16. Bash
16
BAS H
The door to the bathroom wasn’t entirely shut and Bash was a self-sabotaging idiot for looking. Faye’s reflection moved in the mirror over the sink unit; fully clothed in long pyjamas and a retro t-shirt, so it wasn’t as though his innocuous glances held any salacious intent as she cleansed her skin with copious amounts of a liquid pumped from a bottle, then washed off the foamy suds.
Faye’s self care was Bash’s self torture.
She fascinated him. Rarely did he get to see her in her wind-down mode after a long day. Watching her absent-minded nightly motions was soothing, which was completely normal, right?
He’d never had a skincare routine until Faye caught him washing his face with hand soap. Now he was fully loaded: cleanser, toner, some serum that’s supposed to keep his skin looking bright (whatever that meant), and moisturiser (two different kinds for day and night, obviously).
As much as his male ego took a knock to admit it, the woman was right, and Bash had made it a side quest in life to own the fact that he took care of his skin whenever any of his caveman-minded male acquaintances brought it up.
He’d never wanted to be a towel before, but he was suddenly envious as Faye da bbed her face dry. She squirted something white from a tube and lathered it over her face and neck. And now he needed to look away …
Mon Dieu. ? * He shouldn't watch this. His mind went to too many places, fingertips wishing it was him who got to stroke Faye’s cheeks like that.
The strange domesticity of this arrangement he’d volunteered them for had evidently made Bash forget his senses, because an entirely different self care threatened to cross his mind, tempered down by the fact that if he touched Faye’s face now, she would probably bite his hand off.
Distraction. He needed one. And desperately.
Leaning off the edge of the bed, Bash fished his current book from his bag – a mid-noughties literary piece he’d found in a “Ten Books to Read Before you Die” article online – and shifted the duvet around his waist so it wouldn't catch on any of the pages.
He’d gotten through four when Faye slid into bed, her pyjamas softly brushing against the sheets. That reality, and the wave of her clean scent invading his space, made him miss the paragraph he was reading.
Bash couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in the same bed as a woman who wasn’t Faye. He may let her believe he went through reams of girlfriends like he did sketch paper at work, but he wasn’t the type to stay the night. Nor did he use them and lose them. Whoever he entered a bedroom with knew his terms: it wouldn’t go beyond some no-strings fun, and he wouldn’t be catching feelings.
“What are you reading?” Faye asked on a tired exhale.
Bash wasn’t sure anymore. Focus. Focus. Without moving his gaze from the page he only pretended to read, he tipped the book so she could see the cover .
“Ooo.” The duvet rustled as Faye moved closer, and Bash’s stretched out thighs drew tight in apprehension.
Did she … snuggle towards him? Burrow down at his side? Her head lay on his shoulder. Was he dreaming? Breathing? He tried not to stiffen too much with how her cuddliness caught him by surprise, given her hesitance for sharing a bed in the first place.
“I’ve not read this one,” Faye said, her words like warm kisses through his t-shirt to his collarbone.
Did she know what she was doing to his dizzy mind at all?
Before Bash knew it, he lifted his hand nearest to her, bent his elbow and buried his fingers in her hair, scratching a gentle massage at the side of her head. Faye hummed and the sound went straight to places in Bash’s restless body it shouldn’t; like the purr of a cat as she curled even further in towards him.
This was … new. Not his touch, but the reality that they were in bed whilst he did it.
Faye kept her hands to herself, tucked up against her chest, but just her warmth beside Bash was enough. He liked how comfortable it was; how right lulling each other towards sleep felt.
Page by page, they read together until the end of the chapter. Bash was already halfway through the book before Faye joined, and he was sure she had no idea what was going on, but her eyes remained on the words and her head only lifted from his shoulder to change position.
He folded the book closed for a moment and set it in his lap. Faye shifted her chin and he felt her eyes upon his jaw waiting for what he’d thought he should say.
“I’m sorry my uncle showed up today and made things uncomfortable,” he said, though he hadn’t stopped thinking about it all afternoon. The air had been different; off-colour ever since Mortimer arrived.
“Bash, when you have a family like I have, you get used to awkward .”
Bash tilted his head and found Faye’s eyes. Her voice had been soft, stripped-bac k to something he didn’t hear too often. And though he knew most of her story, he knew too that there was more.
Something in his expression willed her to go on.
“When I was younger,” Faye began, “if I was with my mum’s family, then I’d always be scared to say something nice about my dad or talk about him in any way, and vice versa, because the fallout from the divorce wasn’t good for either side. I love my parents, but I’ve always pictured how awkward it’s going to be if I get married, and the idea of struggling through that day when I would want everyone to be there, hoping that they can coexist peacefully for a few hours, makes me want to have a wedding day even less.”
Faye didn’t offer information like this up too much, so Bash didn’t take it for granted.
“Do you still feel like that? When you’re with either family?” he asked.
