Chapter 55
Fifty-Five
ADDIE
Iwas starting to think that Josh had a perma-smile on his face because I could still feel the edges of his mouth tipped up in the impression of a smile as he smashed his lips against mine.
The last ten minutes had felt like they just happened to me, and were not a part of my life that I was actively taking part in.
Josh had shown up dressed like Zeus, indicating that he had been eavesdropping earlier, before his little ambush.
And didn’t that just reveal all I needed to know about him as a person?
Then his Zeus persona had introduced himself to my parents as my boyfriend, which made the colour leave my already pale dad’s face, and Mum muttered something in French and hadn’t returned to speaking English yet.
Lucy had tried to figure out what the fuck was going on without actually asking. Rachel looked ready to fight.
I wasn’t clear on whether it was me or Josh that she was going to throw hands with.
Clara had thrown on her fakest of smiles, and then suddenly, there was the cold press of lips on mine, and I was rendered immobile.
I didn’t know how long I stood stock still with Josh’s mouth on mine, but the moment his tongue tried to prise open my mouth, I found the wherewithal to push him away.
“What the fuck was that?” I spat as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“I was just saying hi to my girl,” he said, a loose smile on his face as he tried to pull me back in.
“Your girl? We went on one date, and I’ve not been in touch with you since. What about that made you think I was your girl?”
“You invited me to this engagement party,” he said dumbly.
I scoffed and wiped my mouth again. “No, I didn’t.
You invited yourself, and then you didn’t give me enough time to tell you that you couldn’t come because it was for family and friends.
Of which you are neither. And I should have been more honest with you some time before this very moment, but I don’t think I see anything beyond that one date happening between us.
We are not well suited to one another, and there is nothing that could make me change my mind on that one. ”
As the smile finally dropped from Josh’s face, I turned away and looked for the person that I always sought out first whenever I went into a room these days.
He wasn’t in the dining area, which meant that he was probably in the kitchen.
I started walking towards it, only to be stopped by Steffy at the dessert table. A jolt of pain wrapped up in a thick blanket of guilt pierced through me as I remembered she might also have feelings for the man I was irrevocably in love with.
“Hey, Ads, have you seen Eli? I need him to divulge the secrets of the filling he used for the quiche because I think I want to marry it.”
That made me pause. “I haven’t seen him for a while. Why wouldn’t he already know you feel that way about the quiche? Weren’t you the one he was testing them out on?”
Steffy’s light brown eyebrows drew together. “Why would he do that?”
“Are you two not dating?”
She laughed. It was a bright, airy laugh.
“Absolutely not. I mean, we have been hanging out, but no, we’re not dating.
He was helping me create a menu for my work Christmas party—I swear I have to organise them earlier and earlier each year—and we’re friends, I guess.
He’s talked me out of swiping right on a lot of guys with fish. ”
It was my turn to frown. “Fish? Are you into fishing now?”
“No. I think it’s the closest they can get to a dick pic, so they just whip them out whenever.”
“So, you’re not dating Eli?”
“Has he said that we’re dating?”
I stuttered before finding the right words. “Well, no. But things have been hectic recently, and I kept seeing you around, so—”
“You put two and two together and got five? It’s funny, I thought you were the smartest of us all, Addie. It’s good to know that there are flaws in the intelligence.”
I wanted to be offended. I was the smartest of us all.
Academically.
Outside of that, I was apparently a fucking idiot. And had been for a while.
“So, you’re not dating?” I asked slowly. I needed to be one hundred per cent sure I wasn’t about to step on anyone’s toes.
Steffy smirked. “Adrienne, I can confidently say that I am not the Henry he wants.”
Hope bloomed in my veins. “And you haven’t seen him?”
“He’s gone,” Clara answered my question as she approached, grabbing a slice of caterpillar cake and picking at the chocolate icing. Steffy slipped off, not wanting to get between the two of us.
“Gone where?” I snapped.
“He’s safe and will be fine. We need to talk. Get Rachel, we’re going home.”
I recoiled. “What does Rachel have to do with anything?”
“She seemed confused when I mentioned we were all going to Becky’s for a post-date debrief.
I didn’t give it a second thought because I was also confused when you told me you were going on a date, but now I think she was confused for a different reason.
So, we are going to talk it out, and I find that nothing keeps you honest quite like the person who clearly knows your secrets.
Especially when that person is Rachel Holloway.
” Clara had that tone she only got when she meant business.
In another life, she would have killed it as a lawyer.
I nodded once and went to find our Megara.
The table in my parents’ kitchen had seen its fair share of shit over the years. Heated debates, outright arguments, lots of tears, the most competitive side of everyone we knew, and countless family dinners.
It was the cornerstone in our family.
And it was where we ended up once we had changed out of our fancy dress, cleaned our faces, and put PJs on, because despite none of us living in this house full time, Mum and Dad always made sure there was a wardrobe full of clothes that any of us could wear.
Clara had taken several slices of Victoria Sponge from the party, and we were sitting in silence, breaking pieces off.
Rachel was the first one to speak. “Addie and Eli have been friends with benefits.”
I kicked her under the table.
Clara’s eyes widened before they narrowed. “I knew I saw you both coming from behind that curtain at your party. Jesse told me that I was making it up. Fuck, did you tell Jesse?” She sounded hurt.
I dropped my head down onto the table and groaned.
“I didn’t tell Jesse.” My voice was muffled against the wood.
“But you told Rachel?” Clara sounded less hurt by the idea of that.
I raised my head. “No, not technically. I told her one thing, and then she inferred something else and wasn’t wrong. And Eli and I agreed not to tell anyone else because other people would have opinions, and we didn’t need those.”
