11. Bash
11
BASH
The annexe, as ever, was a touch on the cold side when Bash went to drop off his things, and the wintry spiced scent of a recently sprayed room mist battled with the obnoxious bowl of potpourri on the bench at the foot of the bed.
Not much had changed since he’d redesigned this bedroom a few years ago. The pale, natural woods and cream palette still flowed effortlessly into the rest of the house. Only, he hadn’t remembered sticking an olive tree by one of the windows when he’d been at the drawing board.
Maman. He sighed as he played with one of the leaves. It could only have been her. He wasn’t sure if he’d stopped blushing from what she’d said to him when they’d arrived.
“I had forgotten how beautiful she is,” she’d said in French, give or take a rough translation, and Bash contained his emerging smile. But then she added, “You would make beautiful children together.”
His stomach had clenched. The fact that Faye was his best friend knotted with a reminder of yes, they would. Yet he couldn’t allow himself to daydream like that .
“ Maman ,” he’d tried to say without sounding irritated enough to alert Faye. “That’s not happening. Leave her alone.”
His warning had gone right over Michèle’s head. He knew there was an element of good-hearted teasing in what she’d said, but he’d think that as a medical professional she’d know better than to make comments on when a woman would want to – if ever – have kids. His protective feathers had ruffled.
“Why not? I want grandchildren, Sébastien. When will you ask for her hand?”
Ask for her hand? It wasn’t the nineteenth century anymore. Nor would he be buying his mother any more of those regency romances from off of her wish list.
“You have grandchildren.”
“Well I would like more. Yours .”
As if he wasn’t wanting that badly enough for himself as it was, Bash didn’t need the added pressure of his family wanting it too.
Thankfully, Michèle dropped the topic after that brisk chat in the hallway where Faye’d stood by unawares. It would arise again, no doubt. It was just a matter of time.
Bash used the facilities of the half-bath and rinsed his face with a splash of cold water. Faye had been right with wanting to freshen up; driving for hours with the car’s heaters on full whack had put an oily film all over his skin that he’d have to save until tonight to wash off completely.
Where he’d be sleeping felt so far away from where Faye was. Even more so after he’d had one of his most pleasant sleeps ever right next to her only a few nights ago. Though he hadn’t meant to have woken up curled around her the way that he had.
It’d taken him a moment of shifting and yawning to realise just how invasive his closeness had been, and guilt-shaped daggers still pressed in his gut for not having better control over his body. Followed by shame-tipped knives for the fact that between the embarrassment, he’d liked waking up with Faye in his arms.
Bash padded through the house with freshened eyes that hadn’t returned here in months. With his schedule being so packed it was usually his parents who ventured to see him instead.
In the kitchen, Christmas music much like the jazz he’d witnessed at Samuel’s trickled through the hidden wireless speakers, and Bash felt completely at home. Nostalgia worked like a drug to bring back memories of walking into their childhood living room on random nights, finding his parents dancing cheek to cheek to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
His smile reached his eyes as he watched the mundaneness of them moving around one another now.
Arthur turned from stirring something remarkably custard-like at the stove. “Ah!” Bash didn’t let his laugh crack at the “ get stuffed” text printed above a cartoon turkey on his father’s apron. “Where’s Faye?”
“ Les croissants sont chauds. ? * ”Michèle’s oven glove clad hands removed a tray from the heating oven of the aga – because yes, they had one of those – and placed it on a trivet on the marble island.
Leaning his shoulder against the doorway, Bash glanced at the rest of the plates and serving bowls. When Michèle had said she’d prepared snacks, she’d really meant to have said a buffet . Faye and he had eaten lunch at a service station on their drive up, but looking at this marvellous spread made a hollow space in his stomach open up for more.
It was good to feel free to just eat and eat again when half a lifetime ago he might’ve cried looking at all of this in front of him.
“She’s just freshening up,” he answered right when he stepped further into the kitchen and eyed the array of pastries, crackers, cheeses, and fruits. A whole plate purely consisting of buttered bread. “You didn’t have to do all of this, Maman .”
Appreciation softened his voice, but his thanks was wafted away with the simple wave of an oven glove.
“And why exactly is Faye here?” Arthur gently pried, the wooden spoon which he stirred getting slower and slower. Where he already knew this questioning was going to go made Bash’s stomach begin to twist. “Not that we aren’t excited to have her—” Another slow turn of that spoon as Michèle nodded in agreement. “We’re just … curious.”
