Chapter 12
Twelve
ADDIE
“Do you hate me, or do you just like my suffering?” I asked Clara the following day, before she could even dare to say hello to me. Was I being dramatic? Yes. But it felt justified on this occasion.
“Hello to you, too, Addie. Lovely weather we’re having. How are you?” she asked sarcastically as she moved out of the way to let me in, and we both went to the kitchen.
There were two laptops on the island, but no sign of the owner of the second one.
“Where’s Jesse?”
“Wow, you just aren’t going to do small talk today, huh?
” Clara laughed as she sat down on one of the island stools.
“To answer your second question, he went to the shops to get dinner because he reached his target word count for the day, and he knows he’s not allowed to be around me and gloat about that shit.
The answer to your first question is: I am going to need context. ”
I slipped onto the stool opposite her. “My new flatmate. The one you met but didn’t comment on. You don’t think it would have been good to be like ‘Good luck living with Elijah Vincent’? So, I ask again, do you hate me?”
She scoffed. “No, I don’t hate you. I thought you knew. Didn’t you say you’d been talking? I don’t know why you’re so mad.”
“Mum told me that his name was Eli Jenkins, and I know you know that Rachel basically declared him a ghost. How would I know that the man I was talking to now was also the bane of my existence? Of course I’m mad you didn’t tell me.”
This time, she rolled her eyes, clearly uncaring of my feelings.
“The bane of…Oh my gosh, Ads, grow up. You were academically challenged by a boy for two years, a thousand years ago. You cannot possibly still call him the bane of your existence. I, for one, would just enjoy the fact that you have a hot flatmate, instead of holding some weird grudge.”
I spluttered. “What? Hot? He’s not—What?”
Clara laughed. Cackled would be a more accurate way to describe it. Her head tipped back, and the sound she made came from her diaphragm and the back of her throat.
“Please do not try and deny it. I met him yesterday. He’s very attractive, really grew into himself.
I’ll be honest, I thought part of the reason you hated him so much was because it was your first brush with finding someone physically attractive, and you didn’t know what to do with it.
So you made him the villain in your story and refused to fall for him as a result. ”
“I was not attracted to him.”
I wasn’t. I was sure of it.
“Are you joking? You would spend an hour talking about him on Thursday afternoons. Why were you wasting an hour every week talking about someone if you didn’t find them attractive? Nothing he did was that annoying. You were a bit obsessed with him. You know, like you had a crush.”
“It was never an hour. He was in my last class on Thursdays, so I didn’t get to complain about him to my friends. Which just left you four.”
“I timed it once, Ads. It was an hour. Walking through the front door didn’t stop you.
We all made snacks while you kept it up.
No one took up more real estate in your brain than Elijah.
How could that not have been rooted in attraction?
I don’t even think I could talk about Jesse nonstop for longer than ten minutes, and I’m in love with the guy. ”
I latched on to that. “And how is Jesse?”
Clara shook her head. “No, we are still on your thing. Just admit that you think Elijah is still hot.”
“I never thought he was. How can it be a ‘still’?”
“I’m not asking if you want to screw him seven ways to Sunday. I am just asking you to admit that you think that he’s attractive. And that you thought he was attractive then. But mostly, admit that you think that he is hot now.”
I was silent.
Did I think that Eli was hot?
He was greyer now. Long streaks of it peppered around his temples, complementing the chocolate brown that made up the rest of his hair.
There was stubble along his jaw now. That also had grey peppered in along his sideburns.
His eyes were still a rich dark brown, although there was a sadness to them now.
All the components of his face worked well together, and they were nice to look at.
He had finally grown into his long limbs and filled out across the shoulders… and thighs.
He had nice hands.
And just before I fell asleep last night, I did have an image drop into my head of him moving through a sequence of yoga poses, which had the nerve to make my blood warm.
“He’s not unattractive,” I mumbled. Clara snorted as she shook her head.
“You are so full of shit.”
“I answered your question. Now it’s your turn. How is Jesse? You figure the proposal out yet?”
Clara leaned back on her stool, her hands coming behind her head. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“He’s great. And no, I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t know why I’m finding it so hard. It’s not like it needs to be a production.”
“Well, what does it need to be?”
“It needs to be special. I’m not asking him if he wants to try out this new restaurant that is supposed to have killer cocktails. It’s marriage.”
“Well, how did you two end up moving in together? Was that a whole thing?”
“No, his lease was coming to an end, and he was basically living here anyway, so why not just make it official. It was barely even a conversation. It just happened. I think this would be easier if he hadn’t been there in the aftermath of the failure of the last one.”
“Yeah, but he turned it around, didn’t he? Wasn’t he the one who ate your lasagne?”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Did you intend to make that sound so sexual?” she queried. I laughed.
“Yes. No. Mostly yes. I don’t know what you want me to say here.
I haven’t even been in the realm of getting close to asking someone to marry me.
And I haven’t been around enough to have an idea of your dynamic with him.
However, I imagine he wouldn’t care if it wasn’t ‘special’.
The moment he knew you were even thinking about asking the question, he’d probably say yes. ”
“Doesn’t he deserve more than that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe that is exactly what he needs.
If he were asking you, wouldn’t you rather it happened while you were washing the dishes or something equally mundane?
” Clara nodded. “Exactly, so maybe it doesn’t need to be this big thing that will be a great story when everyone inevitably asks how it happened.
Maybe it just needs to be what you need it to be. ”
“But he wouldn’t be the one asking. Jesse is all about the grand gesture. He loves receiving them.”
“And what is a bigger grand gesture than a woman, who had a proposal fail miserably on her, gathering the strength to try again?”
Clara paused for a moment before waving her hand vaguely in front of her and shaking her head.
“We should stop talking about this before he comes home and wonders why we went deathly silent.” A smirk broke out on her face before she continued.
“I have another question about your new flatmate. What was it about him that had you thinking so hard about whether or not he’s hot? ”
I groaned. “I cannot stress how much I hate you right now.”
“It’s good to have you back, Addie.”