“What makes you think I would have had an opinion on this?”
I scoffed, a harsh guttural noise. “Because you’re my older sister. But sure, let’s pretend you’re judgement free. If I had told you three months ago that I was in a friends-with-benefits situation with the man I lived with, what would you have said?”
Her hand slapped down on the table. “This has been going on for three months?”
I shrugged. “Roughly.”
“Much like Rachel, I would have respected your decision. But I also would have told you that you were being stupid if you thought that you weren’t going to catch actual feelings. Please tell me you told her she was being stupid?” Clara turned to Rachel.
“Not quite. I didn’t really have a leg to stand on because I had my own situation to deal with.
But yeah, I thought it was stupid for her to act like she didn’t actually like this one.
Eli was never going to be like the others.
He wasn’t a fresh slate that you could cleanly slice from your life.
He was always going to be your kryptonite. ”
I had spent so long denying I had feelings for Eli beyond rage that my knee-jerk reaction was to deny there had ever been anything but white-hot anger from me towards him.
But somewhere over the summer, I was able to admit to myself that it wasn’t a new crush I had on Eli, it was an old one, reignited.
“Does that make me Superman?” I joked softly.
Rachel smiled. “You do have the glasses. And you also have a healthy dose of fear. Which I don’t think you’re wrong for feeling, but that fear is keeping you from playing the game.”
“Is the game love?” I said, sarcasm thick in my voice.
“Yes. Now, brace yourself, Adrienne, because I am about to tell you that your problem is daddy issues.”
Clara and I both snorted. Rachel rolled her eyes.
“I don’t mean in the way that you both think.
Darren is great. And the way he loves Vivi is even greater, which is where your problem, Addie, lies.
You grew up with a high bar on what to expect from a romantic relationship.
Both of you did, but only you, Addie, had to watch your dad have a heart attack right in front of you and then deal with the immediate impact that it had on your mother.
“You had to hold Vivi up while she fell apart. You had to come home to the scene of the incident every day until you left for uni. You had to watch your dad build his strength back up. You, more than any other person in this family, saw this big, solid man break apart and then piece himself back together. And more than that, you had to witness the true price you pay when you love someone with your whole heart and soul. And subconsciously, you decided that romantic love wasn’t going to be for you because it had the potential to hurt too much, and you had been hurt enough.
“I know who you’ve been involved with over the years, and they were all men that you have never had a hope in hell of falling for, so living that was way easier for you.
It was less messy. You got to hold all the cards, and you knew you were never going to play your hand.
It was never going to be that way with Eli.
You tried to shove him into a box that you knew well, but Eli has always been someone you could fall for.
And I mean really fall for. Which you did.
And I cannot believe you went on a date with that fucker of a man just to pretend that you didn’t. ”
“In my defence, I thought Eli was dating Steffy, and Becky really wanted me to date that man. I couldn’t tell her why I couldn’t.
I hadn’t admitted to myself how I felt when she suggested it, and by the time he asked, I was pretty sure Eli was on the love train with Steffy.
I needed something to get me to stop thinking about him. ”
“That defence would not hold up in court and you know it,” Clara said, forcing a laugh out of me. “You really thought he was dating Steffy?”
“We have seen them at Vivi’s together!”
“Do you and Eli not talk? Even I knew she was around so much because she was planning a Christmas party menu,” Rachel said.
“To be honest, we’ve hardly seen each other this month. So, we haven’t been talking much.”
“Would he not have had to tell you if he was dating?” Rachel asked.
I shook my head. “No, we could date. It was just if it became something more that we would have to talk about it.”
“You are incredibly stupid. I mean, you both are a little bit, but I bet he only went along with it because you said dating would probably be good for him,” Rachel said as she broke off another piece of cake.
I took great interest in the cake, studying it like I would study for an exam.
“Un-fucking-believable,” she muttered around her mouthful.
“He’s the person I would look for first in a room,” I said quietly after nearly five minutes had passed of just eating cake. Both Clara and Rachel turned to me with matching looks of confusion.
“It’s a thing we do. Random questions. It started when we were in different cities, and we kept it up. He asked me once if I were in a room full of everyone I knew, who would I look for first. My answer ended up being him. I think I’ve known since then.”
“You think? Everyone you know, and your answer was him,” Rachel said, disbelief clear in her voice.
“Fine. I’ve known since then. But acknowledging what that means is…terrifying.”
Another long silence saw the rest of the cake disappear.
“Who would you choose?” I asked Rachel eventually.
“Everyone I know? I’m looking to see if Mum showed up,” she answered. We both looked at Clara. She shrugged.
“I’m looking for Jesse for the same reasons you would look for Eli. I love him, and shit is more fun with him by my side.” She paused for a moment, her lips pursed. “He had a panic attack. Jesse took him home,” she said slowly.
“Is he—” I started, feeling sick that he had a panic attack on his own.
“I’m not going to say he’s okay, but I managed to get him to calm down,” Clara filled in the gaps of my unasked question.
“Was it bad?” My voice was tight.
“It took about five minutes to get him back to breathing mostly normally. Does he have them often?”
I shook my head. “He’s had one that I know of before. Earlier in the summer.”
“Do you remember what scents he picked out?” Clara asked.
“Wood sage and sea salt. Why?” I replied instantly.
The beginnings of a smile broke out on her face. “Was just curious.”
“Wait, wood sage and—He’s that dialled in to your perfume even when he’s in the depths of a panic attack? Oh shit, he’s down bad,” Rachel said on a laugh.
“I need to talk to him,” I said.
“Not tonight, you don’t. Just give him, give yourself, the night. Come on, let’s go build a pillow fort and watch Miss Congeniality.”