Chapter Twenty-Two #2
She’s right – it’s only May, and already it feels like summer has arrived, warm enough that Nicole is wearing a sleeveless dress, white with blue flowers on, complete with fancy sandals that Lissa is sure Darcy would covet.
It makes her glad she spent time picking out the playsuit she herself is wearing, rubbing fake tan into her legs.
Even if the outfit choice wasn’t really with Nicole in mind.
And if the way Ash’s eyes dropped straight to her legs when she met him outside is anything to go by, it’s already had the desired effect.
‘So you decided against the Maldives then?’ Lissa asks as they head through the house.
‘Hmm?’ Nicole is wearing butterfly earrings, which jangle as she walks.
‘The Maldives. You were going to go there on holiday. For Dad’s birthday.’
‘Oh, yes. Well I looked into it and turns out it’s rather more expensive than I thought. So it’s shelved for the future – definitely one for the bucket list, though.’ So it wasn’t that they changed their minds about inviting her, Lissa thinks.
‘The Maldives,’ Ash says with a low whistle. ‘Fancy.’
Lissa glances at him. ‘Surprised you’ve never been. Didn’t fancy working from there for a year, then?’
He grins. ‘Well, sure. If I could find a way to stay there without selling my spleen.’
‘Bone marrow would probably get you more on the black market,’ she says, offhand.
He huffs out a laugh. ‘It’s scary that you know that.’
There’s an array of bottles and little cans of Fever Tree on the table as they reach the kitchen, and Nicole adds the damson gin to the selection.
The sliding door is open to the patio, where several dozen people mill around.
Lissa had no idea her dad had this many friends – she recognises literally none of them.
‘Apparently they have great diving,’ Ash says, and Lissa frowns at him, not following the thread. ‘In the Maldives,’ he expands.
Nicole’s smile immediately becomes more sincere. ‘Oh, you dive?’
‘Yep. Learnt on my gap year.’
‘Of course you had a gap year,’ Lissa mutters. From the way his mouth crooks up, she knows he heard her.
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Nicole says.
‘You dive?’ Lissa can’t help the incredulity, something that causes both Ash and Nicole to look at her. ‘Sorry,’ she says quickly. ‘I mean … you dive?’ She tries to make it more casual, sees Ash give her a sarcastic thumbs-up behind Nicole’s back.
‘Oh yes. It’s why I wanted to go. Your dad doesn’t, but he could do a DSD, and I think Elsie would love it.’
Lissa has no idea what a DSD is – and she can’t really imagine anything worse than being trapped underwater in a neoprene suit – but she nods along as Ash and Nicole start exchanging stories of their best dives.
She squints at Nicole, trying to picture her in a mask.
But she just can’t imagine her tidy interior-designer stepmum in all the scuba gear.
‘Sorry, Lissa,’ Nicole says, when several minutes have passed with Lissa attempting to look politely interested.
‘No,’ she says quickly. ‘It sounds very … fishtastic.’
Ash’s lips twitch at her lame attempt at a joke. ‘You should try it. I’ll take you.’ The way he says it, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, does something interesting – and a little unnerving – to her insides.
She sees the way Nicole’s eyes flick to her, then away, down to the kitchen tiles, like she doesn’t want to look directly at her.
‘Not my thing,’ she says lightly. ‘I don’t really swim.’ He gives her one of those looks – like he understands more than what she’s saying – and Nicole, thankfully, clears her throat.
‘Well, what can I get you both to drink?’
‘She seems nice,’ Ash says, when they are outside with drinks in their hands, hovering at the edge of the patio.
‘Yeah.’ Lissa takes a sip of her Prosecco – it’s a party after all. ‘I guess she is.’
‘You guess?’
‘I don’t know her all that well.’
‘Have you tried to get to know her?’
It’s a genuine question, no judgement in his tone, but still, it pulls her up short. She’s not used to people asking her stuff like that so directly. ‘I guess not,’ she says after a beat.
‘There she is!’ Lissa turns at the sound of her dad’s voice to see him crossing the patio towards them, beaming.
He switches the spatula he’s holding to his left hand, holds out his right as he nears.
‘And you must be Asher.’ And of course, he has extended Ash’s name for absolutely no reason at all.
Ash raises one eyebrow at Lissa, who shrugs, trying to convey that it has nothing to do with her.
‘Thanks for letting me gatecrash,’ Ash says as they shake hands.
