Chapter Thirty-Four
Elle
Ididn’t expect it to be quite this close,’ Stephen commented as we walked the two streets from my parents’ and stopped in front of my sister and Quinn’s house.
‘Convenient, hey?’ I knocked on the door. ‘Tim's just around the corner, too. All the others still live at home.’
‘How come you chose to move into the city?’
I shrugged my shoulder. ‘I like the city and – well—’
‘You wouldn’t get anything done if you were too close, would you?’
My lips parted. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I saw how many jobs you were given in one afternoon. Is that why you chose to come to England at Christmas?’
‘Well, I had research to do to finish my book, and a deadline…’ I lifted one shoulder. ‘They don’t mean to. We all fall into roles within our family, don’t we?’
He was about to speak when Lucy opened the door, fastening a pair of dangling earrings as she welcomed us in. She’d changed out of her day clothes into a nice top and some cropped leggings ready for date night.
‘She’ll probably wake up at about eleven for a bottle, but we’ll be heading back by then, so if she doesn’t get off to sleep, don’t worry.
She’s gone down easy, so all you guys need to do is keep an ear out and watch some TV, or, y’know, whatever you want to do to keep yourselves entertained.
’ She dropped a big wink in my direction. I gave her an unimpressed stare.
They shuffled around fussing about where diapers were and the formula and the number for the paediatrician for another ten minutes. She caught me again at the door, whispering to me. ‘Seriously, Elle, c’mon, you’re only young once. Have a bit of fun with him.’
‘That’s all it’d be though. Short-term fun.’ I kept my voice low as well.
‘How do you know? He’s just spent all day with our family. Why would he do that if he wasn’t fully invested?’
‘He was just doing what I told him. To make sure we got Dad on side.’
‘Yeah, I’m not convinced anyone could put up with watching the twins acting out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern without deeper motivation than that. But even if that is the case – Lord, Elle, do it for me, OK?’
‘That is wrong on so many levels.’
‘I never got to run around dating like you. I love Quinn but we met so young, y’know? Make the most of it and have fun.’
She kissed my cheek and closed the door behind them.
I understood what she was talking about; I could appreciate that settling down so early made it feel like she’d missed out, but if she thought getting my hopes up and then dashed over and over again was fun she wasn’t really considering it from my perspective.
But that was nothing new. With so many people trying to offer me advice on my love life, it was no surprise I didn’t have a clue what to do.
I knew what I wanted to do, but that didn’t mean I should.
The house was silent. I looked at Stephen and he looked at me. Quietly. Steadily. My stomach was doing so many flips it was like the meat I’d had for lunch thought it was still cooking on the barbecue.
‘Shall we?’ I pointed him towards the back yard. The shadows were lengthening and there were two chairs in a shady spot. I brought out the baby monitor and debated getting glasses of wine for us but it was already feeling dangerously romantic.
‘Where have they gone for their date night?’ Stephen asked.
‘The open-air cinema.’
‘Those are still around? I figured it was something from a bygone era. Like in Grease.’
‘It’s a rooftop one, not a drive-in. There is a drive-in, an old-fashioned one, up in Warwick. It was a tradition in high school, if anyone had a car, to drive out there at Spring Break.’
‘Sounds fun. The drive-in I mean, not the rooftop one, obviously.’ He gave a rueful smile.
‘Eh.’ I curled my lip. ‘The drive-in was a long journey and a lot of money to pay just to make out in a car.’
His dark eyes were in shadow, but I could feel how they were trained on me, unnervingly focused again. ‘You used to go just to make out in the car? Elle, I’m scandalised.’
‘Oh, not me. No. Boys weren’t interested in me in high school.’ I tilted my chin up, showing I wasn’t bothered.
‘More fool the boys,’ he murmured, the words silky, caressing over my ego.
‘Not really. I mean, this was prior to laser eye surgery and glasses were not chic like they are now. My body was growing out in all sorts of directions rather than upwards, which I tried to hide with frumpy clothes. I had a retainer…puberty was not kind.’
‘Would you have wanted to go make out at the drive-in, if someone had asked you?’
‘What teenager wouldn’t?’ Again, breezy voice.
I didn’t want him knowing how hard those years had been.
How much I’d longed for some male attention.
So much so, I’d ignored my better judgement when the cutest boy at school looked my way.
‘I bet you looked just the same when you were a teenager – life is unfair like that.’
‘You think I looked like a man in my early thirties when I was a teenager?’ He raised an eyebrow at me.
‘You’re right, that would be weird. Especially with the facial fuzz you got going on at the moment.
’ Ha, he’d never guess how obsessed I was with it.
How much I wanted to spend time cataloguing the differences to how it felt under my fingertips compared to against my palm, brushed in every direction, or the noise it would make if I scrubbed at it lightly.
‘Go on then. Tell me how awkward-looking you were.’
‘I had the usual spots – a very difficult year when my voice was breaking, and I grew six inches but gained no extra weight. I swear my nose took up ninety per cent of my face at one stage, too. But on the whole, I scraped through OK.’
‘”OK”, he says.’ I scoffed under my breath. Even the best-looking boy at my school wouldn’t have held a candle to him. I shook my head. ‘You can go if you want. I don’t mind doing the babysitting by myself. It’ll give me a chance to write.’
‘You can write now if you want. I’ll keep an ear out for the baby.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’ He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles.
‘Sitting here with you is more pleasant and more helpful than going home to sit by myself.’ He looked out over the garden, his teeth catching at his bottom lip for a second, like he’d said too much.
Was Stephen…lonely? Was that why those distant looks kept creeping over him at my parents’ house?
Being in the centre of a crowd of close-knit people was bound to make you feel isolated, even when he was getting so involved – he had so little family left.
When I’d seen him at the Fifth Avenue bar a couple of weeks ago, I’d wanted to figure out who the true Stephen was, like he was a Sudoku puzzle, but I hadn’t thought about the consequences of doing it.
I didn’t want to see his hurt and feel this tenderness for him growing in my chest.
‘Being able to sit quietly, companionably, with someone is a novelty,’ I said evenly.
‘Particularly with you,’ he quipped and I cuffed him around the head on my way to get my notebook.
I wanted him to grab my wrist and pull me down into his lap.
To kiss me boneless. But that wasn’t going to happen.
He’d made it clear the ball was in my court where that was concerned; he was going to respect my wishes and I knew better… didn’t I?
We sat in the velvety darkness, a set of tea lights along the railing to my sister’s deck, and I opened my notebook.
The stars were overhead, and something was stirring in my mind.
I let myself write. Not plan or outline or scratch away at a problem.
I just wrote a scene where Kit and Charmaine sat down together and talked, and touched…
And realised that they were falling in love.