Chapter Twenty-One
When the appointed drinks date with Sadie arrives, I squeeze myself into my Spanx and then slip my new dress over my head.
I fluff the big, voluminous waves I’ve managed to coax into my hair.
The summer’s ill-conceived bangs have finally grown out, and I have a moment to remark that I look like my old self before I realize I don’t know what self that would even be.
The only self I’ve got is this one. This one, today, in her one good dress, with a bit of bile roiling in her stomach.
I need to be in an Uber in the next five minutes, but I know Lachlan is in the living room and something tells me I’m not going to be able to slip out unnoticed.
He’s got a big black-tie gala tonight for a charity he works with; he asked me to go with him, but as soon as I confirmed there would be cameras there, I shot him down so fast it made his head spin.
I walk into the living room as nonchalantly as possible. The clasp on my bracelet is being fiddly, and I focus on trying to close it rather than pay attention to the gasp Lachlan makes as he sees what I’m wearing.
“Fuck me, you look amazing.”
I suppress the reaction this provokes in me, the way it makes my heart stammer and my stomach swoop. “Ugh, no, I’m already sweating so much in this thing. Sleeves were a mistake—can’t hide the pit stains.”
He laughs. “Have you decided to come with me after all? I showered and everything, just in case.”
I look up from the bracelet and see that he’s decked out in a tuxedo with the bow tie undone, and, damn, he really pulls it off.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen him in anything other than gym clothes or his Mersey kit that I forgot how nicely he cleans up.
A pang of hunger shoots through my body, finding and filling the deepest parts of me.
I don’t bother to mentally wave it off, because how am I not supposed to find him attractive right now? “Sorry mate, no gala for me.”
He tugs at the cuffs of his shirt, pulling them out from under the sleeves of his jacket. “What’s the occasion, then?”
As it so often happens, a deep red blush precedes my answer. “Um, I’m going on the pull? Is that what you people say?”
Had I blinked, I would have missed it, but I’m sure I saw a pained look flit across his face, a brief and terrifying agony. But then he cackles and I wonder if I made the whole thing up. “Going out to get some, I love it. Who with?”
“Sadie from the PL team.”
“Sexy Sadie?”
A stabbing sensation lances through the pit of my stomach. “You think she’s sexy?”
“Um, no, I mean, that’s just a nickname I’ve heard.” The tips of his ears turn red and he quickly looks back down at his cuffs.
“Smooth. Real smooth.”
He shrugs. “Okay, fine, she’s well fit. But you know who has two thumbs and would be an even better wingman for you?” He gestures at himself.
“Oh, cool, I would rather die.”
“Why? I’m Team Abby, through and through.”
“Yeah, but actually think about it. We go into a bar, dudes come get your autograph, and then what am I left with? A bunch of guys who want to date me just because I know you?”
“What’s so wrong with that? You’ll know they have great taste in men.”
“Yeah, because that’s the number one quality I look for in a sexual partner: their taste in men.”
“Come here. Let me do that.” He points at the bracelet. “It’s just embarrassing watching someone so competent struggle with something a child could do.”
“Oh, fuck you very much. You try doing it one-handed. These things are like Fort Knox.”
His smirk sends a little shock through me, but it’s nothing compared to the feeling of his fingers lightly brushing the underside of my wrist as he fiddles with the clasp.
If he notices he’s covered me in goosebumps, he doesn’t say anything.
I’ve never looked at his hands up close, but there’s something really quite lovely about them.
Long fingers, wide, sturdy palms, a few calluses but not so many that they scrape against my skin.
These are hands you can really do something with…
or be done something to. I make a mental apology to Josh for how I’ve twisted the English language with that thought.
Lachlan knits his brows in concentration; it’s the same look he has when sizing up the angle for a free kick. “Okay, I concede that shaming you about this bracelet may have been a wee bit premature.”
“Vindication!”
He flicks his eyes to mine and smirks again. Then he wraps his fingers around my wrist, holding the bracelet in place with one hand while he fishes his phone out of the inner pocket of his jacket with the other. “Make yourself useful and figure out how to tie a bow tie.”
“I thought you were just going for a Third Act Clooney vibe.” I type in his passcode, grateful to be distracted from the feeling of his fingers on my skin. “Watching now; I’ll be ready to do it in five months, when you’ve finally clasped the bracelet.”
He jerks my wrist toward him in gentle admonishment, then releases my arm with a flourish. “Ta da!”
I hand him the phone and take a step closer.
This near to him, all my favorite, familiar features look strange.
The ginger stubble, the deep laugh lines around his mouth, his full lips and white teeth that belie the poor reputation of British dentistry…
Taking it all in is like watching TV in high definition for the first time, and a little tremor snakes through my chest as I grab the ends of the bow tie.
I try to concentrate on the video and the task at hand, not on the minty scent of his breath or how his lips pull into a smile every time he looks at me.
It sounds dumb, but it’s like I’ve never fully acknowledged the fact of him, the realness of him, his chest so solid and sturdy beneath my fingers.
It’s making it very hard to tie the damn thing.
“As your wingman, I must report that Kieran Campbell asked about you the other day at training,” he says, and his voice is deep and steady. “Wondered if you were single.”
Something in me tightens. I’ve always thought maybe Kieran had a little crush on me, but never would I have expected him to say something about it to Lachlan.
What does that mean? A feeling that might be panic slips a sinuous tendril around my throat.
