12. Faye
12
FAYE
After devouring the buffet Michèle graciously served for a second lunch, Faye received a tour of the house; its spacious kitchen, living room plus the smaller sitting room, a passing glance at the office with dual oak desks, the patio (though it was too cold to stay out there for long), and lastly the beautifully designed annexe where Bash would sleep, before returning to the main sitting room.
The whole house had been decorated in the Christmas spirit to a rough sort of perfection, elevating the cosy cottage feel within a property that was anything but. To Faye, this home was a mansion. She loved the living room’s exposed beams in particular, dotted overhead with a line of Christmas cards tacked into the wood.
Stealing glances out of the windows facing the neatly kept front lawn and driveway, she edged along a trio of sage-green rustic sideboards. Too many photographs sat on their tops in mismatched frames to count, but Faye was determined to look at them all. Most were more recent photos so far, which made identifying Bash easy, until she reached a cluster of grainy prints in older looking frames.
Careful to not knock any others, she picked up one in particular; a print of a young boy in tennis whites and sports socks pulled halfway up to his knees, smiling as he held up a trophy. In her heart, Faye knew it was Bash, but she wanted to be sure.
“Is this you?”
Bash had hovered beside her as she moved along the display, sipping on a mug of tea, but his face washed over with greyness as soon as his eyes snagged on the picture. He stilled for half a second longer than Faye would’ve expected, as if he hadn’t recognised himself at first.
“Yeah,” he mumbled and turned himself away, picking at the back of a mustard wingback seat that looked rather a lot like some of the ones from Baked .
That response told Faye more than he knew. Namely that he still saw himself as the smiling boy in the photo, even just a little bit … and he didn’t like what he saw.
“You look so young.”
“I look terrible.” Bash tried to gently take the frame from her hands without spilling his tea.
“What? Why? I think you look great.” Happy with the ginormous, gleaming trophy in his hands.
He put the frame back further to the rear of the cluster and moved another larger image in its way, muttering, “Shame none of the other teenagers did.”
Faye’s softening gaze didn’t leave his profile. Every crinkle that flattened and ounce of loathing that hardened Bash’s expression as he shoved his younger self to the back of the queue made her long to jump back in time and find that boy to tell him how amazing he was.
He didn’t have to say out loud the reasons why he thought those things. Bash’s childhood was a sensitive topic for him just like her parents’ divorce was for her, because they were the loneliest years of his life. He spent his school break times hiding from his unnecessarily cruel classmates outside of classroom doors, or in the toilet blocks where he could be by himself away from those who shamed him for his larger body back then .
He’d joked a few times that from the age of eight, he’s stayed the same weight but just grown taller, and it sank Faye’s heart every time she heard him say such deprecating things, even now, though it was rare.
He was such a beautiful person inside and out and he couldn’t seem, to her eyes anyway, to get past the thought that he wasn’t.
When they’d met, he’d been the leanest Faye had ever seen him. She’d noticed soon after they’d begun spending more time together how he tightly controlled what he ate, though she’d never seen him restrict himself. Still, she knew that hadn’t always been the case.
Now, Bash ate what he wanted when he wanted it and rarely skipped out on dessert. Hell, he loved sweet things more than she did and still somehow kept his Adonis-like shape. But it had always been there in the back of Faye’s mind that something was wrong. And she’d been right.
When she’d eventually found the right time to ask him about it, Bash trusted her enough to tell her about his up and down bingeing cycles when he was a teenager. And then he’d told her about the monthly therapy sessions she hadn’t known about before then and still attended to this day.
He was getting better. He was healthy and happy, and that was all Faye wanted for him. Bash would tell her if something was wrong – he’d proven so in the past. When his grandmother had passed away and he’d sunk into a bingeing cycle that tipped the scales of grief too far. When he’d been injured and unable to run or play tennis for two months and had gone stir crazy.
Faye quietened her voice from Michèle and Arthur lounging on the cream sofa far behind them, hoping that the quietly playing radio above the unlit fireplace might cover what she said next, too.
“Teenagers don’t make the best decisions.” She inched closer, linking her finger with one at Bash’s side, because if he wasn’t going to look at her then he could feel that she was there for him instead. “I’m sure if they could see you now, they’d know how wrong they were to be mean to you, because you’re an amazing, top tier bloke, Bash.”
He’d been gnawing on his lip but stopped and peered through his lashes. Faye put all of her earnestness into her encouraging smile, and the corner of his mouth curved. “Top tier?”
There was the Bash that she knew. Her Bash.
“One hundred percent.”
The small smile crept more broadly onto his lips. “Thanks, Peanut.”
Their fingers unlinked and Bash rubbed her arm, lighting sparks between her jumper’s sleeve and her skin – a passing, shuddering glance at what that connection could be if his hands traced the rest of her body exactly the same.
She didn’t know if he felt it, but Faye definitely did, and it wasn’t just friction .
