Chapter 15 #2
I’m caught so unaware that I completely forget I’m wearing my bedclothes.
Until I open the door and standing in front of me, still roguishly handsome in his shirt and braces, is Guy.
His eyes rake from my head to my toes, before he says, ‘Hi.’
I know from my very brief medical training that two things are happening right now. One, my sympathetic nervous system is working overdrive. Two, my motor neurons are malfunctioning big time. Hello? Motor neurons? Want to do your job and make me speak?
‘H— Wh— How do you know where my parents live? What are you doing here?’
He slips his hands into the pockets of his trousers and I try my very best not to notice the way the material stretches across his crotch, so much so, I end up looking to the stars in the night’s sky and I think I hear him snicker.
‘Mandy gave me the address and before you say something whip-smart about privacy or whatever, you got my number from Dave, so it’s quid pro quo.’
Now I look at him, worrying my lip with embarrassment. He knows I have his number because I messaged him. He never replied.
Yet here he is, on my parents’ doorstep at 11 p.m.
‘As to the other question, you invited me for hot chocolate. I think?’ His lips curve up slowly, confidently. ‘You were right, the bar doesn’t serve it and after we spoke…’ His smile fades into straight lips. ‘It was all I could think about.’
I step back from the door, welcoming him inside. ‘Mandy must have told you about my velvetiser.’
He chuckles, short and quiet, then steps inside, into me, a full head taller than me but his chest close to mine, so close I don’t think I’m imagining the quick, shallow rise and fall of his upper torso.
‘My parents are sleeping so we need to be quiet.’
‘I can be quiet,’ he says. Then his lips part and it feels like his tongue meets the soft flesh in slow motion, whilst I’m unable to look away.
‘The kitchen’s through here.’ My words are barely audible.
I use the short distance from the hallway to the kitchen to get a grip of myself. To dampen my body’s betrayal of my rational mind.
But it’s hard to be rational when he’s here. I’m not saying this is a move, but this is a something.
‘Were you working?’ he asks on seeing my laptop open on the table.
‘Oh, ah, not really, no.’
He frowns as he takes a spot on the bench seat opposite mine and I take back out cocoa powder and milk.
‘It’s kind of nerdy. In fact, I’m not even going to tell you.’ I hold up my two hot chocolate ingredients. ‘Do you actually want hot chocolate? I could find something stronger – wine, beer?’
‘Hot chocolate is the reason I’m here.’ He grins and it’s a short-bed-shorts-melting kind of smile. ‘Plus, I don’t drink.’
Now it’s my turn to raise a brow. ‘You don’t drink alcohol?’
He shakes his head.
‘But you always have pints lined up on the stage.’
‘Dave disappears those surreptitiously for me.’
Huh. ‘But the tequila, in the lift and at the hen party?’
‘My bottle was filled with water. People expect the naked butler to bring the party. Drinking water doesn’t appear as fun, does it?’
I’m staring at him, rudely so, trying to think of all the times I’ve seen him near alcohol but, with the exception of the tequila bottle, I haven’t seen him drink it.
‘You’re quite the enigma, aren’t you?’
‘Enigma?’ He shakes his head. ‘Closed book, maybe.’
The velvetiser completes its cycle and I pour Guy’s drink into one of my comfort mugs – an old Newcastle Uni one that’s more small bowl than drinking vessel.
I give it my signature touch, drizzling a smidge of salted caramel around the rim and shaving my favourite dark chocolate on top.
When I put the finished article in front of him, Guy looks from the mug, across the table to me, where I’ve slipped back onto my bench, one knee tugged up to my chest.
‘Are you trying to keep me up all night?’
‘You knocked on my door,’ I counter, my brain not engaging before the flirtatious words leave my mouth. I can see he’s taken by surprise and I feel shockingly forward.
I’m relieved when he tells me, ‘You kissed me first.’
I pick up my own drink between two hands, more for the distraction than the warmth emanating from the mug. I’m suddenly hot enough. ‘Are you going to dine out on that forever?’
His laughter breaks the… whatever it is that’s passing between us, and I’m pleased it does because the way he looks, the way he’s looking at me, has me hotter than any cocoa. The kind of temperature that makes a girl dizzy.
Raising his drink, he slurps as he sips. The sort of uncouth sound that would make my mum wince but that I hear as enjoyment. ‘God, that’s good.’
‘I hate to say I told you so but…’
‘You told me so?’
I hold my arms out in response – if the shoe fits. ‘Why are you really here, Guy?’
