Chapter 25 #2
“Like you and Martin?” Elliot asks quietly. “Is that why you got together with him? Because he was ‘sensible’? Because he was a ‘grown up’.”
“I did it because he was safe,” I reply firmly. “And I knew he was never going to break my heart.”
Like you did.
“I guess it doesn’t get much safer than the boy next door,” Elliot says, making the words ‘boy next door’ sounds like a particularly biting insult. “If that’s what you’re into.”
He digs into his pasta in a way that suggests he might be imagining burying Martin in it.
“Right. And I guess you’ve been living some kind of wild, free-spirited life, filled with danger and excitement, have you?” I ask, rattled. “With someone much more interesting than the girl next door?”
This is such a transparent and clumsy attempt to try to find out if he’s seeing anyone that I’m blushing even as I say it. But Elliot just reaches out and tops up both of our glasses again.
“The ‘girl’ who lives next door to me is 82,” he says.
“And I already told you I don’t have a girlfriend.
But you’re right; my life’s pretty boring, really.
I think journalists even refer to me as a ‘recluse’ actually, whenever they have to write about me.
So I’m sorry if I seemed like I was judging you. I don’t have any right to.”
I pick up my glass and take a sip of wine, feeling oddly wrong-footed.
“They do call you a recluse,” I tell him at last. “And ‘elusive’. I think they quite like it, though. It makes you seem mysterious and enigmatic. But … why?”
“Why am I mysterious and enigmatic?” Elliot’s eyes twinkle as he says it, and it triggers a memory of the first time we met; a memory which I quickly try to push to the side. “It just comes naturally, I guess. It’s all part of my magnetism.”
“You were never like that before, though,” I point out, thinking out loud.
“Reclusive, I mean. You were always so open. You had such a … a zest for life, I guess. You wanted to see everything; do everything. You were going to see the world at one point. But now it seems like you just want to hide away from it. So, why?”
Elliot toys with the stem of his wine glass, watching the way the crystal catches the light.
“I did want to see the world,” he says, still staring into the glass. “But I didn’t want to do it alone, Holly. I wanted to share it with … well, someone. But that’s not how it worked out.”
He looks up at me, and I’m suddenly very aware of how close he is.
How painfully familiar he is. And, well, how unfairly attractive he is, too.
Because, in spite of everything that’s happened, Elliot Sinclair still makes my stomach flutter when he looks at me in that intense way of his; and I feel like that gives him a very unfair advantage over me in a conversation like this one.
In the kitchen, The Pogues start singing Fairytale of New York, almost as if whoever chose the set list for this radio show knew that we’d need to hear yet another song about missed opportunities and dreams that died, and we’d need to hear it right at this very second.
Ho ho ho.
“I haven’t been ‘hiding away’, Holly, as you put it,” he says simply.
“I’ve just been lonely. Things were never really the same after …
after I left here. I thought writing about it would help; but it didn’t.
It didn’t help. And now it seems it also just made you hate me, which …
let’s just say that wasn’t part of the plan, either. ”
He runs a hand through his hair, looking sadder than I’ve ever seen him. Every impulse in my body is screaming at me to comfort him — to just reach out and put my arms around him, and make everything okay — but I know I can’t do it. Not until I know exactly what he’s trying to say.
“You said the book was supposed to be a love letter earlier,” I say carefully. “But I don’t know what you mean by that?”
My heart flutters frantically in my chest, like a caged bird trying to get out. I’ve wanted to ask him this ever since he said it; but now I’m not sure I’m prepared for his reply.
“I meant exactly what I said,” he shrugs. “I wrote it for you. To you. We hadn’t figured out Evie and Luke’s story by that point, so I used ours instead. Because even though it was over by then — and I know the ending wasn’t a good one — it was still good while it lasted. Wasn’t it?”
In the flickering firelight, his expression is a mixture of hope and resignation. And suddenly I think I know why he wrote us into his book.
“So it was a kind of goodbye, then?” I say softly. “A way to remember it?”
Elliot appears to consider this carefully for a moment.
“I suppose so,” he agrees, nodding. “I guess you could call it that.”
I watch as the light from his glass casts kaleidoscope images across the wall opposite me, and when I look back at him, I’m horrified to find that my eyes are filled with tears; and this time the radio’s playing some strange disco version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so it’s definitely not because of the music.
Trust me to be having one of the most emotional moments of my life so far to the soundtrack of a novelty song about a reindeer.
“Hey,” says Elliot, shuffling his chair closer until our knees are touching. “Hey, you’re crying again. What’s wrong? It’s not still Ella, is it?”
I want to tell him that everything is wrong.
Me. Him. The weather. Our relationship. This ridiculous song we’re being forced to listen to.
There are two things, however, that are much more ‘wrong’ than anything else; the main one being the small — but important — fact of me having just realized that I’m still in love with the man in front of me.
And the second being that the man in question has just confirmed that his book was an attempt to draw a line under our relationship; to say goodbye to us.
I want to tell him this, but now he’s reaching out a hand and gently tucking a strand of hair out of my eyes.
As he does it, his hand brushes my cheek, and it’s all I can do not to lean into his touch; or, better still, to slide onto his lap, wrap my arms around him, and let him hold me, the way he used to before he decided we needed an 85,000 word ‘goodbye’ to our relationship.
“Holly,” Elliot whispers, his lips dangerously close to mine as he leans towards me. “Tell me what’s wrong. Is it the book, still? Is it what I said about it? Because I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I swear.”
“I know,” I reply, somehow managing to get the words past the lump that’s formed in my throat. “I know you weren’t. But I just … I just wish you’d found some other way to say ‘goodbye’, if that’s what you had to do. A normal way. Like to my face, say. I think … I think that would’ve been better.”
“I could never have done that,” Elliot replies, his eyes dark with some unspoken emotion. “I couldn’t have said goodbye to you, Holly.”
He’s even closer now. So close that when he reaches up and cups my face in my hand, it feels almost like the logical thing to happen next. My body reflexively responds to his touch, as if it’s triggered some kind of muscle memory that’s just waking up, like Cinderella after Prince Charming’s kiss.
He’s going to kiss me.
I want him to kiss me.
I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. Even more than that rare first edition of Pride and Prejudice that Dad keeps saying he’ll buy for the shop one day, but never has. So much, in fact, that I find myself almost subconsciously leaning towards him, willing his lips towards mine.
Maybe just one last time? For old time’s sake? Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt.
But, of course, it would hurt. It would hurt a lot. And I know that beyond doubt, because I’ve been here before. I’ve taken the risk. I’ve kissed the guy. And I’ve ended up broken-hearted, and promising myself I’d never let it happen again.
Which means I need to urgently hit the stop button on this scene that seems to be writing itself, taking its cues from some long-forgotten script, and do the one thing I know he hates more than anything: I have to be sensible. Because it’s the only way to keep myself safe from him.
“Well, it’s getting late,” I announce, standing up so abruptly I narrowly miss bashing heads with him and knocking us both out; which I guess would be one way to bring this … whatever this is … to an end. “I think I’ll turn in.”
I have no idea where the spare bedroom Elliot mentioned is, and there’s approximately zero chance of me getting any sleep tonight.
But as I walk on shaky legs towards the door I hope will lead to somewhere I can be alone with the tears I know are coming, I can’t help but want to pat myself on the back.
Because I did it.
I walked away from Elliot Sinclair, and the danger he represents to me. I did the right thing, even though it hurts.
Maybe I’m more like Evie than I thought I was.