Both of his parents had the same sparkles in their eyes that weren’t because of the overhead spotlights, as if they knew something Bash didn’t.
The more and more he repeated the truth, the less convinced he was of it himself. “I told you, her boiler is dead, and her coming with me here was easier than her being in a cold flat for days by herself, maybe even until after Christmas, whilst she waited for it to be fixed.”
Those were totally acceptable reasons to invite a friend to a family Christmas that wasn’t her own. He was a friend saving a friend from a festive season of loneliness. Yes , that was it.
Michèle had a gleaming look in her eye that made Bash want to back away slowly. “What’s that look for?” he dared to ask, already regretting his choice.
“We’ve been living in this house since you went off to university,” she said, dusting non-existent flour off of the countertop, “and you have never once brought a lady home to see us.”
A lady?
“It’s just Faye.” Michèle raised an eyebrow and Bash stuttered, “Not that she’s not a?—”
“Is she single?” His mother set her hand on her hip whilst Arthur stifled a chuckle.
“ Maman ,” Bash drawled. Where was the nearest wall? He was going to throw his head against it.
“Well?” Michèle pressed. That raised brow … It’d been a weapon ever since Bash was a boy and he couldn’t get away from its power even now.
“Yes … ” He dug his hands deeper into his chino pockets as if it would help him escape this conversation. “She is. ”
“ Idéal .? * ”His mother raised her oven gloves with such exuberance, she narrowly missed throwing them over her shoulder.
Arthur flinched to protect his custard.
“ Maman ,” Bash whined as he watched her wander to a cupboard, “don’t get ideas. If she was interested in me then she would’ve said something a long time ago.” He didn’t think of how he should’ve lowered his voice, given that she was right above them.
No, he thought of how they’d woken the other morning, with his hard-on pressed up against her and her trying to run away from him. He’d been embarrassed and she’d mercifully tried to make him feel better, but there’d been no indication in anything she’d said or done that said Faye wanted that kind of attention from him. So he’d apologised and bowed out with as much nonchalance as he could muster, which had been difficult, given how little blood there’d been in his brain at the time.
Thankfully, the sound of Faye’s footsteps travelled down the stairs and cut off this debate.
“Um … hello?” She called out.
“Just follow the smell of food,” Bash called back. Faye’s blonde head popped around the door behind him a second later.
“Sorry,” she said, her eyes bouncing around the spacious kitchen for the first time. A smile crept up in the corners of Bash’s lips that he didn’t wipe away as she took in his family and their home – not that Faye noticed. “I wanted to get rid of the feeling that I was still in the car from my skin.”
“That’s alright, ma chérie ? * .” Michèle ushered her in with a rolling gesture of her bracelet adorned wrists. “Come in and eat. Croissants are fresh from the oven.”
Faye, tugging down the sleeves of her loose jumper over her hands, tiptoed in and took a seat on one of the bar stools at the island next to where Bash stood. She’d changed her clothes from jogging bottoms to what Bash supposed were thick, winter leggings, and pulled some fluffy socks onto her feet.
With his parents most likely watching his every move around her, he didn’t let his gaze trail over her for more than a second, or his lungs fill too much with the decadently floral scent of her perfume. He adored her like this; the casual yet still pretty outfits which said she felt comfortable enough to let her hair down in his parent’s home – which she had done .
“Remember Maman , Faye is a baker,” he said as she reached for a still-warm croissant from the oven tray.
Faye’s eyes widened on him and then across at Michèle. “Oh, no.” Her refusal somehow sounded innocent, and the dust of pink rising in her cheeks was full of self-doubt. “I make doughnuts, that’s all.”
“Nonsense,” Michèle argued with a smile. “Sébastien tells us all about your café. You are the best doughnut baker in London!” Both points were objectively true.
“Well … I … ”
Bash tilted forwards as he peered at Faye, the top of her head barely making it to his shoulder. She was blushing .
“Thank you,” she said, plucking a croissant in a hesitant, half-committed way. “Though I’m sure that’s not true.”
Michèle's lips parted again and Bash placed his hand on the tip of Faye’s spine. “Try it,” he said before his mother could make her curl into herself any further, nodding at the pastry she played with between her fingers.
He watched her rip off an end and place it in her mouth, and he had to divert his mind from thinking of other things as her lips moved, like he was often forced to.
