Chapter Forty-Six
Stephen
When I was a teenager, I went on an impromptu camping trip with a few friends.
Bearing in mind that we were all inner city kids with families struggling to make ends meet, none of us really had any experience of the great outdoors.
But it was a laugh. Particularly when a storm kicked up in the middle of the night and began ripping up each of our poorly hammered in tent pegs, one by one.
That kind of reckless hilarity you could only fully embrace when you were young and thought you were invincible.
And yet, tonight, I recognised a similar unhinged exhilaration had gripped me, in the face of potential disaster. Elle was ripping up the pegs and I was as good as pointing out the quickest way she could do so.
First, her invite to the bar that had taken my mood from despondent to elated at a speed that gave me whiplash.
Then, I’d found her in this cosy, boisterous bar, that reminded me of home, and she’d been not just glowing, but willing to welcome me into her warmth and light.
And then she’d flirted. Not just a one off slip up, or general banter, but comments and actions that there was no denying crossed boundaries she’d set.
Was I aware that she was drunk and therefore her lowered inhibitions could be contributing to behaviour she might regret?
Yes. But I was also drunk now and couldn’t bring myself to miss any opportunity to reciprocate.
Because what if she didn’t regret it? There had been those moments last night when I’d thought she was toeing the line she’d drawn, but not quite ready in the way I needed her to be for me to risk it. What if she was ready now?
I’d been concerned about ruining our friendship and disappointing her…but if she was going to say those things, and look at me that way, and make excuses to touch me…I was going to make sure she understood I was just as interested in her. Bewitched in fact, by her every move.
Like how she chose to walk with her head held high to the bathrooms by herself after discovering her ex was here. She wasn’t going to be cowed by his presence, and she didn’t need our help dealing with him. If he tried to approach her, I was sure she’d be able to handle it with or without violence.
That didn’t stop me from trying to keep my eye on him when I went to grab another round of drinks.
He’d definitely been watching her walk to the toilets and was only giving half his attention to the woman he’d brought with him, but they were leaving the bar to look for a seat as I approached, so I couldn’t keep tabs on him for long.
As I leaned on the bar waiting for the bartender, the heaviness of my limbs told me that an additional shot with this round was not necessary.
I hadn’t drunk this much since…Christmas?
When I’d found Nick dancing with Beth at the village fete after our failed date and felt betrayed.
Not by Beth. That date had been the start of me realising I was using the chase and physical encounters as a distraction.
She was a beautiful woman, but I’d been working so hard, too hard, to make the chemistry happen just out of habit, and she’d been just as unmoved.
Thank God, because things really would have been awkward now if we’d followed through with a sexual encounter neither of us were really bothered by, and then she ended up with Nick anyway.
No. I’d felt betrayed by Nick. Seeing him happy for the first time in months when all I’d received from him — when I did get to see him — was detachment and anger and sadness.
I’d tried talking to him, giving him space, tough love and none of it had worked.
I’d wanted my brother back — but in that moment, on my own in a cute little village, I hadn’t wanted to see that he was capable of being himself again with someone else.
I was meant to be the one he turned to in his grief.
His big brother. But he hadn’t wanted or needed me.
I rubbed my eyes as I waited for the bartender, reminding myself that things were better with Nick now. I hadn’t lost him despite my catalogue of terrible decisions and despicable behaviour…and why was I even thinking about it?
‘Hey, what can I get you?’ The bartender roused me from my introspection and I automatically plastered on a smile and placed my order.
I checked the doors to the bathrooms in the corner of the room and Elle emerged with perfect timing, like our paths were destined to keep crossing whether it was in a city as big as New York or a bar as small as this.
Her eyes met mine and the band started playing again with perfect timing.
I knew the sound her sudden, delighted laugh would have made, even though I was nowhere near, and how the lingering smile she sent my way was full of shared amusement at the cinematic coincidence.
My attention was dragged away by the bartender depositing the last drink, and I handed the woman a few notes to cover her tip.
‘I love it when they do this set,’ Elle announced as she appeared at my elbow, her hand on my arm as she tiptoed up to be heard over the band. ‘Listen.’
I tilted my head towards the group sitting by the bar. ‘Is that…a Taylor Swift song?’
