Chapter Fifteen
Belle
I feel my cheeks burn whenever I think back to this night. I take a deep inhale, excited to relive it. I shuffle on the wooden floorboards, wondering what Jake will think. I smirk.
The room is ever so slightly smoky, filled with the scent of incense, a musky sandalwood aroma wafting from a low bookshelf to our left.
God, I loved this apartment. A woven rug, red, black and cream, lies in the centre of the room underneath a coffee table which is all glass, except for its bronzed legs made from metal piping.
Next to that, a cream velvet sofa backs on to a window overlooking a residential street of brick tenement houses.
A fur throw is folded delicately on one arm.
A taller bookshelf on the far wall holds a record player, something slow and warm drifting from it and the shelves are stuffed with books, trinkets, records.
A mirror is leaned up against the bookshelf, making the room appear bigger and, next to it, a tall lamp casts a warm ambient glow.
The monstera in the corner was her pride. ‘Eleven years old,’ she’d told me once, touching a leaf like it was a pet. ‘Most people overwater them. You have to learn to leave some things alone.’ I remember wondering if that was advice about plants or about me.
The day we’d met, I was not expecting to meet a new love interest. My mind was all work – I had a presentation the following week but had also promised Jules a visit for her birthday, so my stress levels were at an eight out of ten on that train from London to Edinburgh.
I was tapping away on my laptop, oblivious to my surroundings, when I stretched out, looking out at the barren land through the window. My leg was tapping frustratedly against a table leg, or so I thought, because then said table leg moved.
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry,’ I said, ducking to look under the table and confirming it was, in fact, a human leg.
I peered over the tabletop and noticed a woman sitting opposite, a mischievous and amused grin playing on her lips.
She had chin-length brown hair, swept haphazardly to a side part.
She wore a blue check shirt buttoned to the top and was holding a book open on the table; a red leather bookmark was placed neatly in the fold.
She looked like an actress I admired. The kind of woman I’d pause on while scrolling, telling myself it was just appreciation.
She looked, I realised with a small internal lurch, like the women I’d always noticed but never let myself think about too hard.
‘I really am so sorry!’ I grimaced.
‘Playing footsie, are we?’ She smirked, playfully, and I felt my face go immediately, completely, red.
I closed my laptop. We flirted the entire way to Edinburgh.
She made me laugh and talking to her, flirting with her, felt so easy, effortless.
Like I didn’t have to try or put on an act – I could just be myself.
She asked for my number when we got off the train and I gave it to her without having to think about whether I wanted to.
That weekend in Scotland, I was barely there. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw hers: that steady blue, fixed on me like she’d already decided something.
I had agreed to a drink in a pub with her, before my train back home that Sunday, and the tension was palpable.
She had placed her hand on my leg in the corner booth when we chatted about our lives, our jobs, our friends, and I’d felt like a giddy schoolgirl; I could hardly concentrate on anything but the warmth of her palm on my thigh.
I chewed my straw as she talked; the Roman nose of her side profile as she looked out towards that bar felt like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
The distance was going to be an issue, but she’d promised me that she’d text me every day. And she had stuck to her word.
Texting for weeks became sexting, became phone calls, became Zoom dates, became plans for me to visit her flat in Edinburgh. I was addicted to how she made me feel – sexy, impulsive, hot.
I’d never done long distance, and my only sexual experiences since Jake had been my ex-boyfriend’s best friend and an Ibiza one-night stand.
But I was two years off turning thirty and ready for romance.
In my head, my next serious relationship would be the forever one, and so for the first time, I was honest with myself about what I actually wanted.
When Emma came along, I wasn’t sure if she was going to be the one for me, or whether she was going to be the sexiest fling I’d ever had.
Either way, meeting her on the train, looking at me like I was interesting, unlocked a part of me that had been quiet for a very long time.
There were no expectations with Emma: she felt as happy to explore me and my body as I was to explore her.
This particular evening, she had picked me up from the station with a book she thought I’d enjoy – Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, dog-eared and annotated in her handwriting.
We went straight to her favourite wine bar, where she ordered for us both without looking at the menu.
A natural, orange wine from somewhere I’d never heard of.
A cheese board with names I couldn’t pronounce.
