20. ZARA
ZARA
“I really appreciate you letting me come and stay with you, Zara. I know I can be a bit much sometimes, but I promise not to get into any trouble while I’m here.”
Tilly and I were sprawled on the sofa enjoying a well-earned glass of wine after getting her settled in the room I’d picked out for her.
“You ‘being a bit much’ is one of the things I love about you, Tilly,” I said, “and anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t worth your time. You don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not for me.”
“Oh thank goodness. I was going to do my best to be normal, I really was, but I’m not sure how long I could have kept it up for.”
“Normal is overrated.” I said and she giggled.
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never really given it a proper chance.” Her face turned serious. “How much did Phoebe tell you? About my little problem I mean. I know she asked you to invite me here to get me out of Avalon, even though she made it sound like you needed the company.”
“At the risk of sounding pathetic, I do need the company, Tilly. I’ve been going stir crazy here on my own. I’m looking forward to having someone to talk to and maybe go out with.”
Her face lit up when I said that. “I’d love that,” she said excitedly.
“Can we go to London and go to a nightclub, and the theatre, and the zoo, and some fancy restaurants, oh and the clothes shops, the ones in Avalon are okay but everything they sell is a bit tame. Jed said we can stay in one of his hotels if we want to.”
“We can definitely do all of those things,” I said, laughing as she bounced up and down squealing with excitement and trying not to think about what kind of clothing choices would meet Tilly’s definition of ‘not tame’. “But first, I do need you to promise me something, Tilly.”
“Anything,” she looked at me expectantly, “I won’t bring any boys home if that’s what you’re worried about.
Or stray kittens or puppies – unless you want me to of course?
” She looked at me hopefully and I did my best to look forbidding when I told her “no pets”, then added “and no boys either” when she looked like she was about to ask for clarification on that.
“This is really important, Tilly. I need your word that you won’t decide to go running off without telling me.
I promised Phoebe I’d look after you, and quite apart from that, I’d be worried sick about you if you did a disappearing act on me.
” She was quiet for so long as she mulled that over that I started to wonder if that had been exactly what she was planning to do.
“I promise I won’t do that,” she said eventually. “I could have come to the mortal realm any time I wanted, I’m not a prisoner in Avalon. I just didn’t want to go against my dad’s wishes. If I do decide to defy him and not go back, I won’t just disappear on you. I’ll tell you.”
“It's not that I'd try and stop you from doing whatever you felt you needed to do. I’d just appreciate you giving me a heads up before you do it, so I know you haven’t been kidnapped or something.”
“I promise I will. Did Phoebe tell you what my dad is trying to do?”
I hesitated. If I said yes, I might be dropping Phoebe in it, but I didn’t want to lie to Tilly either.
“It’s okay if she did,” she said, obviously seeing my dilemma. “I told her she could. I just wasn’t sure if she had.”
“I’m not sure if she told me the whole story. Just that your father wants you to settle down and get married, and you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to yet,” she said with a sigh. “It’s not that I hate the idea of settling down with the right person eventually, but there’s so much fun to be had before I seriously consider it. And when I do, Quinn is definitely not the right person.”
“Quinn?” I nearly choked on the mouthful of wine I’d been about to swallow. “As in, Jed’s head of security? That Quinn?”
“Mmhmm. Dad’s got it into his head that he would be an ideal match for me because he’d have no trouble keeping me in line. His words, not mine.”
Going by the few times I’d met Quinn, her dad was probably right about the keeping her in line part, but that didn’t seem like much of a reason to marry someone.
Tilly needed a partner who loved her enough to be able to steer her into making the right choices of her own accord, not someone who’d just arbitrarily order her around.
And who’d love her regardless when she got into mischief.
“And what does Quinn have to say about it? Surely if he said no, that would be the end of it.”
“It would. And I thought he’d do just that, but for some reason he seems to be willing to consider it. Which is why I’m getting to the point where I might have no choice but to defy my dad and refuse to go back to Avalon. I’m not sure I have the courage to stand up to both of them.”
No wonder she’d been so desperate to get out of Avalon.
