Chapter 19 #2
I practically have to drag myself away from her and back to the barbeque with the lads, both because Kylie tells me I have to – I expect some female interrogation is about to take place – and because I need to take a pause, get my head around the fact she’s here.
I’m not having some kind of respiratory failure; I’m just feeling things that I’ve never felt before.
And it’s fucking petrifying. As petrifying as it is exhilarating.
Dave and Trev are talking across me and I hear bits of their conversation, making appropriate noises, all the while unable to take my eyes off Lyra and seriously grateful for my polarized lenses.
When the food is ready, I use the excuse to extract her from the others and bring her over to my blanket to eat.
After dishing out plates of grub to everyone, I take a pew next to Lyra, not moving my leg when the bare skin of our thighs graze, feeling the connection in her touch that I felt two weeks ago.
I know I had reasons to try to ignore what happened between us, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them now.
We slip into easy conversation about today’s wedding, joking about the cows, Lyra telling me about other wedding disasters, me sharing gossip I’ve overheard from the hen parties I’ve been working at in the evenings. It feels good to laugh, as if my body is lighter somehow.
Once we’ve eaten, I lie on my side, propped on my elbow, and Lyra faces me, sitting cross-legged.
It’s as if there’s only the two of us here, despite the busy beach.
I’m lost in her easy company, until the increasingly rowdy voices of Kylie’s friends start moaning about the ‘shite’ music playing through Kylie’s beach speakers.
I reach for Lyra’s phone next to her on our blanket. ‘Can I?’
She nods and I take her phone to the speakers to pair it, then hand it back to her. ‘Put Lyra’s music on; she’s got awesome taste.’
‘Coming from a pro, that’s quite a compliment,’ she tells me quietly as I come back to lie next to her.
‘I was a pro,’ I remind her.
She shakes her head, reaching down to nip my chin between her finger and thumb. ‘You forget I watch this face on stage and listen to that voice every other weekend.’
She’s leaning over me, her shirt fallen open, exposing her body an extra inch to me. An inch that drives me wild with the urge to roll her over and continue what we started in her parents’ house.
I open my mouth and take her finger between my teeth.
Her own lips part and I can’t resist tasting her, drawing my tongue over her knuckle, which sends something like a power surge to my groin.
I want more and I’m stuck on this public beach, in a group of increasingly drunk friends, wishing I could carry this woman off to my apartment that is teasingly close by.
‘Yer sister’s still on me back to get ya to go to her birthday party, Guy,’ Kylie says.
‘You and me both,’ Dave says from where he and Trev are both scoffing another burger beside the barbeque.
Talk about a mood kill. Lyra sits up straight and I shift my position to see Kylie.
‘She shouldn’t’ve brought you into it,’ I tell her. I point to Dave. ‘That plonker shouldn’t’ve told her I’m back in the north east.’
‘She’s yer sister, mate, come on,’ Dave says.
‘Plus,’ one of Kylie’s friends pipes up, ‘anyone on Facebook knows you’re singing at Earl’s Castle these days.’
This is precisely the problem with social media, the reason I don’t have accounts and the reason I never used to give interviews when I was in the band. People think they have a right to comment on your shit when they know nothing about it.
‘It’s her quarter century,’ Kylie adds.
I come to sit, rubbing a hand roughly across my two-day-old gruff. ‘That’s not even a milestone, and like I’ve told Dave, she’s in the market for a present, not a big brother.’
‘Hardly,’ Kylie says. ‘I don’t think yer sister or yer mam can expect anything else from ya these days. Ya skint yourself to buy them both a house.’
I can feel my nostrils flare and stand to walk away from saying something I’ll regret to a woman I ordinarily have a lot of respect for.
Dave has the sense to tell her, ‘Alreet, Ky, ya can pester him later.’
I feel them having an unspoken exchange behind my back but I ignore it, grateful that the line of conversation has shifted.
Until I’m plating up chicken I don’t really want and Trev’s beers have clearly gone to his head too, because he asks, ‘Do you ever see Matty?’
And by Matty, he means my nephew. Scott’s son.
The instant his words hit me, I feel myself flip into fight-or-flight mode and it’s Trev I’m looking at, so I want to go with flight but there’s nowhere to fly when I’m trapped on the beach.
I don’t know why but I turn away from him to seek out Lyra and I hate what I see in her expression.
Even behind the tinted glasses she’s wearing, it’s there – pity.