‘This one’s Neufchatel,’ she’d said, cutting me a sliver from the heart-shaped round.
‘French farm girls used to make them for the English soldiers they’d fallen for.
A little act of treason.’ She’d held my gaze as I ate it.
I nodded like I had opinions about cheese.
I was too nervous to taste anything properly. Too aware of her watching me chew.
I’m standing in the archway to the kitchen and watch now as we sit on opposite ends of the sofa, flirting, tension radiating from our bodies. Jake comes in behind me and stops, abruptly, noticing Emma. I watch him blinking.
‘Hmm …’ He smirks.
‘Got a problem with something?’ I put my hands on my hips.
‘Nope. No problem.’ He looks at Emma, then back at me, nods with brows raised. ‘She’s fucking fit.’
‘You basically said the same about Nat …’
‘You’ve got great taste.’ He pauses. ‘Vik aside, obviously.’
I sigh, turning back to Emma.
Jake scans the room, tapping a finger to his lips as he nods. ‘Let me guess … Artist?’
I roll my eyes. ‘Wrong.’
‘A poet?’
‘Wrong again.’ As Jake totters around me, I keep getting drawn to Emma. That husky laugh, low and a little rough. I find myself waiting for it, trying to tune in without meaning to.
Jake huffs next to me. ‘Give me a clue …’
‘She was an interior designer.’
Jake lets out a laugh, short, snappy. ‘That explains it. This room is annoyingly well put together.’ He gestures to the décor, before adding, ‘Although …’ He trails off, his eyes narrowing as he studies the space.
‘Spit it out,’ I say, folding my arms, bracing myself.
He glances at me, then back around. ‘This whole setup – the vinyl, the incense, the strategically placed fur throw … This is just work for her.’
‘Your point is?’ I scrunch up my face, tilting my head.
‘Belle. She literally designed a shag pad. You fell for a mood board.’
‘Don’t be a dick.’
I glance at Emma, in her ribbed tank top and baggy jeans. I’d forgotten the way she leaned in when she listened. Really listened. How she never rushed to fill silences, how she’d be comfortable just letting things sit.
How she held eye contact just a beat longer than expected.
How when we were together, I felt like the most important person in the room.
But it wasn’t just how she made me feel.
It was who she was. She had a life I admired and envied – a flat she’d designed and really put her stamp on; friends she’d had for decades; opinions about wine and art and politics that she delivered without hesitation.
She never second-guessed herself. Never apologised for taking up space.
I wanted to absorb her certainty through proximity, like it might rub off on me.
I think back to this relationship with a fondness I can’t shake. Those weekends we spent in bed, talking, laughing, drifting in and out of each other. Time stretched in a way it doesn’t anymore.
‘This was the first time I’d opened up to someone.
And even though it was long distance, I started to let myself imagine a future.
For the first time since … you know.’ I swallow and watch as Jake bites his lip.
He looks at me consideringly and just for a beat there’s something there between us again. I break eye contact and we both turn.
We watch as I crawl over to Emma, on all fours, and we kiss. I feel Jake go very still beside me. I wait for him to crack a joke, some sort of smutty remark, but he doesn’t. I look over to him, but his face is contemplative in a way I can’t read.
Is he uncomfortable? Jealous? Turned on?
He must be feeling something after discovering I found something soft and easy that wasn’t with him.
I notice the slight stubble on his jaw, the smooth skin around his eyes, how he looks exactly as he did the last time I saw him alive.
I haven’t let myself look at him properly until now.
On the sofa, Emma pulls my top off. Young me looks nervous, giddy, and horny, somehow all rolled into one – all bitten lip, mouth open, eyes wide, nipples hard.
Beside me, Jake glances away, suddenly very interested in the bookshelf. Still, I reach out instinctively and try to cover his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare look.’
‘I’m not looking!’ He bats my hand away, laughing. ‘Chill out. Nothing I haven’t seen before anyway.’
‘Just making sure.’ I hold my hands outstretched. ‘Come on, take these. We’re going.’
He rolls his eyes but takes them in his, and I let Emma’s flat fold away around us – the incense, the record, that husky laugh, all of it going soft at the edges, then gone.