“Well, as long as you’re here with me you don’t have to worry about it. I very much doubt Quinn is going to chase you here to try and win you over. So let’s just concentrate on having some of that fun you’ve been craving because honestly, I think we both deserve it. Deal?”
“Deal. So what’s first on the agenda? Clubbing tonight?” Her face fell and she added, “Oh, no, I need to do some shopping first, I’ve got nothing to wear yet.”
Thank the gods for that. I was going to need at least a couple of days to psych myself up for clubbing with Tilly, and then only if I couldn’t persuade her she wouldn’t enjoy it. Except I knew she would absolutely love it. Maybe I could convince Terrah or Jules to take her while I was working.
“Jed gave me some spending money.” She fished around in the bag she’d tossed onto the sofa and pulled out a pre-paid credit card with a triumphant ‘ta-da’. “He said there’s five grand on it. Do you think that will be enough? I don’t know how much everything costs here.”
“As long as you don’t go mad and start buying everything designer, you’ll be fine.
” Phoebe had already told me about the card and said that if she maxed it out Jed would top it up so she could keep using it, but I wasn’t about to tell Tilly that, or there’d be no stopping the shopping.
“But we may have to wait a bit before we can do anything I need to take time off work for. I’ve already taken a few days for the Karaoke and today so I can spend this evening with you, so… ”
“I get it. Maybe we can just get takeaways and do the whole ‘Netflix and Chill’ thing this week? Did I say that right?” I choked down a laugh.
“Not quite. That usually refers to inviting someone round for the evening with the intention of having sex with them, so you might want to save that one for members of the opposite se—in fact, maybe just don’t say it at all. Definitely safer that way.”
“Oh, oops. Got it. We can still watch Netflix without having sex though, right? I found tons of programmes I want to watch that I can’t get in Avalon.”
“We can definitely still watch Netflix,” I reassured her.
“But as for takeaways, we can only get pizza delivered this far out in the sticks, so unless one of the others are visiting and bring it with them, that’s our only option.
If you wanted,” I ventured, “we could go to Fae as well. Do you have anyone there you’d like to visit? ”
“Maybe.” She didn’t sound too sure how she felt about that. “But first I want to watch Enchanted and a few other shows, and we’ve got some dance routines to put together for you, Little Miss Saucy Pants, for when your man candy gets back.”
I’d managed to work out how to edit out the steamier parts of the video Seth had made and had shown it to Phoebe and Tilly, which may not have been the wisest move as Tilly had immediately come up with at least a dozen ideas how I could make my next routine even raunchier.
She’d also offered to help Phoebe come up with ‘a sexy ass lap dance’ for Jed, much to her horror, and I didn’t hold out much hope of Tilly getting her to agree. I’d had enough trouble getting her to do that mini line dance routine when the three of us had sung together at the Karaoke last year.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this, Zara?” Tilly’s question startled me out of my own thoughts. “I know it must be hard for you with Seth having to go away so soon after you got together. If you don’t feel up to doing stuff with me, I won’t mind.”
“It’s fine, Tilly. I promised Seth that it would be business as usual while he was gone and I intend to keep that promise.
It is going to be hard, but it would be pointless putting my whole life on hold while he’s gone.
The time will go a lot quicker if I keep myself busy and besides, it’s not like he’s lying in hospital in a coma or something.
He’s going to be pretty busy too. So your mission is to keep me distracted and give me a slap if I start sliding into a funk. A metaphorical slap, that is. Okay?”
“You got it, Little Miss Saucy Pants.” She gave me a sharp salute, and I just hoped she knew what metaphorical meant. Now there was an incentive to stay positive.
“So, do you want to stay in tonight and eat pizza and watch TV?” I asked, “or shall we go out for something to eat?”
She waggled her empty wine glass at me. “As long as there’s plenty more of this, let’s do pizza and TV.”
I got up and went to the kitchen to retrieve the wine bottle from the fridge.
If I’d known Tilly was going to be coming for an extended visit, I’d have asked Seth to get in an extra supply of fae wine before he left.
As it stood, it looked like we’d be needing to add a visit to the supermarket to our to-do list.