Chapter 22
FREEFALLING
‘Freefalling’ was a very late edition to ‘Your Email Didn’t Find Me Well’.
It wasn’t released until months after the initial album and is one of those songs which started as one thing and ended as something completely different.
But that’s just what happens when you explore how you’re feeling through music.
I’ve booked us into one of the most beautiful Tuscan villas I’ve ever seen.
We’re in the middle of nowhere, a tiny town where I can act like a normal person.
A few days off for both of us. No one will know where we are or what we’re doing, other than the entire Internet when the troll who tracks my private jet lets them know.
Kareem has opted to stay in Florence with his family, but he’s not far away and available whenever we need the car to go anywhere.
I’d be happy to just relax in the villa, swim in our pool, and read my book for the entire weekend.
A small three-bed with a pool, a living room and a little kitchen. Big enough for me and Luc… and Dennis.
Luc’s birthday is tomorrow, and no one mentioned it before I surprised Luc on the plane when we were landing not-in-London.
He didn’t even mention the big day when we started talking about New York, and I get it because I wouldn’t either.
I never celebrate my birthday with any sort of party.
I’ll usually have dinner with Jess or Rory.
Very rarely Mauve if I can help it. And this year isn’t an important birthday for Luc: he’s either thirty-two or thirty-three.
I can’t remember how old I am half the time, let alone other people.
He doesn’t seem that fussed about his birthday.
He’s only told me what date it is once, but it’s been a marker of the number of years that have passed since our first break-up.
Another August twenty-fourth, another day of watching him celebrate with a gorgeous birthday meal and his gorgeous fiancée.
An awkward photo of him at a dinner table in a dimly lit restaurant, smiling with a big glass of Prosecco, a big portion of food in front of him, reposted to his Instagram story from hers. Never posted directly to his.
I used to say happy birthday every year, while we were adjacent to being semi-friends, before he moved on with Rose and things became too difficult and complicated. August twenty-fourth started to pass like it was any other day.
‘What bedroom are you going to take, Luc?’ Dennis asks.
‘I’ll happily take the smallest one, Dennis,’ Luc says, and I know that he knows he won’t be sleeping in it.
Dennis dumps his bag in the middle-sized room and shuts the door behind him.
I weave my fingers through Luc’s. ‘I didn’t want to be excessive and rent the biggest place in Tuscany,’ I tell him. ‘I feared that would go against my quest to act normal.’
‘It’s still bigger than we need it,’ Luc whispers, a grin tugging at his lips. ‘It’s three bedrooms.’
‘Well, I thought we’d be sleeping in separate bedrooms when I booked it.’
That’s all the confirmation he needs.
‘We’re going home in three days,’ I say. ‘That’s all I could get off.’ Dennis unzips his suitcase in his room. ‘I thought today we could relax around here, and then I have a surprise activity booked tomorrow.’
My gaze traces his face, waiting for his reaction, and his eyes do that thing again. The thing where they paint my body like it’s a canvas. The thing which kickstarted all these feelings all those years ago.
It’s exactly what we need. A little time to escape reality properly. Time I can spend with Luc without worrying about who’s watching. Time to decide whether these feelings are here to stay.
Whether I really don’t want our arrangement to end in a few weeks.
Whether I’m really going to let my heart win this time. To let Luc in for good.
My brain replays the wobble of his lip on the plane, after we’d already started descending and the seatbelt sign was on, when I told him that we were in Tuscany for a surprise birthday trip.
‘You brought me to Tuscany for… my birthday? For a surprise?’ Luc had shaken his head, voice shaking. ‘I don’t have anything with me.’
I told him that his sister had let me in to his apartment when he was at a meeting with his agent, and that Kareem has been pretending the bag I’d packed for Luc was his the whole time. Babies need a lot, but they don’t need that much.
‘If I could unbuckle my seatbelt right now… I would give you a huge hug, but I’ll settle for this.’ He’d reached his hand across the plane and intertwined his fingers with mine. ‘Thank you, Sienna.’ Even the memory of his words drips down my skin like melted butter.
‘You’re insane for this, by the way.’ Luc shakes his head, laughing. ‘Who books their…’ he trails off. ‘A holiday to a Tuscan villa as a surprise for their birthday.’
‘Me, apparently.’
It hasn’t escaped my notice that Luc didn’t finish labelling me. That he didn’t call me his fake girlfriend or friend as we’ve been doing.
