Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
brAM
It’s a little after ten by the time we get back into my car, and the mood is very different from when we got out.
Between the relief of knowing my mum’s ok, the amazing food I’ve just eaten and the unspeakable joy of being trolled by Lucy, I’m feeling almost giddy.
And, as a bonus, the badly parked idiot next to us has gone, so we’re both able to climb into the car like the normal humans that one of us is.
I even managed to slide the driver’s seat back into its normal position without Lucy noticing that my knees were momentarily around my ears. Could life get any better?
It turns out that the answer is yes, because when I turn to look at Lucy, she’s looking right back at me, head resting against the seat, her blonde waves in beautiful disarray around her head.
I want to reach into them and kiss her until she’s breathless.
God, I’ve been turned on since I touched her forearm in the restaurant.
Yes, her forearm. It’s obviously been way too long since I’ve seen any action. She’d only have to touch my leg and I’d—
‘How long will it take to drive back to the coast?’ she asks, breaking me out of my dirty daydream. I’d blush if my not-entirely-working circulatory system hadn’t just diverted all available blood in my body below my belt.
‘A couple of hours.’ I stifle a yawn and she studies me, brows knitting together.
‘When are you working next?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ I can’t remember the exact time, but as long as I’m there before two I’m pretty sure Sammi won’t murder me.
We need to prepare for the special gig we’ve planned, but that’s not until the evening.
Just as well, as even with good traffic we won’t be back before midnight, and there’s absolutely no chance I’ll be going straight to sleep after spending a couple of hours in such an enclosed space with Lucy.
She smells amazing, like always, and it’s driving me to distraction.
‘We could stay here tonight?’ she suggests tentatively.
‘Then travel back in the morning. I mean, my flat is only a few minutes from here, so it wouldn’t be a big hassle.
And it’s not like we’re not already sleeping together.
’ I hear the catch of her breath as a furious blush ravages her cheeks.
‘I … I mean, we’re already sleeping in the same house. Not sleeping together.’
She’s rambling now, overcorrecting her mistake, and it’s adorable. But she has a point. And if I’m being honest, I can’t say I hate the idea of seeing where she lives. Or sleeping with her, obviously, but I’m not going to just come out and say that.
But then I look at her more closely, and my train of thought skids to a stop.
She’s clearly nervous, stumbling over her words and chewing delicately on a thumbnail.
The idea that she might not be completely comfortable with it lands in my gut like a punch and I know that I have to double check she’s on board.
Plus, there’s the small matter of me being able to enter her home and all that.
That one could throw a real spanner in the works.
‘Are you inviting me to stay at your flat?’ I ask carefully, dipping my chin so that she has to meet my eyes. Something flashes across them before she composes herself, turning in her seat so that she’s looking straight at me.
‘Do you need to be invited?’ she asks, the tone of it infinitely more confident than she sounded before. It makes the knot in my chest ease a little.
‘Humour me,’ I say, with a smile. ‘I want to be sure you’re ok with this. Us sharing a space is not the same as me coming into your space.’
She studies me for a moment, like she’s looking for something in particular. It’s something she’s done a few times now, and every time I feel like I can’t breathe until it’s over. She surely can’t suspect that I’m undead.
Can she?
‘It isn’t,’ she concedes after a second or two, ‘but this is me inviting you anyway. If you’re sure that’s ok.’
I have to laugh at that. ‘I’m very sure it’s ok.’
Her relief escapes as a sigh. Then she settles back in her seat as I start the car, and I let her direct us the seven minutes it takes to get to her flat.
‘You live here?’ I wonder aloud as we stop at the very familiar security gate, and I punch in the code without her having to tell me what it is.
‘Yep,’ she chirps, before she notices the green flash of the code being accepted. ‘Wait, how did you…?’
There’s a creak of tyres on tarmac as I pull into a parking space and cut the engine. ‘It’s my supernatural powers,’ I say, and her face falls again, but then she notices the grin I’m trying to hide and swats me on the arm. I can barely feel the gentle tap beneath the leather of my jacket.
When I turn, she cocks a brow at me. ‘Real answer, please.’
I relent. ‘My sister lives here. She’s working abroad at the moment, but when she’s home I pop in every few weeks to see her.’
It was more like every week this year, at least before Lizzie went to Brazil, but I don’t correct myself. It feels too raw to talk about the ins and outs of how we share our mum’s care after the panic of this evening.
‘No kidding,’ Lucy says softly beside me, and it brings me back into the moment. ‘What block is she in?’
‘D.’
Lucy puffs out a small breath of disbelief. ‘I’m in A. Just opposite.’ She gestures to the building directly in front of us, which I now notice has a large A bricked into the design. It’s no more than thirty metres from Lizzie’s block.
Huh.
I hop out of the car and head round to open Lucy’s door, but she’s two steps ahead of me, standing there with just the slightest air of awkwardness as she straightens her bag strap on her shoulder.
I reach for her hand, as is becoming habit now, and she leads me into the building.
The lift doors open almost as soon as she presses the button, and we step in together.
I’m thoroughly unsurprised that the lift in Lucy’s building is just as minuscule as the one in Lizzie’s.
The sign inside claims that they can carry eight people, which is just preposterous.
I’ve been in with Quinn, Fox, Emmy and Sammi once, and we were plastered to each other so uncomfortably that they refused to ever do it again.
Emmy said that being that close to Quinn made her gayer.
Even with just me and Lucy in it’s a bit of a squeeze, but, let’s be real, I’m loving every second of the proximity. I’m almost disappointed when the doors open and we tumble out onto the landing. She leads me down the hall, stopping at a pale blue door.
