Chapter Twelve Imani
I can still feel the warmth from his hand.
Which is ridiculous, really, given it was just a simple high five.
But the echo of it lingers under my skin, pulsing through my palm like my body hasn’t quite got the memo that the contact is over.
His hand was bigger, warmer, and mine just fitted against it perfectly, like it belonged there.
Which is a thought I absolutely do not need to be entertaining right now.
I stuff both hands into the pockets of my coat as if that will help shake away the sensation, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes me more aware of the absence of his palm against mine.
Beside me, Asher walks in steady silence, his stride unhurried, hands tucked casually into his pockets like we’re just two perfectly normal people out for a perfectly normal late-night stroll instead of co-conspirators fresh off a very public, very messy, staged fight. Which, by the way, went wonderfully.
I have to admit, I’ve had my reservations about whether Asher could really pull our plan off but he’s pleasantly surprised me with his commitment to the role this evening.
I glance sideways at him. The look on his face is unreadable but the way his shoulders are set looks tighter than usual.
I clear my throat, because I hate the awkward silence almost as much as I hate the way my brain keeps replaying that brief brush of skin.
His gaze flickers over to me, one dark brow lifting, and I fumble for something to say now that I’ve got his attention. ‘Tell me something about yourself that most people wouldn’t know.’
I cringe inwardly at the dullness of the question.
It feels like the kind of thing a HR rep might ask a group of employees during a team-building exercise.
As basic as it is though, it seems to have done the trick because Asher looks moderately amused and the tension in his shoulders seems to have eased a little.
‘That’s a pretty broad scope,’ he says.
‘Good. Broad means you’ve got plenty of options. No rehearsed answers. And I don’t want some polished PR soundbite about your favourite charity or whatever either. I want something weird.’
‘Something weird?’
‘Yeah. Like…’ I search for an example. ‘Did you ever collect anything weird as a kid? Or have an imaginary friend for too long? Or, I don’t know, maybe you secretly love trashy reality TV?’
His mouth twitches. ‘You’re assuming I’d even admit to that last one.’
I grin. ‘I think you just did.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You didn’t deny it either,’ I sing-song, enjoying the way his jaw tightens like he’s trying his hardest not to laugh.
After a beat, he sighs, looks around dramatically like he’s making sure no one is around to hear. Then he leans in slightly and says in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I didn’t know cactuses were real until I was about nine.’
I nearly trip over my own feet. ‘I’m sorry? You didn’t what?’
Asher stares determinedly ahead. ‘Never mind. Forget I said anything.’
‘Oh no, absolutely not. You’re not getting away with dropping that kind of lore and then chickening out.’ I nudge his side with my elbow. ‘Elaborate, please.’
Asher lets out a pained groan, looking like he desperately wishes he’d said something more normal like ‘I don’t think pineapples belong on pizza’.
‘Fine. But this stays between us.’
I make a show of crossing my fingers and holding them over my heart. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’
His lips twitch ever so slightly. If I weren’t paying such close attention to him, I don’t think I’d notice. But I am, so I do.
‘I’d only ever seen them in cartoons. Looney Tunes, mostly.
You know the ones with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner?
He’d go crashing into one or get flattened next to one.
So I thought…’ He pauses, and I give him an encouraging nod.
‘I thought that cactuses were just another made-up Looney Tunes thing. Like the Acme rockets. Or anvils falling from the sky.’
I have to stop walking for a second because I’m laughing too hard to move. ‘You thought cactuses were fictional? Like they were just cartoon props? Cactuses?’
Asher scowls at me, but there’s no malice behind it.
‘Yes. Until a holiday in Greece when I was a kid. I was walking back from getting ice cream with my brothers, and I saw one by the side of the road. I remember thinking that it looked so fake. And I thought it was so strange that someone would take the time to make this completely fictional thing from a kid’s cartoon and just leave it randomly on the side of the road. ’
‘Oh my God.’ I clamp my hand over my mouth to try to muffle the cackles from coming out. It doesn’t work, but I have to hope Asher appreciates the effort.
