. . . a warm welcome
It takes three different trains and seven painful hours to get me all the way from Verona to the centre of Nice.
Then another hour to journey up into the mountains to find El’s parents’ villa.
The longer I have to myself, the more my big brave decision feels like a desperate, masochistic act.
By the time I’m buzzed through El’s gates and directed towards her garden, there’s a lump in my throat so big I fear I won’t be able to speak.
But as I turn the corner, I see a set of familiar hazel eyes spot me before I even take a step.
He leaps from the pool, not stopping to bother with a towel, and bounds across the stone tiles into my arms.
‘There you are!’ Noah embraces me tightly.
This is the longest we’ve been apart since the moment we met, and I thought I was the only one that felt the distance.
But as he squeezes me closer, dampening my clothes, I can tell he felt it too.
This is the hug of someone who doesn’t want to let go.
I take a big gulp as he pulls back from it, arms still holding mine.
‘Love the new hair,’ he says.
I run my hand through my braids, a dark brown that blends into gold, all the way from my scalp to where they stop at my hip bone.
‘Thanks, Paige did them,’ I say.
‘Well, pass on my praise!’
‘Are you angling for brownie points?’ I ask.
He winks. ‘Always.’
‘Amorie!’ El calls, running over to join us. ‘We’ve missed you! Honestly, it’s not been the same. He’s great and all, but everyone knows that you and I are the real romance.’
Bold words coming from someone I’ve never been one-on-one with, but I giggle in time with her nonetheless.
‘Let’s get you settled. Give us a moment?’ She turns towards Noah, shooing him away.
He leaves instantly and I hold my breath. My stomach sours with every step he takes into the distance.
‘So how was Verona?’ she asks coolly.
‘Beautiful, and so great to see my sisters,’ I reply.
It’s easy, it’s friendly, it’s absolutely fine. El’s not the enemy. No one’s the enemy. I just need to get over this.
‘Any hot dates?’ she asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
I try to smile back. It’s meek at best. ‘Took a break actually.’
She nods, none the wiser. ‘I get it. Dating’s exhausting. I’m so glad I found Noah.’
I bite my tongue and try to ignore the fact that she ‘found Noah’ while in the midst of a long-term relationship. If I speak, I’ll be the villain, despite it being a fact. So, I’ll just have to let my tongue bleed out a little.
‘Have you eaten?’ she continues.
I shake my head.
‘Sam’s still by the grill; we can put in a request.’
‘Sam from Berlin, Sam?’
Her eyes grow wide. ‘Oh, yeah! I forgot you two had a thing . . . What happened with that anyway? He never said.’
I shuffle uncomfortably, trying to think of an appropriately dull response. El may be everyone’s friendly fav, but she doesn’t strike me as someone that can keep a secret. Unless, of course, that secret involves kissing a man who is not her boyfriend . . . But that’s none of my business.
I settle with a shrug. ‘Nothing much.’
She’s visibly disappointed. ‘Right. Well, I can go ask him for your food if you’re uncomfortable?’
‘No, it’s no drama, I’ll go!’ I say chirpily.
Something tells me that if I let her talk to Sam, she’d make things immeasurably more awkward. Plus, it is the perfect excuse to escape from this forced one-on-one. So, I flash her one more smile and hastily make my way across the stone floor towards the barbeque.
Sam stands tall and joyful, singing along to the music as he flips a burger in his barbecue corner. A beer bottle rests in his spatula-less hand, which he raises to me in salute as he spots me sauntering over.
‘Long time no see! El said you’d be coming.’ He stretches his arm out for a hug, the bottle cold against my skin as he squeezes me tightly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Verona, with my sisters. El said I was coming?’ I ask.
What happened to ‘forgetting we had a thing’?
‘Sure did,’ he scoffs.
He offers me his beer bottle. I grab it without a second thought and take a hearty swig, taste be damned. Then he aggressively cleans a patch of the grill, before laying a piece of foil down and topping it with a veggie burger.
‘She hasn’t stopped interrogating me about that night in Berlin. Said the two of us should share a room. D’you have fun with your sisters?’ he asks, moving on.
‘Tonnes,’ I say.
‘Glad to hear it!’ Then he gestures to El and Noah, cuddling on a deckchair in the distance. ‘That’s weird, right?’
I splutter, the beer going up my nose. ‘Why do you think it’s weird?’
He side-eyes me as I recover, before going back to the burger and shrugging. ‘Just didn’t see it coming I guess.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Even that night in Berlin? She was all over him; it seemed fairly obvious to me.’
But he remains unfazed. ‘That’s just El. I mean, you should have seen her the first night she met me.’
‘Oh, I believe it. I saw the way you two hugged hello in Berlin.’
He smirks. ‘Were you jealous?’
I have to admit it. ‘Kind of.’
His lips twist further into a fairly satisfied smile. Then he shimmies the now-ready burger onto his spatula before holding it out towards me as I scramble for an empty plate. I grab a bun from the table and make a start on the sauces as he continues to grill.
‘So, you really think that they’re weird?’ I prompt him. ‘Why? What have they been doing that’s so weird to you?’
I came here ready to back them. I am Noah’s friend after all, and I want him to find his perfect partner just as he intended.
However, it’s spine-tinglingly validating to know someone else might just get bad vibes from El too.
Maybe I’m not heartbroken because he’s with someone, maybe I’m heartbroken because I know deep down that he’s with the wrong someone.
Perhaps a second opinion will give me grounds to bring it up with Noah. I take another swig of Sam’s beer.
He pauses in contemplation. ‘Okay, maybe not weird, per se. It just wasn’t the couple I was expecting to find.’
‘Oh. Who were you expecting?’ I ask.