What went on in his mind when he was asleep was beyond Bash’s control, but in broad daylight those thoughts were beyond torturous. After a decade of friendship, and many years of being stuck in this perpetual state of daydreaming, they were bound to have cropped up at least once .
Faye chewed, and then her shoulders sank with an appreciative moan that went straight to Bash’s?—
“ Mmm ,” she crooned, covering her mouth. “This is delicious.” Her compliments came around another bite. “So buttery.”
Tingles spread along the sensitive skin of his palm where Bash realised he still touched her. And with that sound of her humming …
He let his hand fall away back to his pocket in the nonchalant way he’d had a long time to perfect. There was something within him that often simply needed to touch her – a small point of contact that automatically made him feel calmer. But he couldn’t do it constantly, there were still boundaries between them after all, so he timed his touches to when they laughed, or when Faye looked like she needed reassurance, and he treasured every hug she gave.
Michèle looked pleased by the compliments. “Pastry is for the soul.” Wise words. “There is always more, so eat as much as you’d like. Sebby, you too.”
Bash reached for one, just one (for now), and marvelled at the butteriness like Faye had done. There was no better croissant than those from a French woman who had all of the time in the world to bake. For a moment, he was catapulted straight back to his early childhood where he and Matt had a continental breakfast in their twin bunk beds on Sunday mornings.
“So, Faye, Sebby tells us that you are having trouble with your apartment?” Michèle settled onto one of the adjacent stools across the island. A slightly insensitive opening gambit, Bash thought as he tried not to narrow his eyes, but Faye’s presence in his mother’s kitchen at Christmas was the tiny elephant in the room.
Faye took an extra second to swallow another piece of croissant. “Yes, my boiler.”
Arthur scooped a spoonful of potato salad onto a plate. “Why don’t you move in with Sébastien?” Just as quick as he’d asked, he levelled Bash with a steeled look. “I hope you’ve offered Faye your guest room, son.”
Bash had had this argument with himself already. “ Dad ? — ”
“He is neat and tidy.” Michèle interrupted like she was trying to rehome a stray. “And he has washed his own underwear since he was thirteen?—”
“Maman!”
Faye giggled behind her hand.
Bash dragged his palm down his face. God, this was mortifying.
Michèle put her delicate hand to her chest. “What? We are your parents!” A fact that Bash wished wasn’t true right then. He loved them but they had zero tact. “We have not had much chance to tell all of the stories that we have saved for this moment.”
“Stories?” ... Plural?
Bash wanted to scoop Faye up and run with her out of the door. Regaling her with embarrassing tales of his childhood had not been the plan.
Twisting to face Faye head on, his mother leant in, and damn Faye, she leant in too.
“When Sébastien was little,” Michèle began as a bolt of fear for which unexpected tale she would spin out splintered down through Bash, “we holidayed to Montpellier. One day at the beach, we turn around, and what do we see?” Enraptured, Faye’s lips parted like she’d silently gasped in anticipation. Arthur already smirked. “He has stripped himself naked and run off through the sand towards the ice cream stand.”
The laugh that burst from Faye would’ve been even more delightful to Bash’s ears if his childhood escapades hadn’t been the cause.
Who was he kidding? He devoured that sound. But he had a facade to keep up.
Tossing his head back, he groaned. His parents were doing this on purpose but he couldn’t work out why. If this was what it was like to bring a woman home to your family then he would never do it again. Ever. With Matt finished with his procreation, Maman could say goodbye to having any more grandchildren .
Nope, Faye was it. The last.
“His tiny little cheeks bounced everywhere?—”
“Maman!”
“And she doesn’t mean the ones on his face.” Arthur leant into the laughter with a perfectly timed wink.
Faye’s laughter turned to wheezing as she grabbed her side, and the smile threatening to break through Bash’s indignant pout levelled up to code red.
Folding his arms, he shook his head at the three of them. “We are not doing this. I’m not going to listen to this abuse.”
Faye’s grin was wicked. “No! Please, keep them coming.” She was as ruthless as his mother today. Bash knew it was a bad idea to put them in a room together.
She rested forwards on her elbows and tucked her chin on her linked hands. All shyness gone. “How old was he? When he ran naked?”
Both of Bash’s parents turned their eyes to him expectantly.
Okay. They were really doing this.
His shoulders slumped in resigned defeat.
“Nine,” he murmured.
And the embarrassment continued for a further hour.
* ? The croissants are warm
* ? Perfect
* ? My dear