“Did you tell him I’m dead inside but to try again in a decade or so? ”
“No, but I’ll remember that next time a potential suitor asks for my opinion.”
We lapse into silence while I focus on the video, which is describing the trickiest part of the process.
Lachlan shifts his body and swallows; I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
When he speaks again, it’s like there’s almost a franticness about it, a fraying at the edges. “Would you want to go out with him?”
“I mean, when would I even have time, what with my duties as your valet?” I flick my eyes up and give him what I hope is a casual, normal smile, not one concealing about six hundred different meanings, questions, innuendos, inflections, anxieties…
“Are your eyes different colors?” he asks.
I’m thrown by this conversational pivot but relieved to move on from Kieran. “Very slightly, yes.”
“They’re really beautiful.”
The heat burns on my cheeks and I fight the urge to close my eyes.
“It’s called heterochromia. Mine is central heterochromia, so just the inner part of one eye.
But some people have complete heterochromia, like Kate Bosworth.
Remember her? She has one blue eye and one brown.
It’s wild. And it’s really common in dogs, like Siberian huskies. ”
He looks down at me with a wry smile, one that feels like it could shift between mocking and sincere depending on the light. “One of my favorite things about you, Stripes, is that you’re completely incapable of taking a compliment.”
“What? No I’m not.”
“Earlier I said you looked amazing and you responded by talking about your pit stains. I tell you your eyes are beautiful and you come back at me with excerpts from a medical textbook and a reference to Kate Bosworth, whoever that is.”
“She’s an actress,” I say quietly. “She dated Orlando Bloom in the mid-2000s.”
“And the hits keep on coming! Please, crack on with the Kate Bosworth facts, since I know me talking about how it looks like someone spilled a bit of gold paint in your iris will make you staggeringly uncomfortable.”
“She was a champion equestrian in high school,” I mutter.
He throws his head back in laughter, jerking the bow tie out of my hands. “You are a freak, you know that?”
“Yes, I am well aware. Now get back here and let me finish this.” I focus on the silk, which is slippery in my shaking hands.
I know I’m bright red and I know Lachlan will have the biggest shit-eating grin on his face because he knows he’s right: I am incapable of taking a compliment, especially from him.
So I’ll just refuse to dignify his smirk with a response and keep my eyes focused on his throat.
But then he takes my chin in his hand and tilts it up toward him and I can’t focus on anything anymore.
We stay frozen for a few breaths, eyes locked on each other, and it’s like his gaze is boring a hole straight through to the very core of me, and I’m fine with it and it terrifies me.
The moment blossoms between us and it’s nearly imperceptible, but the air in the room shifts.
It’s a subtle reorientation of particles, but I feel it.
A weightiness, a heaviness, a sense of inevitability.
Like magnets flipping around to lock onto each other, a soft shunk of connection that resonates in the center of my chest. I know Lachlan feels it, too: I can see the tension of his shoulders, the faint hint of pink on his marble-cut cheekbones, the shallow exhale of a nervous breath.
It’s like we’re both milliseconds away from moving closer, though already there’s nothing between us but shared breath and a charged, electric air.
He slides his hand up my arm, his fingers catching on the fine mesh of my sleeves.
Something builds inside me, some great, looming shock of feeling that rushes up and escapes my lips in a sharp exhalation.
I search his eyes for a sign about what’s happening, but all I can see is my own confusion and want mirrored back at me.
I’m the first one to break the spell. I have to, because it’s dangerous to imagine what will happen if I don’t. I swallow. “A lot of people thought David Bowie had heterochromia, but really he had something called anisocoria, where one of his pupils was bigger than the other.”
For a second, it seems like he’s not going to let us slip out of the moment, like he’s holding us there, his lips slightly parted and his breathing rapid.
But then his mouth twitches and he releases me, from the grip of his fingers and the grip of his gaze.
“I’m going to interpret that as you saying, ‘Thank you, Lachlan, for your generous compliments. If I were a more emotionally mature person, I’d be able to respond appropriately. ’ ”
“Good interpretation.”
“Would you like to see how a normal person takes a compliment?”
“Sure.”
“Well, go on, then.” He raises his eyebrows in anticipation.
I take a step back, and I know I should be grateful to put some distance in between us, to move us back to solid ground after the shaky footing of the last minute, but I already miss the nearness of him.
I run my fingers down his lapels and brush off imaginary dirt from each shoulder.
“Lachlan Ramsay, you are really—and I mean, like, painfully—good…at holding that phone steady so I can see the video.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.” With one final flourish, I pull the bow tie taut, but my hands linger on his chest.
I know I have to get out of here, have to go meet Sadie and a whole barful of men—how awesome that I’m now super confused and also super turned on. Just the perfect headspace for what’s to come. But I can’t move.
Lachlan breaks first, briefly glancing over at the wall to grab my scarf from its customary hook near the door.
It’s a beautiful little green and blue number that Josh and Erica got me for my birthday last year, and the soft cotton feels lovely against my skin as Lachlan wraps the scarf around my neck once, twice, and holds the ends, not breaking eye contact.
His expression is soft, almost sad, and he’s idly rubbing the fabric between his finger and thumb.
The whole night will collapse if I spend even five more seconds thinking about what’s happening here.
Painful as it is, I move quickly, backing away from Lachlan.
I grab my bag and coat and get into the elevator, leaving him standing in the living room, watching me go, feeling his eyes on me the whole way.