, heard her soft exhale as his mouth met hers.
He could taste the wine and mint again. She ran her hands along his forearms, stroking fire along his skin. His fingers dug in at her waist and it took every ounce of self-control to keep it light, not to drag her against him.
She was looking at him in that very direct way of hers when they broke away.
“I want to come back with you,” she said.
She was so certain, so sure of herself. His fingers tightened their hold on her waist as need coiled in his belly.
“But I can’t,” she continued. “I promised Priya.” There were never any games with Mel—he always knew exactly where he stood.
It had made him not want to play games with her, either.
He released his grip on her waist. “Next time.” He could hear the promise in his own voice—utterly sure that there would be a next time. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like that before—he’d always been more of an “enjoy the moment” kind of guy.
She nodded. “Next time.” And that was it. From then on, there was only ever Mel.