3. Faye
3
FAYE
The night ended far too soon, but Faye had to be at her bakery bright and early. She couldn't afford to lose much more sleep when she would be rolling out of her bed to a dark sky. Doughnuts didn't make themselves for an eight-thirty a.m opening.
It wasn’t unusual that their group would split in two after an evening together, with Bash and her living north of the Thames, and the others, south. Bash’s house in Knightsbridge was the closest to Samuel’s, but Faye needed to head further north out of the bustling boroughs. She didn’t like living so far from Baked , and if she could afford to live any closer, she would.
She supposed that wouldn’t be much of an issue soon.
“Here—” Bash took her long, biscuit-coloured coat from her chair and held it open. She thanked him whilst slipping her arms into the sleeves.
Such gestures like those set her standards higher for a boyfriend – if she ever found time or compulsion to search for one again – with each simple sweet thing Bash ever did.
He zipped up his own padded jacket and together they said goodbye to the others .
When they reached the velvet studded doors, Bash turned to her. “I’ll walk you to a taxi.”
His end of day scruff roughened his look and his eyes were weary, but Bash insisted, always, on seeing she was safe. Faye had no idea why when returning her home took them in the completely opposite direction to his house, other than that he’d always been a good friend.
She’d long ago figured out how to push away that ‘end-of-date’ feeling of anticipation when one walked the other home. Except, there were no end of night kisses upon her doorstep. No allowing herself to linger when they hugged.
Out on the wintry street, the rush of clear air swept away the cobwebs being crammed inside of the club had dusted her with. “Actually, do you mind if we walk for a while? I think all the noise and stuffy air has gone to my head.”
“Yeah, sure.” With a gentle nudge at her waist, Bash moved himself to walk on the side of the pavement nearest the road. He always did. Faye often tried to catch him out and surreptitiously swapped sides, only for them to end up exactly as they always were.
Illuminated beneath the tinsel and Christmas lights, they wandered. With cars and sirens and horns blaring like a melodious backdrop, the soggy scent of freshly rained on tarmac and pavement didn't ever change.
A hen party stumbled out of a club whilst a stag party stumbled in , and as the groups crossed, Faye caught a few sparks of attraction and minds double back on which direction they wanted to go.
“Have your Dad and Ruth left for their usual Christmas getaway yet?” Bash pulled her back to the reality of his warmth beside her; heavy and blanket-like without touch.
“Not yet. They leave on Sunday.”
With Morris Whittaker’s only daughter (aka her ) grown up and childless, he and his wife, Ruth, usually disappeared for the Christmas period. Faye didn’t quite know what they were running from, or even towards , but she’d never stop them from having their fun. And in truth, she was thirty percent jealous of their loved-up getaways.
Okay, forty . But what did that matter?
“Did you say they’re going on a Norwegian cruise?” Bash huddled closer as a pair of passers by took up more space than necessary on the path and forced them over away from the road.
He didn’t distance himself once those pavement hoggers were behind them, their steps in unison as he slowed his longer stride. Every tiny brush of their coat sleeves made Faye want to be dancing in his arms again.
“This time, yes. Last year was the Caribbean, and I’m sure they’ve already booked Australia for next year.”
See? She wasn’t jealous at all …
Coincidentally, her mum and step-father were also away for Christmas this year for an anniversary celebration, so for once Faye was all on her own for the season. Except for her step-sister, Ellie, that was. She didn’t mind it when her childhood Christmases had been such a catastrophic disaster.
As an adult now, she valued the peace. There would be video calls and photographs – celebrations delayed until the new year. And she had her bakery and friends to keep her busy in the meantime.
The streetlights and building fronts were just bright enough for Faye to see the murky puddle she hopped over. With a glint in his eyes both surprised and stunned, Bash’s gaze swept down to her boots and back up again, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Wouldn’t you ever like to go with them?” he asked next.
Would she like to go on a two week getaway with no worries or stress or demands of her job? Did he even need to ask?
“I’d love to.” Though Faye’s enthusiasm didn’t quite transverse to what she said next. “But it’s their thing.” She wrapped her coat further around her now the feverish feeling of being in an oven in Samuel’s wore off. “I love my Dad – and Ruth of course – but I’d be a third wheel to their party.”