“Not as much now. I think time’s helped to heal some things,” she replied. “It’s been nearly twenty-five years.”
Still, being in a big family unit, Bash knew, was difficult for her.
“Is that … why you were hesitant to say yes to coming here?” He didn’t feel like the two situations were correlated, but to Faye they might be.
Her acorn eyes snapped up. “No, not at all. I just didn’t want to intrude on your family. It’s not like I have a reason to be here?—”
“ I want you here,” he cut off her wrongness. “That’s a good enough reason for my family. And they like seeing you, I know that they do.”
Faye stared up at him, her half-light eyes so beautiful. Bash let the silence sit for a moment as that impulse of a confession swirled around in the air between them, filling his chest with unsteady flutters that felt too much like truth he didn’t speak .
He cleared his throat. “I think I’m going to read another chapter. Do you want to?”
Faye rubbed at her brow with both sets of fingers like she tried to work out a knot of tension there. “I would, but I don’t think I can keep my eyes open for much longer.”
“I can read it to you instead?” Bash offered, opening the book again in his lap.
Her head was already down on her pillow. “That’d be nice.”
So he did, until his body made the decision to fall asleep with Faye by his side for him.
First rule of cross-country rambling with Arthur Phillips: wear the right socks. The man had taken one look at Bash’s feet – which he’d thought acceptable in his walking boots – and sent him off again. It took two minutes to unlace the boots before he’d even made it back to the bedroom to grab a thicker pair of blister-repelling miracle socks.
The door was left open when he jogged along the upstairs hallway, which didn’t seem like a Faye thing to do, and she was downstairs gathered with everyone else. Everyone except?—
“What are you doing?” Bash stumbled to a halt at the threshold, finding his brother curled like a goblin over his hold-all.
“Um,” was all Matt managed, one hand in Bash’s things. An answer that only made his brows draw together even tighter.
He strode like his tail was on fire while Matt righted himself beside the bed where only an hour ago Bash had still been curled up two feet apart from Faye. One of the compartments in his bag was opened and?—
His expression flattened.
“What the … Why are you putting condoms in my bag?”
He might need to get his vision checked, because it can’t have been right that those foil packets – which he knew for certain weren’t his own – were what he’d seen.
Matt had the sense to look sheepish as he backed up a step. “It’s a joke … now that you’re sharing a room with Faye, and all.”
Bash’s sense of humour must’ve broken because he didn’t find his brother funny at all. Maybe Matt could’ve pulled this off when they were still hormonal teenagers and he would have laughed, but not this time. This was too far.
Sharing a room with a woman who was just his friend didn’t equate to needing protection. Why couldn’t anyone believe that? And what kind of twisted perception did Matt of all people have of Faye to make him try this joke in the first place? That just because they were sleeping in the same bed, she was going to offer herself up that way?
“Is that what you think of Faye?” Bash snatched said protection out of his bag, furious.
“No, of course not.”
“If I did the same to you and Saira the first time she stayed over here, she’d be pissed.”
“Yeah … maybe this was a step too far. I’m just trying to help egg you along here.” Matt scratched behind his ear and Bash could see the force of him back-pedalling. “Look, I’ll take them back.”
Matt reached?—
But Bash didn’t let go. He … couldn’t. Which didn’t make any sense because he absolutely did not need condoms at all right now. Someone needed to tell his heart that because it knocked against his rib cage as though it demanded to be let out.
With his hand retreating to his side, Matt’s shoulders inched down. The confused sharpness in his eyes softened.
“You really do love her,” he said.
“Why’d you say that?” Bash’s voice came out more gravelly than usual.
“Because you brought her here knowing you’d be under the same roof, and by the look of it, you weren’t so presumptuous to bring protection in case you did finally tell her how you feel.”
“Yeah well not everything’s about sex, Matt.” He punctuated his brother’s name, mildly annoyed that the man was right.
“Says the man who’s had more flings than any other I know.”
“Faye already thinks of me as someone who sleeps around. I didn’t need to bring these ” – Bash gestured up the foil strip – “to make her point. She means more to me than that.”
“Well you don’t help your image, Bash. You do sleep around.”
“Only because I can’t have?—”
“There you two are!”
Bash whipped the strip of foils behind his back as he spun.
Saira settled her hand upon the door frame. “Come on, we’re ready to go. Matt, what are you doing in here?”
“Nothing honey. Just double checking what Bash bought Dad for Christmas.”
Condoms, Bash thought, and wished he hadn’t.
Matt’s excuse passed strangely believably. Still, Saira gave them a dubious look before she left and Bash already knew Matt would spill the beans about this later. Coerced by his other half or not.
“This conversation isn’t over,” Matt whisper-shouted on his way out behind his wife.
“It absolutely is.” Bash shoved the condoms deep into his bag and zipped it up so determinedly it should’ve broken.
* ? My god