He brings his forearms to the table and twists his hot chocolate between his hands. ‘I had a good night.’ He glances up to me. ‘It’s been a long time since I had a good night, and I think it started when I got locked in a dungeon with you, so I guess… I wanted it to end with you, too.’
He renders me utterly speechless. Because I’m flattered and there are jiggly beans dancing in my tummy over his words.
But also because I didn’t do anything, I don’t think.
If he had a good night, it’s down to the kindness he showed other people.
I think I’m sad for him, for the rock star, the musician, Guy Walker, and it surprises me.
I find myself wanting to know everything about him that isn’t obvious. All the bits in between the chart-topping era and now. All the parts before.
I hear the creak of a bed above our heads, a sound that makes us both shift our attention to the ceiling.
‘Let’s take these into the extension; it’s almost sound-proofed to the rest of the house,’ I tell him.
He follows me into the extension, originally constructed to be a playroom when Livy and I were kids.
Over the years, it became the room one of us was sent to when we fought.
In secondary school, it became the music room, which was home to all the instruments Mum and Dad forced Livy and me to take up.
Dotted around the room are boxes containing my old violin, a cello and a clarinet.
My upstanding piano, which I actually was good at because I enjoyed it.
When I was an older teen, right up until I left home recently, this room became my hideaway.
I’m the only person who really comes in here, to hide away with my vast stash of old vinyl records and the bulky second-hand player I bought, which has nineties-style tape cassette and triple rotating CD options.
I’m sure it was cool when it was new on the market.
Guy follows me inside. It’s cold, so I switch on the old electric heater. ‘We’ll be roasting in ten minutes. Would you like a throw in the meantime?’ I gesture to a stack of folded blankets on the ottoman between two leather sofas.
‘I’ll be fine with my warm sugar overdose. Thank you, by the way.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I say as we face each other, both wondering where we should sit, I think. I am wondering where I should sit. On the same sofa as him? On the sofa adjacent?
I decide to let him make the call, tucking myself into the corner of one sofa and pulling a throw over my bare legs.
His focus flicks between the seating options. Eventually, he chickens out, setting down his drink on a coffee table and walking around the room.
‘Who plays?’ he asks, motioning to the boxed instruments.
‘You’re looking at the band-camp geek. Though my repertoire mostly extends to three-note nursery rhymes. I’m very proficient with the triangle and the tambourine, though.’
I’m finding myself funny but there’s something about my words that seems to jar with him, right before he gives me the kind of smile that doesn’t light him up.
‘I could play the piano well,’ I tell him.
‘Could?’ he says, trailing his fingers along the old Yamaha, probably collecting dust on the tip.
‘I haven’t played for a long time. I always think going back to an instrument you know well is like riding a bike, though. It either clicks, or it doesn’t. Most instruments never did for me. Piano was the exception. I could get lost in here for hours.’
He nods. ‘It was always guitar for me.’
‘I would have loved to play the guitar but it wasn’t encouraged at my school. It’s what all the bad boys played,’ I tease.
‘Why do you think I played? Absolute babe magnet when I was a teenager.’
I splurt my next mouthful of creamy cocoa.
‘It cancelled out the acne,’ he says, then tentatively tinkers with the keys on the piano, which is slightly out of tune.
‘I taught myself to play piano a bit. It helped me write but I was never good enough to perform on it. I always thought if you could crack the nut of the piano, you could teach yourself to play just about any instrument.’
‘Well, I tried to teach myself guitar when I was at university, and I can assure you, it’s not as translatable as you think.’
‘Maybe you didn’t give it enough time.’
‘Probably right. How about you? Do you still play often?’
He glances my way, creases forming at the side of his eyes, then he quickly moves away from the instruments without answering my question. He moves to one of two long shelves that are packed full of my LPs.
I watch him run a finger along the collection, slow enough to read the spines, wondering how it would feel to have those fingers run lazy lines across my skin.
‘Oasis. Stereophonics. U2. Arctic Monkeys. The Killers.’ He reads the titles as he works along the row, then slides the next one out and tucks it under his arm, obscuring it from my view.
He continues scrolling. ‘Kings of Leon. This is their best album. Florence & the Machine. Billie Eilish.’ He takes out the next one and tucks it under his arm with the other, so that I can’t see either.
‘Sam Fender. The Goo Goo Dolls. This is a wicked shelf. Who’s the music lover?
’ He moves towards the big old LP player which sits central to the long wall in the room, flanked on either side by shelves of vinyl. ‘Does this work?’