‘Yes! They do covers of pop hits, kind of like Bridgerton. It’s awesome music plus a little puzzle, as you try to work out the song!’
I laughed, because of course having an element of mystery, however brief, was always going to be the icing on the cake for her.
‘Want some help?’ She nodded at the drinks.
I didn’t really need it. I could use a tray to carry the drinks, but there was more risk of them getting knocked and the whole lot hitting the deck.
‘Go for it.’ I took a glass tumbler in one hand and stretched the fingers of my other to cradle another two.
I turned towards her and realised she was watching me, her gaze fastened on my hands, as she bit her lip.
It was a good job that my hands were occupied because I might have had to liberate that lip and take it between my teeth instead.
She looked up at me through her eyelashes, darker than usual with mascara, making the light grey contrast even further. Someone jostled her slightly trying to get to the bar and she broke the eye contact and lunged for the remaining drinks.
I motioned for her to go ahead of me. Her skirt was made up of layers of gauzy material and floated around her thighs as she squeezed through the crowds, her long hair fanning over the bare skin her strappy top didn’t cover, teasing me with flashes of the places I’d touched her last night but not in the way I wanted to.
I narrowly avoided walking into the back of her as her step faltered, closer to our table.
I glanced over her head and realised that her stupid-llama-headed ex had taken a smaller table only two away from ours, and he was staring straight at her.
He commandeered his date’s head by gripping her chin and then started kissing her, with his eyes still open and fixed on Elle. My hands tightened around the glasses to the point that I almost lost the lot.
I leaned forward, putting my mouth close to Elle’s ear. ‘Remember the coconut shy? I reckon I could take his head off with one of these cocktail glasses if you wanted me to? Doubt it would even take me three gos.’
Elle looked up at me and I was relieved to see her smiling. ‘And waste good alcohol?’ She shook her head and continued over to the table.
‘Can you believe him?’ Keisha said, after I passed around the drinks and she’d thanked me.
‘Sadly, I can, but I still nearly vomited up a little bit in my mouth,’ Elle said, taking a sip from the glass she had kept.
‘Not that,’ Caitlin said, and gestured to what I realised now was a solitary chair at the end of the table, where there had previously been two. ‘He came and swiped Elle’s chair, while I was putting in a request with Don.’
‘Boyd was in the bathroom and I was on the phone to the babysitter,’ Keisha explained. ‘He was gone before I could say anything.’
‘Wow. He literally took my chair? What is this, elementary school?’ Elle curled her lip.
‘You can have mine,’ I automatically offered.
‘No way. You’ve worked a — what? — fourteen hour day and on a Sunday, no less. I’m not taking your chair. Plus, it’ll be harder for you to hear us talking from up there. I’m closer to the ground.’
‘It’s only a few inches, I’m not at the top of the Empire State building.’
She put her hand to her chest as if in shock. ‘Alert the media, a man not making a big deal of his larger than average size.’
A thrill ran through me at all my possible retorts, but instead I decided to drop onto the chair. ‘Fine. If you insist.’
Her eyebrows raised, as I guessed they would. ‘OK, not going to lie, I thought you’d put up more of a gentlemanly fight than that.’
I smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got somewhere else in mind that you can sit, Elle.’
Her mouth dropped open as I let that hang in the air for a moment, and then I patted my thigh. Her cheeks flushed pink.
‘Oh. Your lap.’
‘Of course. Where were you thinking of?’ I gave her a scandalised look and she poked me in the arm but didn’t move to sit down.
‘You sure?’
I just patted my leg again and then she stepped closer, smoothing her skirt and settling onto my thigh but keeping her knees pressed tight together, and her body angled forward.
I put my arm around her back, resting my hand lightly at the top of her hip to provide support. ‘Relax,’ I told her softly.
‘I don’t want to give you a dead leg.’
It would have taken amputation at the waist to get less blood circulating the lower half of my body at this point in proceedings.
‘Elle.’ I tugged her closer. ‘Get comfortable.’
Her cheeks were still flushed, but she let me take her weight properly, slipping her arm around my shoulders for balance. The heat of her thighs pressed to mine and the side of her body grazing my chest made me itch to turn her towards me fully, crush her against me…
‘I think it’s safe to say that power play back-fired spectacularly on Damon-the-Douchebag,’ Caitlin raised her glass. ‘A toast to Elle, her literary prowess and improved taste in men.’
