Chapter 20 #2
Then I stand there with one hand on the boot lid, staring at the contents like they might explain me to myself.
Notebook. Laptop. Jacket. Running shoes I have barely used because Pippa has destroyed any illusions I had about my fitness needing additional activity. A half-empty packet of mints. A spare shirt I should probably wash before it becomes sentient.
This is fine.
This is normal.
Assignment ends. Reporter leaves. Article gets written. People return to their lives.
Pippa returns to hers.
I return to mine.
I close the boot.
Get into the driver’s seat.
Shut the door.
The car is very quiet.
Too quiet.
I put the key in the ignition and then stop with my hand still on it.
Because there it is.
The thing I have been pretending not to know since I woke up with Pippa warm beside me and the light on her shoulder.
I am about to drive away from the most important thing that has happened to me in years because the goodbye was awkward and I am too afraid of making it worse.
Which is not maturity.
It is cowardice with good intentions.
I stare through the windscreen at the station.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I say.
The car, correctly, offers no defence.
I lean back against the seat and close my eyes for exactly one second.
I see Pippa in the kitchen, turning away to rinse a mug she did not need to rinse.
Pippa on the roadside, telling me to breathe.
Pippa in her office, letting herself shake.
Pippa at breakfast, saying she did not want children and waiting for the world to correct her.
Pippa in bed, looking at me like she had no idea what to do with the fact I was still there.
Pippa in the corridor saying, “Safe drive”, as if that was a goodbye either of us could live with.
No.
Absolutely not.
I pull the key out of the ignition, open the door and get out.
The second I start walking back towards the station, my body seems to catch up with the decision and my heart begins behaving like it has been given an alarm call. Fast. Hard. Useful for once.
Inside, the reception area is empty. The station noise is softer now, mostly coming from the kitchen and the bay. I pause for half a second, because I have no plan beyond do not be an idiot, and historically that has not been enough to build a strategy around.
Then I see her.
Pippa is at the far end of the corridor, just outside the office.
She is alone.
Thank God.
She looks up.
Sees me.
Everything in her goes very still.
Her gaze drops briefly to my empty hands, then back to my face.
“Forget something?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Courage, apparently.”
Her expression changes.
Not much.
Enough.
“AJ.”
“No, let me get this out before I turn it into a joke and make both of us suffer.”
Her mouth closes.
I step closer.
Not close enough to touch.
This is not that moment. Not yet.
“I was going to leave,” I say.
“I noticed.”
“I got to the car.”
“Efficient.”
“Put my bag in.”
“Very organised.”
“Got in.”
“Congratulations.”
“Pippa.”
The teasing fades from her face.
I breathe in.
Station air. Coffee. Rubber. The faint smell of toast from the kitchen.
And beneath it all, Pippa.
Clean skin. Soap. Warm cotton.
Two weeks ago, I did not know this smell.
Now I think I could find her blindfolded.
“I don’t want that to be the end,” I say.
She says nothing.
Of course she says nothing.
She is Pippa, and silence is one of the many tools she uses better than I use most words.
So I keep going.
“I don’t want to walk out of here, write the article, send it through the proper channels and pretend that’s all this was.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“That was the assignment,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And it’s over.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going back to Carlisle.”
“Yes.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I laugh once.
Not because it is funny.
Because she has cut through every elegant sentence I might have built and gone straight for the load-bearing wall.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Her face closes a fraction.
“No,” I add quickly. “No, that came out wrong. I know why I came back. I don’t know the logistics yet.
I don’t know what this looks like tomorrow or next week or around shifts or deadlines or the fact that you live here and I live in Carlisle and my life has been built around running towards whatever looks like the next bigger thing. ”
Her eyes do something then.
A guarded flicker.
I hate that I put it there.
“But I know I don’t want to get in that car and choose the old version of sensible because I’m afraid of what happens if I say the actual thing out loud.”
Her voice is quieter when she asks, “What actual thing?”
My heart goes once, hard.
Then steadies.
This is it, then.
No clever angle.
No sharp framing.
No making uncertainty do the work because I am too cowardly to say what I mean.
“You,” I say.
She blinks.
I almost smile, because apparently all my language has abandoned me at the crucial moment.
“You,” I say again, slightly better. “This. Us, if you want there to be an us. I know that’s a lot, and I know the timing is ridiculous, and I know I have not earned the right to ask for easy trust. But I’m asking for the chance to try.”
Her mouth parts.
Not much.
Enough that I nearly lose the thread entirely.
“Why?” she asks.
The question is not cold.
That might have been easier.
It is careful. Almost wary.
As if she wants the answer and is braced for it to hurt.
I look at her, and the answer is obvious and impossible at the same time.
“Because I’ve fallen for you.”
There.
The words are out.
Pippa stares at me.
Her mouth parts a little more.
Then she frowns.
“Fallen for?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“As in…?”
“As in I’m standing here making a complete fool of myself because I don’t want to walk out of this station and pretend the last two weeks didn’t happen.”
She stares at me.
The silence stretches.
Then, because she is Pippa, and because too much honesty apparently requires immediate structural support, she says, “Are you sure this isn’t just some sort of firefighter thing?”
I blink.
“A firefighter thing?”
“People have them.”
“Do they?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Well. I’m sure they do, but no.”
“You’re certain?”
“I’m fairly sure my attraction to you is not based on access to a helmet.”
“Fairly sure?”
“Completely sure. The helmet is incidental.”
“Good to know.”
“And for the record, the whole fantasy thing usually goes the other way.”
Her eyebrow lifts. “Does it?”
“I mean, traditionally.”
“Traditionally?”
I wince. “I can hear myself.”
“Can you?”
“Yes. I’d like to withdraw from the cultural commentary section of this conversation.”
“Wise.”
“I don’t have a firefighter kink, Pippa.”
“No?”
“No.” My voice softens, because the humour is useful, but it is not the thing. Not really. “I have a you thing.”
Her expression shifts.
The frown goes first.
Then the carefulness changes shape into something I am almost afraid to name.
I do not move.
Not because I do not want to.
Because this part has to be hers.
She looks at me for a long time, and I can almost see her gathering the facts. The article. The apology. The station. Margaret. Arthur. The office. Breakfast. Her flat. Carlisle. The future, unclear and inconvenient and certainly not something either of us scheduled.
“This is a bad idea,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You’re not supposed to agree immediately.”
“I’m trying not to lie to you.”
That stills her.
Good.
Because the humour is useful, but it cannot be the only thing holding us up.
She folds her arms, and I can see the wall coming back brick by brick. “You live two hours away.”
“Yes.”
“You have a job.”
“So do you.”
“My shifts are ridiculous.”
“I’ve observed.”
“You wanted London. Bigger things. National stories. Whatever comes next.”
There it is.
The real question under all the others.
“I thought I did,” I say.
Her face goes very still.
“I wanted to be seen,” I continue. “By the right people. In the right places. I wanted to prove I could get there, wherever there was. London. A national desk. A room where no one looked surprised I’d made it.”
She says nothing.
“I still want to do good work. That hasn’t changed. I’m not suddenly noble because I learned where a fire station keeps its biscuits.”
Her mouth twitches faintly.