Apartment A502.
Lucy’s flat has exactly the same layout as my sister’s, but beyond that the difference is so stark that it makes me laugh out loud.
We have a certain style in our family, so Lizzie’s decor is a lot like mine: not-quite-black walls, deep maroon soft furnishings, and furniture that could have been lifted from a mid-century church but for the fact that neither of us would ever set foot in one.
In contrast, Lucy has joyously coloured prints hanging on sunny yellow walls, a crocheted blanket over the back of her sofa, which must surely contain every single colour of the rainbow, and so many plants that I can almost feel the extra oxygen in the air.
By rights, this should be everything I don’t like, but I can’t stop the rush of affection as I take it in. There’s nothing about it that I should like, except that it’s her. And apparently I like her.
I like her a lot.
So much so that I’m breaking all of my own rules.
I wander to the window, which is my favourite part of Lizzie’s place.
It’s a metre wide and reaches from floor to ceiling, with an amazing view of the city stretching out beneath us.
Lucy presses her nose to the glass, her fingers splaying as she rests the weight of herself against it.
I get the feeling she does this a lot, and that thought makes my smile widen as I move to stand beside her, looking out at the neighbouring block, mere metres away.
And then my thoughts skid to a halt again.
Lizzie’s flat is opposite. Literally opposite.
I can see the outline of the crappy coffin decorations we strung up for her leaving party in June, now gathering dust in her absence.
I’ve been in that flat so often I could draw it from memory.
I’ve stood at that window more times than I could count.
Have I ever looked at this window before? I must have.
Then I clock the familiar gingham bunting strung up above my head. I definitely have.
I can’t believe she’s been here the whole time.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing. ‘That’s Lizzie’s place.’
‘What?’ Her tiny laugh mists the glass in front of her mouth. ‘That’s crazy. I look at that window every day. I love her skull tinsel!’
‘How long have you lived here?’ I ask, slotting into the space beside her. I can never bring myself to fully lean against the glass the way she’s doing – I mean, that’s a whole new level of trust – but I can’t deny there’s a magic to being this close to it. It kind of feels like we’re flying.
‘Four years,’ she replies. ‘What about your sister?’
‘Almost ten.’
‘Wow,’ she says quietly, and she touches her index finger to the glass like she’s trying to reach something out there.
Wow is right. Four years she’s been here, right under my nose. Although I can’t imagine she would even have looked twice at me if we hadn’t been thrust together in the way we were. She existed in a world of Jons – guys who look like they’ve been plucked from some social media influencer’s timeline.
But when I’m with her, all of that outside kind of stuff just fades away. There’s something there that runs deeper than the spark of attraction. Beyond the vast differences between us, there’s something at the very heart of us that makes us the same.
‘I can’t believe we were this close the whole time and we’ve never seen each other,’ I say, as much to myself as to her.
She smiles, still touching her finger to the glass. ‘Maybe we have, a hundred times, but we just never noticed.’
I shake my head, and she turns to look at me, a soft crease between her brows. ‘Maybe it was a long time ago, in another life?’
I don’t say my next words deliberately. They just tumble out of me unbidden, a truth I can’t keep a grip on.
‘I would notice you in every life.’
She stills then, her mouth falling open a little way. She’s as shocked as I am by what just came out of my mouth, but there’s no taking it back now.
I wouldn’t even if I could.
She takes a step towards me, and it’s so cautious that I don’t reach out for her the way that my body is aching to.
I have to know that she’s into this – that I’m not reading too much into the sparks I feel, or that almost-kiss on the beach.
But she answers my unspoken question with another step forward, tentative fingers reaching for my chest as she rises on her tiptoes and presses the smallest of kisses to my cheek.
It’s like a damn fairytale.
In another situation, I might read a kiss on the cheek as a graceful decline, but this one is more like dipping a toe in water before diving in headfirst. Like it’s the start of something, and we both know it.
She doesn’t pull back all the way, and I feel her fingers leave my chest as they grab a fistful of T-shirt and use it to tug me towards her.
There are no rules in existence that could hold me back at this point.
I meet her halfway, reaching out for her jaw to pull her closer, and when our lips finally meet it’s like music – the perfect chord reverberating through my whole body.
Her mouth is soft against mine, blissfully warm and still sweet from the sticky rice dessert we shared.
I can feel it curving into a smile as she pulls back for a beat before kissing me again, so softly and slowly that it’s damn near making me lose my mind.
I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed like this before.
I’m not sure I can even describe it. There’s nothing hesitant about it – more like she’s holding herself back, enjoying every second.
I feel like she’s savouring me, and that’s somehow sexier than if she were to strip naked right here in front of me.
The hand holding my shirt begins to move, reaching up over my shoulder and around the back of my neck, and she uses it as leverage to ease her body closer until we’re connected at the heart and at the hips.
Heat floods through me like a tidal wave.
I want to touch her, taste her, worship every last inch of her, but I hold back. The slow burn is just too good.
My hands start to move almost of their own accord, discovering the silky-smooth skin of her cheek, the curve of her waist, the thump of her pulse in her throat.
My face follows my hand, my nose trailing down her neck before I graze the base of it with my lips, wondering how it would feel to suck on the skin there. Wondering what she’d taste like.
When she finally pulls away, we’re both breathless. She looks ethereal there, like always, her features illuminated by the glow of the city lights below us, and it makes something catch deep in my chest. Her eyes open slowly as her perfect lips pull into a smile.
She’s fucking beautiful.
And I don’t hesitate for a moment when I tell her so.