Bash noticeably dug his hands further into his pockets as he sauntered, clearly in no rush to go home. “You never know, next year you might have someone you could take with you.”
“Is that an offer?” Bemused, Faye tried not to notice how far they’d walked, or how many available taxis they’d already ignored.
But the idea of Bash coming with her on one of these hypothetical holidays was kind of fun – a friendship kind of situation. Totally normal for two people who weren’t dating to do, right?
“ No … ” Bash dragged on the word with a lopsided smile that made up for Faye’s there-and-gone disappointment for his answer. “I was just saying … ”
She hummed as she thought about what it was he’d originally said. “I’d like to do that sort of thing one day; pack my bags and leave with someone for a couple of weeks. It’d be nice.”
Though unlikely.
If Faye’d learnt anything in the last twenty-nine years of her life, it was that a long term relationship was doomed, and she wouldn’t want to spend such special holidays with someone who would only disappear afterwards. In her heart, a life-long love was all that she yearned for, but how likely was the reality of that?
Nope. She could let those thoughts sit and stew in her imagination as fantasies.
“I think so too,” Bash agreed.
“Who are you jetting off with?” Faye whirled to walk backwards, teasing.
He looked anywhere else but at her and chuckled. “No one, yet.” His tone tailed off at the end, and that word yet made Faye want to prod.
“Meaning?”
“ Meaning … ” Dragging his feet as he stared at the ground ahead of them, Bash’s grimace looked like he considered answering until he plastered on a smile that was see-through. “I don’t know. Ignore me.”
“No. Come on.” Bash never hid his feelings from anyone, let alone her, which set off warning alarms in Faye. She aimed for light and gentle encouragement. “If you want to tell me, then I’m all ears. Literally.”
“You don’t have big ears, Peanut.”
“Big enough.”
Bash sent her a shallow smile of least resistance which faded fast. “I’ve been thirty for three months,” he lamented, “and I just feel like my life should be going places when it’s not.”
The way Faye’s frown deepened would require extra attention in tonight’s skincare routine, because how long had he had those feelings? Three months? She’d never seen someone more excited before to turn thirty than Bash, and now …
Now that she looked at him – really looked at him, at all of his forming crinkles around his eyes, their shadows deepening under the streetlights, plus the tension around his mouth, those thoughts and feelings were so obviously there within his eyes. And she’d missed them. Maybe they’d been there before tonight and she’d never seen it, or she’d failed to realise that something other than his work had been playing on his mind. All of which made Faye feel like a shitty friend.
Her tone sobered. “Places?”
“Like … a new house?—”
“I love your house,” she interjected.
“A bigger house then.” Bash twisted to her when he said so and the flash of dismay on his face made Faye want to cling to him. “A garden.” He looked down at his feet and she braced for what she realised was coming next. “A family.”
Oh. He’d never mentioned that before – not to her anyway. She’d assumed he wasn’t all too bothered about settling down just yet, given the copious dates he went on each month. There’d been at least two different women in October that Bash had seen, and probably more he hadn’t told her about. He didn’t speak much of his love life and Faye always put it down to the fact she wasn’t one of his ‘bros’.
But she did know that, even if it wasn’t what he’d actively chased for since she’d known him, Bash wanted that white picket fence life. You’d only have to look at how much he loved his nieces to know that, or even his friends. He was a big chunk of marriage material wrapped up in snuggly jumpers and blue-green eyes, but he never let any women close enough to snap him up; Faye didn’t understand why.
And as for his house, it was a Georgian townhouse mansion spanning five floors with four bedrooms, home gym, multiple reception rooms, and a regency-style kitchen that was to die for . How much more did he wish to have?
The answer wasn’t in material things, and Faye knew that.
With Bash’s hands still planted in his pockets, she hooked her arm with his and drew him into her side, making him stumble a step.
“You’ll get there, I promise you you will,” she said, and she meant every word. “You’re only thirty, that doesn’t mean you’ve got one foot in the grave. Loads of people are doing the whole marriage and babies thing later in life anyway these days.”
A humoured chuff broke through Bash’s silence. Head cocked, he eyed her. “How do you know?”
“With the exception of your brother, how many of your friends actually have kids?” Faye thought about Freddy, but his co-parenting situation didn’t really count in this instance. She meant his other friends – the guys he still saw from university days or his sports teams, or even from work.
