Chapter 16 #3
They both preferred the quiet of home to the hustle and bustle of the city, but Marylebone was a lovely area to spend a lazy Sunday morning and the stroll to the café was actually very enjoyable until Denny spotted a woman with a blond bob along the passers-by and her heart started racing.
“It’s not her.” It was like Eris’ voice was coming from underwater. “If she comes near you, I’ll kill her.”
“No, you won’t. I forbid you to touch that bitch,” said Denny. Even though her head was swimming, she could hear an alarm bell at the back of it.
They both came to a halt when they turned the corner: ahead of them, the café was crammed. Even the two tables outside were taken despite the uncertain weather. Denny had a reservation, but that wasn’t what concerned her.
“It’s rammed,” she said. “Maybe we should get takeaway?”
“It’s fine,” Eris cut short. She adjusted her grip on Denny’s hand and dragged her inside.
They were lucky enough to get a corner table.
She let Eris sit with her back to the wall, but it wasn’t enough.
The crowd wasn’t the biggest issue: it was the noise, the buzzing chatter with occasional bursts of laughter and louder pitches that made Eris wince and pick at her thumbnail as her leg bounced under the table.
Denny couldn’t bear to see her in such distress.
“Let’s go home,” she nearly begged, but Eris’ expression was stubbornly unbending.
“No.” She scanned the QR on the centrepiece and started browsing the menu while rolling the napkin between her fingers. By the time their food was served, the napkin had been reduced to confetti.
Denny tried to chat as a distraction, but it only made Eris more nervous: too many stimuli overlapping.
When dessert arrived, she realised that her leg was bouncing too.
She didn’t know if she was just absorbing Eris’ stress or venting a stress of her own.
Her ears still felt like they’d been stuffed with cotton wool, but her skin prickled from the noise surrounding her as if it’d been something physical.
All the time she’d been spending at home, basking in her comfort zone, must have deteriorated her outside world immunity, like a muscle she hadn’t used for too long and was now atrophied.
She had no idea how she was going to rebuild a shield that had been years in the making, especially now that there was no one who was constantly pushing her boundaries.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to rebuild it at all.
All her life, pushing herself to do all those overwhelming things just because it was what everyone else did, she’d felt like someone who was paying a ticket for an expensive train she had been forcibly shoved onto—a train that never stopped and ran too fast for her to jump off.
It had never occurred to her that she was free to pull the brake and just hop off without owning explanations to anyone until Eris had done it for her.
Eris was teaching her so much about self-respect and self-care. No one else Denny knew would choose their own comfort over peer pressure, even if that meant squeezing themselves into a box to fit in. Except maybe Aunt Aunika.
When the waiter brought the bill, Denny paid it right away, defying Eris’ glare. “You can pay next time.”
Her phone pinged: it was two coffee cup emojis with a question mark from her mum.
“My parents ask if we want to pop in for coffee,” she translated out loud. The flash of panic that crossed Eris’ face brought an indulgent smile to her lips. “You’d rather go home.”
“It’s just that this place is—”
“Really loud. Takeaway would’ve been a smart choice, mh?”
“We can’t give up everything just because noise bothers me.”
“We absolutely can.”
Eris’s eyes closed for a moment as a soundless sigh deflated her chest. “I want to do this, Denny,” she said, surprisingly firmly. “Normal shit with you, like all couples do. I can do it.”
Denny took her hands. “I know you can. We should just plan our dates a bit more wisely.” After a short pause, she added: “We could bring your headphones next time.”
“I can’t hear you with those.”
Denny’s face fell. She lacked better suggestions, but refused to give up. She’d have to do some research.
“I can walk you home and then head to my parents’.”
“I’m not a baby,” scoffed Eris.
Denny smacked a kiss on her cheek. “Text when you’re home, yeah?”
The kiss was returned, a peck on the lips that still tasted like tiramisù. “Say hi to your parents for me. Promise I won’t miss it next time.”
“Go home and rest. I’ll be back soon.”
* * *
“Where’s Eris?” her mum asked as soon as Denny walked in alone.
Denny plopped down at the kitchen table. “Home. The chaos of the restaurant tired her out a bit.”
“Noise sensitivity?”
“Yeah.”
“Luke, what about those earplugs you wear at work?”
Denny wasn’t really paying attention, too focused on the text that had just arrived from Eris.