‘So I ran up to it,’ Asher continues, the tips of his ears darkening slightly. ‘I remember yelling for Andreas to take a photo and then—’
‘Oh no,’ I say, knowing exactly where this is going. ‘Tell me you didn’t touch it.’
‘Worse, actually,’ he says solemnly, looking like he’s having war flashbacks. ‘I ran up to it and full-on hugged it.’
That sets me off again. I’m bent over in the middle of the street, practically crying. ‘You hugged it?’
‘I didn’t think it was real!’ he protests, his mouth curving upwards despite himself.
‘I thought it would make a funny photo! Anyway, long story short? I spent the next half an hour picking needles out of my arms, face and chest while my brothers rolled around on the floor laughing. I’ve still got a scar.
’ He points to the faint scar I’d noticed along his right cheekbone at the gala.
Of all the ways I could’ve imagined he’d got it, deliberately face-planting into a cactus definitely wasn’t one of them.
I swipe at my eyes to wipe away the warm tears that are now flowing freely. ‘That just might be, and no offence, the funniest thing I think I’ve ever heard.’
‘Glad to be of assistance,’ he says dryly.
He very kindly lets me get through the last of my giggles and then we fall back into step and turn down another side street.
I’m still smiling and, despite the May breeze, my chest feels oddly warm.
He didn’t have to tell me that story. He could’ve made something up or said something boring and generic just to keep me quiet until the end of our walk.
He didn’t even have to suggest the walk at all, but I’m glad he did.
I like talking to Asher. It’s easy. It’s been easy from the very beginning, I realise, remembering how easily our conversation flowed back at the members club.
When it’s just us, I don’t have to put on airs and be Imani Davies, dutiful daughter and heiress to the Peregrine Airways empire.
I can just be me and apparently, that’s enough for him.
Ironically, it feels like we’ve known each other for years.
Suddenly I’m hyper-aware again of how close to each other we’re walking and how his stride matches mine like we’re old friends who have done this kind of walk a hundred times before.
I clear my throat again. ‘My turn now?’
He arches a brow like he’s sceptical I can come up with anything that’ll top cactus-gate. ‘Alright, let’s hear it.’
‘Okay.’ I take a dramatic breath. ‘Until I was about, uh, ten? Maybe eleven? I wore a head brace.’
His head jerks towards me. ‘What?’
‘Yeah,’ I say with a wince, as previously squashed memories from my childhood come flooding back. ‘I had a pretty strong overbite when I was younger.’
Asher blinks. ‘You mean like one of those metal ones? The kind that wraps around your head like some kind of medieval torture device?’
I groan. ‘Yes, that exact kind. It even had the chin strap and the neck pad and everything. My mother tried to call it my “robot superhero gear” to make me feel better about having to wear it.’
He lets out a short bark of laughter. ‘That’s brutal. Did it work?’
‘Absolutely not,’ I say, already laughing with him.
‘I hated every second of it. Thank God I didn’t have to wear it at school, but I had to wear it whenever I got home, even if we had guests.
’ I shudder, remembering the time my cousins came to stay for a long weekend and my parents wouldn’t let me take a break from wearing the brace.
The teasing I endured that weekend was relentless.
‘My older cousin once spent an entire weekend chasing me around with her digital camera.’
‘There are photos?’
I nod sadly. ‘Unfortunately.’
His eyes glint dangerously. ‘Please promise me you’ll show me one.’
‘Never.’
‘Please.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll find them.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘Oh, I will,’ he says, grinning widely now, and for a second I forget how to walk again. It’s not fair that anyone can have a smile that nice.
We round a corner and the streetlights hit him just right, throwing warm gold across his cheekbones and catching the faint scruff along his jaw. I swallow hard and look away.