Imaginary walls begin to close in on me. My chest is tightening as if I’m locked in a tiny space with no ventilation. There’s pressure building behind my eyes and I want to run. Or lash out. Or… I glance down to the cool box of booze. I won’t, I know I won’t, but?—
Two cool hands take hold of my face, so soft they make me close my eyes and lean into them. I’ve held my blink and when I open my eyes, Lyra is standing in front of me, brighter than the light of the sun, beams bursting from around her, putting sunspots in my vision.
‘Hey,’ she says. Simply. Quietly. Spellbindingly. I watch her next breath and realise I’m inhaling with her, exhaling as her chest falls.
‘Hey,’ I croak, my gaze falling to lips I want to kiss so much it’s making everything north of my waistline ache.
Then the track changes in the background and in a cruel twist, I hear the opening chords to one of The Hand Me Downs’s songs.
Lyra’s hold is suddenly gone. She goes to her phone and changes the music to a song by Sam Fender.
‘Ah, they could have sung for us,’ one of Kylie’s friends says.
‘Sorry,’ Lyra says, chuckling. ‘It would be really mortifying for him to find out I had a massive crush on him all through my late teens.’ She looks my way and heat rises on her neck. ‘My twenties, too.’
‘Did ya?’ Kylie asks, practically squealing with delight as my lips twist in disbelief because here she is again, Lyra, rescuing me. Making herself uncomfortable to spare me.
‘Oh yeah,’ she says, watching me watch her. ‘Bad. Like, posters on the back of my bedroom door, playing the songs he sang on repeat until my university roommate threatened to cut the plug off my speakers.’
The ladies are laughing and remarkably, so am I. This woman is remarkable. And all I can think is, I had a crush on you, too. I think I fell for you before I ever met you.
So I set my plate aside and cross the sand, taking her cheeks in my hands the way she just did for me, and saving her from her self-humiliation.
I press my mouth to hers, showing her exactly how she just made me feel. Like no one has tried to protect me since… ever.
Either everyone has fallen into silence, finally, or I’ve just stopped hearing the noise. As I tear my lips from hers, Lyra gives me the sweetest half-smile I’ve seen in my life. Creases tugging on one side of her mouth.
‘Thank you,’ I tell her, for her ears only.
‘Aww, look at my baby, all grown up,’ Kylie says, making me look skyward as I shake my head. ‘Lyra, has Guy told you that I used to babysit him? Long before the band. When he was just a spotty kid who’d lock himself in his bedroom with a guitar for hours on end.’
‘Ah, no, he hasn’t,’ Lyra says, lips curved in a completely different way now that it’s for Kylie’s benefit.
With half an ear on the conversation, my mind only able to comprehend how much I want to take Lyra off this beach, I lounge next to her, listening to the banter of the group, occasionally throwing a putdown Dave’s or Trev’s way.
At some point, as the evening starts to drop cooler but the sun is still alive, Trev says, ‘It’s like old times this, all of us down at the beach, having a laugh, drinking beers. We’re only missing a couple of guitars.’
I understand the sentiment but there’s a lot different to those days. I don’t think I show it but Lyra’s fingers slide on top of mine, where our hands rest next to each other on the blanket. Times have changed. People have changed. I’ve changed.
‘Maybe Jay could come next time?’ Kylie asks, and I feel every morsel of my body lock.
‘No.’ My statement is emphatic and ends the conversation. Good. I hold my tongue enough. When it comes to Jay, the guy who introduced my brother to drugs, it’s a hard no.
I take hold of Lyra’s phone and scroll through her music, looking for a distraction, landing on a Stereophonics album.
‘I love this song,’ she says as ‘Just Looking’ begins to play.
She’s sitting up, arms hugging her knees, and I’m sick of not touching her, wishing we were alone.
Trev starts to sing to the music and others follow suit. No one cares what I’m doing any more.
Sod it. I move to sit behind Lyra, my legs either side of hers, her back against my chest, and I wrap my arms around her, leaning my chin on her shoulder.
I wonder briefly if I’ve crossed an unwritten line, but she rolls her head to one side and when her neck is exposed to me, I press my lips to her throat, the scent of her subtle perfume making me dizzy.
Then I sing into her ear, feeling and hearing her sigh against me.
‘You’re killing me,’ she whispers, and I know that feeling. She’s been killing me all afternoon.
Standing, I offer her my hand as I grab a towel and hook it over my shoulder. She lets me lead her down the beach to the water, as close to alone as we’ve been all day.