Eris
Home safe and sound
Watching a documentary about a homicidal cult to decompress
There was also an attached selfie showing her lying on the couch with an arm flung over her head. Denny turned around to take a selfie of her own with her mum making coffee in the background and forwarded it along with a string of hearts that Eris would positively gag at.
“Tell her to try these.” Denny glanced up to find her dad handing her the tiniest paper box. “They filter out the noise but you can still follow a conversation.”
Denny turned the box around: a pair of fancy earplugs were pictured on the other side. “Where can I get a pair of these?”
“Keep those.”
“He buys them in bulk because he’s always misplacing them.”
Denny pouted. “I’m feeling attacked for some reason.”
“Oh, by the way! He finally finished unpacking and found the souvenirs we got in New Zealand for you and Eris.”
“You got my flatmate a souvenir from New Zealand?”
Heather brought her hands to her hips. “Your flatmate, Denny?”
Of course her mum knew. Denny lived in denial that she wasn’t an open book but was constantly proved wrong.
She stole a biscuit from the plate in the middle of the table and nibbled off a chunk. “I’m detecting some scepticism there.”
“I birthed you, missy. You’re the emotional copycat of your father: your face gives everything away.”
“Let’s be honest, Chickpea,” Luke chimed in. “The way you and that girl act with each other is not giving flatmates.”
“Oh my god, stop talking like that.”
“You couldn’t take your eyes off her the other day,” said Heather while bringing the moka to the table. “You took her leftovers, filled her glass when it was empty…”
“Those glances you shared…”
“She looks at you like you’re the sun itself.”
No, that’s how I look at her.
A sudden silence fell and Denny noticed her parents were both staring at her with big, complacent grins plastered on their faces.
“Did I say that out loud?”
Her parents’ grins widened even more. There was no point in playing dumb.
“Alright, fine: we’re together. Eris is my girlfriend. Happy now?”
“I knew it!”
“But she wasn’t my girlfriend when you were in New Zealand!”
She braced for any variation of ‘Isn’t it a bit rushed?’ combined with ‘Weren’t you supposed to be taking a break from girlfriends?’.
Both arguments were perfectly valid, or would have been, if Denny had had any control over the dynamics that had connected her and Eris so fast and so deeply.
Her only intent when she’d approached Eris had been providing aid; neither of them could have imagined that they’d get inescapably pulled into each other’s gravity, let alone that their jagged edges would end up slotting so smoothly into one another.
Denny waited, but the lecture wasn’t coming.
“Well? You’re not going to tell me to be careful and so on?”
Luke came around the table to put an arm around her shoulder. “We can’t shut everyone out because there are some bad apples out there, Chickpea.” He placed a kiss on the crown of her head. “Eris is a good match for you. There’s a lot you can learn from someone like her.”
“Someone like her?”
“Someone so different from you,” Heather elaborated. She poured the coffee for everyone. She pushed two cups to the other side of the table, then sat down with her own.
Luke took a seat next to Denny. “Eris knows hardship. She knows what it’s like to fight to get by.
None of the girls you’ve dated before was like her.
They were all like you: sheltered and spoiled.
” Denny opened her mouth to protest, but Luke anticipated it: “Yes, Denny: you’re spoiled.
Not in a bad way, but you are. Eris, though?
That girl is a survivor. I can tell by how she acts around you that she’d never take you for granted like all the other ones did.
” He dropped a sugar cube in his coffee and stirred.
“I don’t know if she’s The One, but she’s a good one.
And she makes you happy.” He pinched Denny’s cheek between two fingers.
“I haven’t seen my baby so happy in way too long. ”
Denny gave him a fierce hug, peering at her mum as she did so: she was hastily wiping the corner of an eye with a knuckle, which was funny, because she’d always been the stoic one in the family.
“She makes me feel so safe and seen…”
“It shows.” Heather watched her tenderly. “You’re our glowing little sunbeam again.”
“Mum, I’m not five…”
“Five, twenty-five, sixty… You’ll always be our little girl. After Blake, you deserve a fresh start with someone who knows your worth.”
Denny took a sip of coffee, grimacing when she realised she’d forgotten to add the milk.
She didn’t bother to fetch it.
All she wanted was to run home and tell Eris that she was officially a daughter-in-law.