Chapter One
Things were not going well.
The clearing up from that night’s sixtieth birthday party had been done in decidedly uncomfortable silence. That is to say, no words were actually spoken between the pair but that didn’t stop there being a charged atmosphere between the two of them which had both feeling acutely aware of the other. Not that he wasn’t always aware of her, though, following the scent of her jasmine perfume around the place like a lost puppy, never more lonely than when she was out visiting one of her friends.
Matt shook his head, feeling his bun slip down the back of his neck. He had wondered for a while if he should just get his hair chopped, back into a more conventional style. Maybe that would shock Robyn into noticing him as a man and not just as her flatmate, employer and best friend – so many labels but none of them the one he wanted. He scraped a hand through the rough stubble at his chin, chancing a glance behind him as she wiped down the last of the tables.
Robyn had looked stunning that afternoon, despite the vintage 1980s lurid pink dress she had worn to match the other three women in the vocal group. She had always been petite, and the faux satin number seemed to swamp her small frame, but regardless of what the woman wore, Matt found his eyes always drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He quickly turned back to wrapping the wires at the back of the makeshift stage, lest she caught him gawking. What she lacked in stature, his Robyn made up for with her feisty demeanour and he certainly didn’t want to get her back up like he had earlier.
Matt hadn’t meant to ask the self-pitying, spontaneous question about her noticing his existence but something in him had snapped. Watching Janet and Brin so in love for all to see had soured Matt’s mood more than he’d like to admit even to himself. Would Robyn ever notice him the way he wanted her to? Would their friendship survive it if she rejected him in that way? – That was the only doubt stopping him from sharing his true feelings, though denying himself the chance to be honest with her was becoming harder by the hour it seemed. Living so closely but trying to keep his intentions platonic was proving more difficult by the day.
Hence why Matt had been keeping his distance for the past few weeks, taking to his bedroom early in the evening rather than cosying up on the sofa with Robyn to watch television, as was their usual routine. She had noticed, of course, she’d have to be a robot not to be aware of the sudden chill in the domestic atmosphere, but had yet to call him out on it. As bright a woman as Robyn was, Matt couldn’t believe she could be so obtuse as to not realise the reason for his bad mood. But then, she wasn’t a mind reader any more than he was, and they had got along perfectly as best friends for years.
That had been when his feelings towards her had been more controllable, though, when Matt could shove them back down into the box he’d labelled ‘My Robyn’ only to be opened in his alone time.
“All done? I think I’ll have a bath, my legs are aching,” Robyn came up behind him, laying a tentative hand on his shoulder. Gone were the days when she would’ve run up and hugged him from behind without a second thought, and Matt knew his current mood was responsible for that. He sank further into his melancholic state, feeling very sorry for himself.
How pathetic, his internal voice chastised him, but aloud he said simply, “Cool, yep, you go on and I’ll lock up.”
Their routines, their mannerisms with each other until recently, had been to all intents and purposes those of a happily married couple, and Matt had lost count of the number of times he’d wished that was really the case. As it was, they were settled down without any of the intimacies of actually being in a relationship.
Matt wasn’t sure how many more nights he could lie in his own bed, at the other end of the landing from Robyn’s room, unable to sleep from the thought of having her so close yet so far away. The time was coming, he knew, when he’d have to set her free. After all, how could she pursue a singing career up here in a small village on the Northumberland coast? No, it was his selfishness keeping Robyn in Oakley, and Matt knew he needed to man up and tell her it was time their arrangement came to an end. For both their sakes.
Robyn trudged up the narrow staircase behind the bar, her feet heavy and her heart heavier. Not for the first time that day, she felt tears spring up unexpectedly, having to force them back until she was safely locked in the bathroom. The last thing she needed was Matt asking why she was upset – after such a joyful celebration as well – since Robyn had no explanation to give him. None that wouldn’t come out as a confused mess anyway. The worry that she had outworn her welcome, that maybe the person she felt closest to in the world partly blamed her for the inn’s constant lack of profitability. That maybe Matt saw her as an irritation now, a distraction he could ill afford.
Robyn knew that Matt considered this his one last chance to prove himself. To show everyone that he may have dropped out of college, but that didn’t mean he was a failure at everything. No matter how many times Robyn had reassured her best friend that he simply hadn’t found his niche yet, that he had plenty of time to find the success he sought, it was still like talking to a brick wall. Matt saw the Olde Oak Tree Inn as the sole answer to attaining his father’s approval. Never mind that Dennis had known the old place was on its uppers when he left for Portugal, leaving the running of the place in his son’s hands. Never mind that he had never actually told Matt he didn’t believe in him. The problem was, that his dad had never explicitly told Matt that he was proud of him, either. Robyn had, many times over the past year and before, expressing her approval and pride at how hard Matt worked and how much more efficiently he’d got the place running. It all seemed to go in one ear and out the other, however, and the stress had clearly started to take its toll on her usually easy going flatmate.
Whether the pub was the sole cause of Matt’s distraction was another question entirely, and if she was honest one that Robyn didn’t really want to think about. Her friends had joked, of course, and Robyn herself had wondered on more than one occasion if there might be more to Matt’s attentions than simple friendship, but her mind was too afraid to go there. What she and Matt had worked – or at least it had until recently – and Robyn would never jeopardise that on a hunch. Besides that, though, she was still unsure of her own feelings. The pair lived in such close quarters, had always been affectionate and touchy-feely with one another, and so it was hard to untangle what was friendship and what might be… more.
One thing Robyn was increasingly aware of, though, was the fact that crunch time was nearing, whether she welcomed it or not. This had only ever been a temporary set up, meant to be a mutually beneficial agreement giving her a home and him some help until Robyn left their quiet village to pursue her singing career. So far, though, whenever Robyn had even so much as considered sending out feelers in that direction, she had been left with a feeling so hollow, so lost, that she had shut down her laptop and put it off for another day. Her ties to the Oakley area were strong, given that Robyn had never lived anywhere else and also that this was where her memories of her grandad were, and that was before she even thought about leaving Matty.
To pursue her dreams, she would have to push herself so far out of her comfort zone that it would be a tiny blip in her rearview mirror, but to be honest Robyn wasn’t even sure that was what she wanted any more.
She took a long, hard look at herself in the bathroom mirror, her vision blurred by tears, a huge knot in her stomach.
Change was coming, but where would she end up?