He turns to me, eyebrow raised. ‘I think you know.’
‘You and me?’
He snorts. ‘You and Noah. You had a vibe that night, as much as El tried to convince me you didn’t. I went in trying to move past it, but honestly with the way you two acted I didn’t think we’d make it as far as we did.’
I feel my cheeks grow hot. ‘Noah and I are just friends. Is that why you ghosted me?’
He chuckles. ‘It was hardly a ghost. I asked you if you wanted to see me again, you said no and that was the end of the convo. Didn’t think we’d meet again, though.’
‘But you’re so excited we have,’ I say jokingly.
‘Jumping for joy,’ he says, deadpan. ‘For real though, it is nice to see you again. Especially after the glowing review you wrote.’
I nearly spit out my burger. ‘You weren’t supposed to read that!’
He looks me straight in the eye. ‘I was always going to read it. It’s not every day that you get scored on your performance.’
My cheeks grow hotter the longer he stares at me and I start to remember how it felt when he pinned me against his door.
‘The rating wasn’t for the sex; it was for the date as a whole. I would never try to rate something so intimate,’ I say.
‘Yeah, whatever. But for the record, I had a nine-out-of-ten night too. In all aspects.’ He stresses the last part.
Our eyes meet, and we relish in our past moment and the lack of awkwardness between us now.
This is nice. He is nice. Honestly, I commend him for being a good sport about this whole thing.
He turns back to the grill, flipping a couple more burgers and holding out his hand for his beer bottle.
Our fingers brush as I pass it and I feel a small spark of electricity, not lust-filled or fluttery.
I’m drawn to him in a new way . . . as a friend, maybe?
Or, at least, someone I can trust in this house of hell.
‘Can I be honest?’ I ask.
My words shake slightly at the thought of repeating the confession I made in Verona, but he immediately quells my nerves with a nod of support. I smile softly and gather my thoughts once again.
‘Back in Milan, when Noah got the call from El, I realised . . . well, I guess . . . I’ve been feeling . . .’
‘Am, we need you!’ Noah yells, interrupting us as he strides over with open arms. ‘Can’t hide in a corner all night. I haven’t stopped talking about you and now everyone’s dying to meet the famous Amorie Grant of the New Traveller.’
He reaches over to grab my hand, but Sam’s arm juts across his path and scoops my palm into his first. ‘She isn’t hiding – we’re just busy catching up,’ he says. ‘Could you give us a moment, actually?’
Noah freezes, dumbfounded as his eyes dart back and forth between Sam and me. He stops eventually, homing in on my face for any signs of distress. His whole demeanour has shifted into something uncharacteristically possessive.
‘I haven’t seen you either,’ he says.
He follows it with a cheeky smile to keep the whole thing light-hearted, but I can spot a desperate power play from a mile off.
I’ve been yearning to exert one of my own since I first saw him with El.
He looks so jealous, but he can’t be – not of me and Sam.
Especially while he’s so clearly and openly with El.
I feel a flutter at the thought of him jealous, but I swiftly kill it.
I can’t go there. I’ll just get myself hurt again.
I squeeze onto Sam’s hand tighter.
‘I’ll be over in a bit, when me and Sam are done talking,’ I say to reassure him.
I feel a small tremor in my voice as I start, but I smooth it as I go. Noah’s not scary and I’m not scared.
His face drops instantly, features sinking to reveal a discontent I’ve never seen in him before. It makes my heart lurch, but I take a deep breath and stand firm. I can’t do this with him. He has El. It’s not good for me.
He doesn’t say anything else – just shakes off his forlorn face and replaces it with an empty smile, before turning on his heel and joining the rest of the party in the distance.
Sam and I stay silent, waiting for his footsteps to fade into nothingness.
The second they do, Sam drops my hand and sucks in air through his teeth.
‘That was brutal,’ he says.
My stomach flutters. ‘You think?’
‘Yeah, but needed. He can’t have his cake and eat it too,’ he tuts.
‘He’s not like that.’ I cross my arms over my chest and suddenly feel an overwhelming compulsion to defend Noah’s honour. I’m the one with a crush on him; he is just going about his life, making friends and hanging out with the real girl he likes.
A wave of nausea washes through me at the reminder of him and El, the real girl he likes. It was never me. It will never be me. We were just two strangers who found each other and made semi-decent friends.
I can make out Sam mumbling something in response, his voice a dull muffle that fades into the background. I can’t focus. All I can hear are waves against my ears. Waves of shame, waves of sadness. What am I doing here?
‘So, do you have space in your room for two, then? I just figure, if El was trying to put me in there anyway . . .’ I say.
Sam stops in his tracks, dashing the spatula to the side so he can make sure he’s taking my words in correctly.
His eyes scan me over, at first light and confused, but they deepen the longer he reads me.
I keep my face firm, resolute. I meant exactly what I implied and I need him to understand that.
‘Just to sleep?’ he asks.
I shrug. ‘Never say never.’
He snickers in response, shaking his head and failing to keep composure. ‘I didn’t think you’d be the rebound sex type.’ He throws a suggestive raised eyebrow my way.
I correct him. ‘There’s nothing to rebound.’
‘You’re trying to make him jealous, though.’
‘Maybe, sorry.’
I shrivel into myself just a bit. He’s right, I am, and it’s unfair to use him like that. I look up in shame, ready to apologise profusely, but he remains cool and collected.
‘I’m not mad at it.’
He turns off the grill, shoving his phone in his pocket before starting up the path. After a moment, he looks behind him and chuckles softly at the sight of me, still frozen where he left me.
‘Come on,’ he says, tucking me under his arm the second I appear next to him. ‘It’s getting late and it’s about time you put those bags down. Let me show you to your new room.’