14 #3
‘You’d be doing me a favour, it’s a long way and I’d feel bad knowing I left you to walk there on your own. So, what do you say?’
His hand stays outstretched, and he has a point. If I want to have the best chance of getting back on the slopes tomorrow, I shouldn’t walk unnecessarily far.
It’ll save me time in the long run, and when he drops me back here, I’ll go back to my sketching. I give in.
‘Fine, as long as I get to pick the songs.’
‘I didn’t realise when I said yes that you were going to only play Christmas songs,’ Rory says, one eyebrow raised as he leans his hip against the supermarket shelves in front of me.
‘It’s snowing,’ I say in explanation.
‘It’s February,’ he counters.
‘Okay, Scrooge, who burnt your turkey as a child?’
He chuckles, shifting so his back is now against the shelves, his arms crossed in front of him. ‘No one, seeing as I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Oh, that’s cool,’ I say, taking in this new fact.
‘Surprised?’
Yes, my head says, because knowing the muscles he has hidden under those clothes means it wasn’t something I expected.
I’m not about to tell him that though, as that would mean admitting I still vividly remember the way his abs look.
‘I don’t know many guys who are vegetarian,’ I say instead, which is also true.
We’re both quiet as we wander around the rest of the supermarket, Rory stopping to grab random treats from the shelves and me occasionally giving guidance based on my knowledge of Tilly and Meghan’s favourites.
We weave our way towards the checkouts, where I catch myself in the screen above the machine and realise my waterproof puffer makes me look like a bloated penguin. Brilliant.
‘It’s on me,’ Rory says, taking the packets of chocolate Hobnobs I’m holding and adding them to his pile of snacks.
I glare at my reflection one more time before going to take the packets back. ‘Oh no, you really don’t have to.’
‘No, I do,’ he says firmly, catching my wrist before I reach it and we both pause.
The confusion on my face must be obvious, and he sighs before going to explain. ‘I do have to, because maybe if I’d taught you better, you wouldn’t have fallen yesterday and hurt yourself.’
He clenches his jaw as he scrutinises my foot.
Oh, I think, feeling the sudden urge to hide my injured ankle by crossing it behind the other. I hate that he feels at all responsible, and it’s clear Tilly didn’t fill him in on the full story.
‘No no, it wasn’t your fault at all. I was too distracted. I should’ve known to stop instead of trying to keep skiing when I couldn’t focus.’
‘Idiots on the slope?’ he asks, and I scoff.
‘More like one specific idiot.’
‘Ah,’ he sighs, tapping his card to pay.
‘Who was it?’ he asks once we’ve walked out of the shop and made it back to his car.
‘Why? Are you going to track them down and pellet them with snowballs?’
I say it as a joke, but Rory doesn’t laugh.
‘Something like that,’ he says, and we sit in awkward silence until I realise he is genuinely waiting for me to give him a name.
‘It was Adam. My ex.’
Rory’s jaw clenches at his name, and he still says nothing.
‘It was an accident though, he was being stupid and I let him get to me, and then it all happened so fast. He’s said sorry like a billion times.’ I keep going, but it doesn’t do anything to smooth out the tension evident on Rory’s face.
The silence stretches out for ages, so I lean back in my seat, hands bunched in my lap.
He doesn’t start driving, and I suddenly get a thought that I’m in a car with a guy who is still in many ways a stranger and none of my friends know I’ve left the chalet.
I should get him to drop me home, and yet the idea of him taking me back there and then driving off again makes my chest sink.
Going back to the chalet alone seems much lonelier now than it did with him in it, chatting and making me cups of green tea.
Besides, if he was planning on driving me somewhere and murdering me, he probably wouldn’t have made me anti-inflammatory tea first.
‘What are you up to this afternoon?’
His voice finally cuts through the silence, and I cycle through the vague plans that I’d made this morning before his unexpected appearance outside my balcony.
Sketching, eating junk food, scrolling on TikTok, watching Gossip Girl reruns.
‘Nothing,’ I go for instead.
‘Wanna hang out?’
Yes, my head says straight away, like an eager puppy.
‘Sure.’
At my answer his face finally loses some of the hardness it’s had since we got back in the car and instead shows the calm confidence I’m used to.
‘On one condition,’ I add, moving towards the car’s volume dial.
He catches my drift and sighs, running one hand across his face before cupping his jaw. ‘Can I make a request for no more Bublé at least?’
I pout, my bottom lip sticking out in the way it always used to in pictures of me as a baby.
‘Okay, fine, you have total control,’ he says, hands up in defeat as I smugly re-connect my phone.
‘So, where are we heading, driver?’ I ask, queuing all my favourite Michael Bublé tunes.
‘You’ll see,’ he says, and I catch the smallest smile on his face. I decide that of all his expressions so far, that’s my favourite one.