‘I was a bit worried when you didn’t mention your birthday,’ I say.
‘I don’t really go in for birthdays.’
‘You used to,’ I point out, remembering the photos with Rose on Instagram.
He swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs with the effort it takes. ‘Well, sometimes other people want to celebrate your birthday.’
It’s a reminder of what Luc’s mum said which sowed a seed of an idea to do something nice for Luc.
That Luc’s too nice and lets other people’s wants and needs overtake his own.
Maybe doing something for his birthday was more to settle my own desires rather than his.
Maybe I’m another person who wants to celebrate his birthday while he doesn’t.
We can pretend it’s any old holiday though, a couple’s trip, if that’s what he’d prefer.
I don’t mind what we do over the next few days so long as it’s what Luc wants.
The springs on Dennis’s bed creak. Luc and I take our suitcases upstairs, where I grab my bikini and he finds his trunks from ‘Kareem’s bag’.
I change into a red gingham bikini, with little frills on the straps and the top of the briefs. I don’t hide away from Luc, but I change quickly.
I take my phone down to the pool and arrange myself on the sun lounger in the early evening sun while Luc jumps straight in.
‘Mimi and Jess still need us to hint that we’re away together… obviously without giving away where.’
It’s an unwelcome reminder of why we’re here. That while we might be living our arrangement differently than how we thought, no one else knows that and we do have rules we need to follow. Even if we’re breaking them the moment the door is shut.
Luc holds onto the side of the pool, looking up at me. He shakes out his curls and they bounce back into their pattern and then looks back towards the villa. I lift my phone, and take a photo, the camera shutter disturbing the peace.
Luc swims a few lengths, and I pretend to read in the last hours of sunlight, when really, I’m watching him over the top of the pages.
When he gets out, his shorts cling to his thighs, and it’s like I notice his body for the first time.
It’s softened, even though he still takes care of it in the same way, and there are a few grey hairs peeking through the back of his head.
A more mature version of the man I fell in love with ten years ago.
I put my book down and Luc lies on the lounger next to me.
‘This is the best surprise,’ he breathes and closes his eyes, reaching his hand over to me and resting it on my thigh. I could sleep.
When I wake up, the umbrella has been positioned so I’m in the shade even though the sun is setting, and Luc has disappeared.
He can’t have been gone long because the water next to me still has ice floating in the top.
The cubes are now tiny pebbles on the surface, a few moments away from melting completely.
I go back into the house and Luc is standing over the hob.
‘Where did you get to?’ I ask, leaning against the kitchen island. He’s changed out of his trunks into some denim shorts and a t-shirt.
‘Biked down to the shop,’ he says. He pulls a litre bottle of water out of the shopping bag and guzzles it greedily before offering me some.
I shake my head and take a sip from my own glass.
‘Want a snack?’ He gestures to the snacks on the table: a bag of biscuits, crisps, bread, cheese slices, tomatoes, the thick spaghetti with the wavy edges that always makes me think of fresh pasta in Italy, basil, prosciutto, pancetta.
I grab the crisps. Pomodoro flavour.
‘Thought I’d make dinner for everyone,’ Luc comments.
‘I can make it if you like?’
Luc knows my cooking abilities, and I don’t even know what I’d manage to make with these ingredients. He raises his eyebrow at me.
‘I don’t mind cooking,’ I protest.
‘You’re an acts of service woman, are you?’
‘Says the man who made sure I was in the shade and had a glass of water before cycling to the shop to get stuff for dinner.’
He looks towards the door and, working out we’re alone, he comes closer to me, enveloping me in his arms. His body is coated in a thick layer of sweat from the bike ride but my body lights up at his touch.
The hairs on my arms stand on end when his lips reach mine.
It’s a quick kiss, but it’s one of those kisses with the potential to make me rethink everything I’ve ever known.
To make me wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t ended it ten years ago.
I try to deepen the kiss, parting my lips softly, but then there’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
‘Hey, kids,’ Dennis says.
Luc and I shatter, spreading to opposite sides of the kitchen.
‘Luc’s cooking,’ I say.
‘Glad you’re not,’ Dennis comments.
‘It was a close call,’ Luc says, at the same time as I retort, ‘Yeah, alright Dennis!’
‘You guys are mean,’ I pout.
‘And not wrong,’ Dennis points out, taking a stool at the four-seater breakfast bar.