I tried not to let that go to my head, as we all reached for our glasses, clinking rims — ‘to Elle’ — before taking a drink.
I might not have noticed how she’d stiffened up at the mention of her “taste in men” if she hadn’t been sitting on my lap.
A seed of doubt about how much I was reading into this, and why she was doing it, niggled.
I took advantage of her closeness to speak quietly to her, for our ears only. ‘I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to put on a performance to get back at him. Is this too much?’
‘No. I mean. I don’t think it will make any kind of dent to his ego, so it doesn’t really matter…’ She smoothed her skirt with the bottom of her glass, over and over, one section, then another.
I ducked my head so I could see her face properly. ‘But?’
All the amusement was absent from her expression as she regarded me for a long moment. She took a deep breath that I felt against my chest and stomach. ‘I don’t want you to be acting.’
My heart skipped a beat so hard it hurt. That was the closest she’d come to saying that she wanted this thing between us to go somewhere. It took me a second to pull the part of my brain responsible for verbal communication to the forefront again.
‘Elle,’ I shook my head. ‘There’s not a thing I’ve done tonight that I haven’t been wanting to do for weeks.’
Saying it reminded me of the observation she’d made back at the start, about how I didn’t know any other way to be.
And here was more evidence. I’d tried to behave for weeks, and I’d tried to be her friend for a grand total of ten days, maybe?
But I had failed. And maybe when the regret caught her up, she’d console herself with the fact she’d been totally on the money.
However, right now, her pupils were dilating as she stared back at me, and I needed to kiss her so badly.
I was a weak, selfish man, only being held at bay by the fact we were at a table with her friends and Boyd was announcing that Keisha had a new three book deal she’d been keeping to herself.
‘Boyd — you know that’s because I haven’t actually signed, I don’t want to jinx it.’
‘It’s happening and we should toast to that, too.’
Elle looked away from me and my head swam at the sudden release from the intensity of the moment. ‘Oh my God, Keesh, that’s brilliant. And Boyd’s right, you know he is,’ she exclaimed.
We all raised a toast again, and then once more to Caitlin for adding five more ideas to her “want to write” pile, and then Boyd for successfully unclogging their garbage disposal unit, and then me for rolling up my shirt sleeves perfectly evenly, and for increasingly more ridiculous things, until our glasses were empty.
Elle was nestled into my side so comfortably it was like she’d been designed for it, and she smelt of strawberries and her coconut sunscreen and liquor.
There was a gnawing ache at the pit of my stomach urging me to bury my face in her neck and bite her shoulder and run my tongue over the mark.
I contented myself with occasionally massaging the muscles that had caused her trouble the night before and she stretched and hummed in appreciation which made everything better and worse all at once.
Every time a new song started, I watched her eyes lose focus as she concentrated, trying to place the pop song now reimagined with drums and accordion and fiddles and flutes. She wanted to guess it before the singing began, like she was in competition with herself. Why was that so fucking adorable?
When she lit up with the latest one, she leaned forward so fast to speak to Caitlin that I had to wrap my arm around her middle so she didn’t slide off my lap.
‘Was this your request?!’
Caitlin laughed in response and nodded. ‘It’s just so accurate. Except he doesn’t even have a dog. Or a car.’
Elle collapsed into her hands laughing and I held her steady as her body shook. I couldn’t resist looking over at her ex who was acting as though there was no vehement music playing about a woman telling her ex “eff you”, his jaw set and his date so clearly having a terrible time.
When Elle finally sat up straight, wiping her tear-stained cheeks, she looked at me. ‘Sorry. The sentiment is just too perfect.’
‘Was there anything decent about him?’ I found myself compelled to ask, because otherwise, why? Why would she waste her time with someone so unworthy of her? ‘At least tell me he was good in bed.’
She snorted. ‘Of course he wasn’t.’ She took a deep breath and tightened her hold on my shoulders, turning her face so her cheek brushed against mine. ‘That’s what Type A’s are for.’ Her breath teased at the shell of my ear and a shiver rushed down my neck.
I was a Type A, wasn’t I? That’s what her family had all said, anyway. And if that’s what she wanted from me, I’d be the best Type A she’d ever had.