The crunch of tyres on the driveway made her snap out of staring at his mouth right as a lengthy silver estate rolled through the open gates and pulled up alongside Bash’s car.
“That’s Matt.” His voice brightened like the conversation they’d just had never happened. Hand falling from her arm, Bash set his mug down on the first coaster he passed and darted off into the hall.
From the light of a lamp on the corner of the house, Faye vaguely made out four silhouettes moving in the car. She’d known Bash’s brother’s family would be coming to stay too, but a flush of unprepared jitters rose from the tips of her toes all of the way to her head, regardless.
She didn’t know much about Matt, and even less about his family. They were surely all lovely, but what if they hadn’t been wanting her here? Had Bash even considered them at all before asking her to come?
Michèle and Arthur muttered things back and forth all the way out of the room, and Faye followed behind them last, keeping a distance as two young girls sprung through the front door, trailing scarves and coats and half-open unicorn backpacks behind them.
“There are my granddaughters!” Arthur cheered, but Bash was there first.
“Uncle Bash!” The smaller girl waved up an arm that ended just above her wrist, beaming the biggest, brightest smile as she reached out an elephant teddy in her hand.
Bash lifted her in one clean sweep and twirled her around, making her two raven ponytails fly as he smothered the girl’s brown cherub cheeks with quick kisses. It was a moment that made Faye want to take a picture, not for herself but for him.
You’re an amazing, top tier bloke, Bash. Maybe he would believe it if he could see how he was in the way that she did.
The older of his nieces went for her grandparents and straight into Michèle’s open arms.
Faye lingered back in the living room doorway, observing the whole family happy to see one another. She recognised Matt following last as he towered over his wife. With the same height and build as Bash, the only difference were their faces. Bash had the naturally cheekier expression, even when focussed, whereas Matt more often looked as though he was one step away from cancelling Christmas until he smiled.
His wife, Saira, Faye had met less than a handful of times. She had the flustered yet pulled-together look about her of a mother on a mission. Golden brown skin that glowed as she blew out a breath in the warmth, and a mismatch of keys, a phone, one sock, and two travel mugs juggling in her hands effortlessly.
Conversation struck up about the young family’s journey (wet and boring) and excitement to be here (read: relieved to not be working). They all piled into the hall and Faye waited patiently for someone to look at her and give her a reason to step forwards, or else she would be standing where she was for a very long time.
“Ah!” It was Bash, of course, who raised his arm at her, his other wrapped around his brother’s shoulders. “Come, come. Meet everyone.”
Taking a deep breath she did her best to conceal, Faye took that first step forwards.
Matt took one look at her and turned back to Bash. “You did it then?”
A frown passed on her brow as she reached them.
“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” Bash said point blankly, “but Maman has fresh croissants in the kitchen.”
“But you said that?—”
“ Maintenant .? * ” Bash pressed his palm firmly into Matt’s back. Faye wasn’t sure what’d spurred on his sudden impatience to have his brother move along, but why did she get the feeling it was something to do with her?
“Wait, I haven’t said hello to Faye yet.” Matt wiggled out of Bash’s hold.
“Okay, but you know those croissants are best when they’re warm.”
Faye couldn’t figure out the reason for Bash’s obstructiveness, and what had he ‘done’? There was something she’d missed.
Matt looked at her with a welcoming smile. “Are you alright with a hug, Faye? It’s nice to see you again.”
“Of course.” It was only a quick embrace, barely two seconds, but she appreciated the request for permission first.
“This is our daughter Imara.” Matt patted his hand on top of the older girl’s head which she lifted to give her a once over. Faye guessed that she was seven or eight, perhaps. “And the one climbing Dad like a tree is Maya.” At the sound of her name, Maya waved her shorter arm from her perch on Arthur’s shoulders.
Faye remembered their names, both of them the spitting image of their mother with their south Asian colouring and silky black hair, but it’d been so long since she’d last seen them in person that she was glad of the reminder. She didn’t think either of the girls would remember her anyway.
She twinkled her fingers to Maya in a wave in return.
“And last but absolutely not least” – Matt offered his hand out behind him – “my wife, Saira.”
“What a nice surprise!” Saira moved a strand of windswept hair from off of her cheek. “We didn’t expect to see you here.”
Faye flicked her eyes to Bash who stood tugging on his earlobe.
“Neither did I,” she said honestly, then quickly ran through explaining the whirlwind of events that had led her here.
The small talk was short, and soon Michèle funnelled the women towards the kitchen whilst Arthur offered up himself and his sons to scurry between the house and the silver estate, shuttling bags in the raindrops beginning to fall.
Faye sat on a stool at the island and tried not to squirm. She was good at polite conversation – half of her job was interacting with people whom she’d never met before. Yet there was pressure here to make a good impression. She realised more and more each minute how much she wanted Bash’s family to like her.
When Arthur returned, shoulders dotted with rain, Matt hadn’t followed him.
And neither had Bash.
* ? Now