Bash visibly thought about it and sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.” In a sweet gesture, he patted her arm linked with his elbow.
Though it hurt Faye to promise – “You’ll get there,” her voice soft and purposeful.
An opulent, lit-up decoration shaped like mistletoe, with shards of light bouncing off of the tinsel wrapped around the wired frame, passed them overhead.
The idea of letting Bash go forever to some other woman’s arms was … hard to find peace with. Faye was selfish for wishing it never happened. What claim did she have over his heart? None . He would get his picket fence life one day, but it would never be with her.
Not unless …
The suggestion that built on Faye’s tongue would be either the best or worst idea she’d ever had.
“And if worst comes to worst,” she said with a mildly tamed grin, “I’ll marry you.”
Bash slipped straight off of the curb and hissed.
A horn blared.
Faye grabbed his arm and pulled him back from the road. “Are you okay?”
Her laser-focus homed in on his ankle. He’d startled her when he’d slipped and she’d let him go, but now her heart raced in her throat and her nails dug into his sleeve.
“Yeah … ” Lashes fanned against his cheeks, Bash shook the rainwater off of his apparently uninjured foot, one white-ish shoe definitely more beige looking from the curb-side puddle. Faye grimaced – his washing machine would be in for a rough night.
Bash coughed to clear his throat and looked up at her, brow puckered and eyes wide. “You’ll what? What did you say?”
There was no way he couldn’t have heard her correctly the first time. Had he nearly broken an ankle because of what she’d proposed? That didn’t bode well. Just another reminder of how much he only ever thought of her as a friend.
Annoyed pedestrians manoeuvred around them, and Faye aborted her stupid thoughts and laughed it off.
“I meant as a ‘friends saving each other from a life of loneliness’ kind of thing.” That’s not what she’d meant at all. “And it’s never going to happen anyway, you’ll find someone. I was just trying to help you feel better.”
Bash stared at her for a long four seconds and fed Faye’s anxieties that she’d made the wrong choice. She pursed her lips in a thin line and shrugged. Playing it cool had never been high on her list of talents – faux indifference was the best she could do.
“Right. Okay. Thanks,” he eventually said, blinking. “I think.”
Faye wasn’t sure what was happening – her stomach spooling up in knots. She’d just proposed to her best friend in a non-romantic roundabout sort of way, but Bash only looked marginally disturbed and severely confused. Hopefully by tomorrow he would’ve forgotten she’d ever said anything.
A marriage for love came with far too many risks for Faye to want it for herself. No, she would rather marry Bash for companionship – if their lives ever came to it – than suffer the turmoil of being married to someone who would just break her heart in the end.
Clearing her throat, they walked on, and just as Faye began to shiver they reached a taxi rank where black cabs and Ubers came and went in a well synchronised dance. She could take the Underground, but she’d rather not when it was this late.
She hailed a taxi and told the driver where she needed to go whilst Bash, for some reason, studied the driver’s face and his licence plate. He’d taken his keys from his pocket and was fiddling with them when she turned to say goodbye.
Though goodbyes were never just with words. Not for them.
Faye lifted her arms around his shoulders and Bash circled her waist, wishing there would never be a time when she would have to let go.
“Goodnight, Peanut.” Bash hugged her closer, tighter. His gentle warmth radiating the lingering scent of his cologne where she turned her cheek into his neck. The scratch of roughness in his voice was probably just tiredness from the long day. “Text me when you get home.” Six words that turned her heart into a marshmallow, hushed beside her ear.
“I will.”
Aware the cab was waiting and the clock had likely started already, they let each other go, but not before Bash’s hands smoothed up and down her waist.
“Bye,” Faye said one last time as she ducked into the back seat of her ride, taking in one final map of Bash’s face.
She waved through the window as he got smaller and smaller, until he disappeared completely and the familiar longing which counted down to the next time she would see him drew in like clouds before a storm.
As promised, she texted him as soon as she was home, then sent a similar text to the group chat. Other messages saying the same thing – that everyone had arrived home – had already filtered in.
Ten minutes later, Bash's text came with another goodnight wish. Faye knew that she would have to get used to it being this way, because pretty soon, texts like these were all that she would have.