‘No! Thrilled to have you here!’ Dad does in fact sound thrilled – over the top, maybe, but still thrilled. ‘Maybe don’t crash the actual gate, though, Nicole will have a fit.’
‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ Lissa says, rising on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. She hands over her present – a card with gift vouchers inside, dinner for two at a fancy restaurant-slash-wine bar in Bath.
‘This is wonderful!’ he exclaims. ‘Let me know when you’re free and I’ll book it in.’
It takes Lissa a moment to realise what he’s getting at – he thinks it’s supposed to be a meal out with her. ‘Well actually,’ she begins, but the rest of her sentence – it’s for you and Nicole – gets swallowed up by the way he’s beaming at her.
‘David!’ someone calls from next to the smoking barbecue. ‘How burnt do you want these sausages?’
Her dad leaves them with a promise to catch up later, and Lissa and Ash find a spot on the garden steps, next to a bed of tulips and peonies.
Lissa sees Elsie down the end of the garden with her friend Jess and waves.
She considers it a win when Elsie waves back.
She wondered what the fallout was from their unauthorised trip into Bath – no one ever called her about it, so she figured it couldn’t have been that bad.
She shifts on the step, the concrete warm against her calves. Her knee knocks against Ash’s as she does so. Neither of them moves away. She glances up at him, finds him watching her.
‘So how’s your dad doing?’ she asks.
‘He’s okay. Not great, but okay. The doctors have him on new medication, which seems to be helping.
’ Lissa nods, and Ash sighs. ‘I’m thinking I might need to move in with him for a bit, actually.
He keeps telling me not to, but …’ He trails off, but she gets it.
She found it hard to move out of her mum’s house, even when space was definitely what they both needed.
‘How’s your mum?’ he asks, and she frowns. Is he reading her thoughts now? He shrugs in explanation. ‘You don’t talk about her much, so I’m reading between the lines a bit here.’
‘She’s … It’s complicated.’
‘Complicated how?’
She chews her lip, thinking of how to explain.
‘So on the one hand I think she might struggle a bit with depression, or a version of it.’ She never really voices this thought out loud, but seeing Ash with his dad makes it easier.
‘And on the … well, on the same hand, I guess, we don’t have the best relationship.
’ She looks away from him, towards the stepping stones making their way down a perfectly mown lawn towards a decorative fountain.
‘She sort of blames me for what happened,’ she admits. ‘To Chloe.’
She wonders if he’ll say that he’s sure she doesn’t – everyone says that, quick to jump in and offer reassurance.
Only it’s not reassuring, because they don’t know, do they?
But he doesn’t. Instead he takes a moment, then says slowly, ‘I imagine something like that … it can either tear you apart or bring you together.’
She lets out a low exhale. ‘Right. Exactly that.’
She can feel his gaze on the side of her face. ‘You ever think maybe she blames herself, too?’
She frowns at that. On some level, she supposes it must be there, but it is always eclipsed by the blame placed on Lissa.
‘So how did the interview go?’ Ash asks, changing the subject. Which is good, because her dad’s birthday barbecue is not the time for an in-depth conversation about her mother. ‘Marketing for Mind, right?’
She smiles. ‘It went well, I think.’ The interviewer remembered her name, Lissa had a genuine answer for why she wanted to work there, and she didn’t feel like she’d babbled too much. ‘I find out if I make it to second interview next week.’
‘That’s great. Well, fingers crossed and all that. I’m sure you impressed them.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Because you were spying on me in the interview?’
‘Yep,’ he says easily. ‘Got you bugged, hope that’s okay.’
She laughs and shifts as subtly as she can to try to put space between their thighs. She’s too aware of how close they are. It’s distracting.
He gives her a friendly nudge with his shoulder. ‘I’m sure because you’re impressive.’
The compliment is given so easily, she doesn’t really know how to take it.
She glances at him, finds his eyes right there, waiting for her.
She can’t help her gaze being drawn to his lower lip.
They’ve not talked about it – the fact they’ve kissed not once, but twice now.
That she kissed him. Things seem easy between them, the same as always.
But there is an awareness humming around her body, a kind of what if.
What if he kisses her, this time? What if he doesn’t?
She realises what she’s doing and looks away, taking a swallowed breath. She glances at him again, and he smiles – easy, natural.
She drums her fingers on her thigh, over her playsuit. ‘Ash?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Do you believe in past lives?’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘I suppose I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘If you did think about it, though,’ she presses, ‘would you believe in it?’