‘Anyway,’ I say, trying to distract myself from whatever my heart is doing at this moment, ‘that was my weird kid thing. So now we’re even.’
‘I don’t know,’ he muses, eyes twinkling. ‘Having to wear a head brace is maybe slightly worse than not knowing cactuses were real.’
‘Definitely not,’ I say confidently. ‘At least my embarrassing secret has no casualties. Yours ended with you impaled.’
He chuckles again, and the sound sends an odd little flutter through me.
We fall into silence again, but it’s different this time and I don’t feel the need to say anything to break it up.
It feels more comfortable. Like we’ve found a rhythm neither of us expected to stumble upon tonight.
I realise, with a jolt, that I don’t want it to end.
I want to stay hidden in the quiet backstreets of Mayfair and learn every weird and wonderful fact about Asher Vouvalis he’s willing to share, but I’m suddenly acutely aware of the fact that the hum of the busy main road is getting louder and louder with each step we take.
I sigh, feeling the little bubble we’ve created beginning to pop. ‘I guess we should think about wrapping up?’
Asher glances at the watch on his wrist and then at the empty street ahead of us. ‘I’ve got nowhere to be. You?’
I fight down the urge to grin, and instead play it cool with a small nod. ‘Let’s go.’
And so we do.
As we walk, the conversation flows even more easily than before.
I tell him about the time I got stranded in Doha for eight hours and ended up joining a group of elderly Filipino women in a makeshift karaoke session in the food court.
He tells me about the month he spent in Crete as a teenager, being the unofficial translator for all the British tourists who wanted to order beer and chips and not much else.
We debate the best sandwiches in London; he swears by some hole-in-the-wall deli off Brick Lane that ‘does magical things with pastrami’ and I counter with the grilled halloumi from a stall in Broadway Market that, I insist, ‘has changed my life’.
Somehow that leads to confessions about our comfort foods.
His is rice pudding straight from the tin, mine is instant noodles with a possibly ungodly amount of chilli oil.
He admits he can’t cook anything that requires more than three ingredients and that he’s probably exclusively paying the salary for several Deliveroo drivers at this point.
I tell him about the time Sloane once set off my building’s smoke alarm making toast.
From there, the stories keep coming and each one feels like a little window opening wider and wider.
I tell him about the time I accidentally dyed my hair orange trying to go blonde at university – a mistake Sloane has never let me forget about – and he admits he once got a shitty tattoo with Andreas and Teddy to celebrate graduating.
He stubbornly refuses to tell me what the tattoo is of or where it is and I make a mental note to try and wheedle it out of him at some point.
We spend the rest of the walk comparing notes on our most questionable life decisions and realise we both hate olives but pretend to like them at dinner parties because it seems sophisticated and like the kind of thing we should like.
I make him laugh again. Several times, actually. It feels like I’m playing a game – get Asher Vouvalis to laugh – and I’m winning.
It’s easy talking to Asher like this. It’s like we’ve known each other longer than we actually have and we’re just stepping back into what is only natural for us.
When it starts to rain and a few drops of water land on my face, I only just about manage to swallow down my groan of irritation. I think I probably could’ve kept walking with Asher all night long without getting tired or bored.
‘We should probably call it a night,’ I murmur as the droplets falling to the ground pick up in speed.
Asher nods and I wonder if I’m imagining that he looks as reluctant as I feel. ‘Agreed.’
We head towards the main road so we can call for our cars before an umbrella becomes strictly necessary.
‘I’m glad we did this,’ Asher says as we wait. ‘It was nice not pretending to hate you for a little while.’
I laugh softly. ‘It was very nice. We should do it again.’
He hums in agreement.
The car I called pulls up to the kerb first, rain misting the windows in soft streaks. I open the door and then hesitate.
‘You know,’ I start. ‘It’s a shame that we had to meet under… well, you know. The circumstances.’
He tilts his head, watching me with a quiet, steady gaze that makes my chest tighten slightly.
‘I just mean,’ I say, shrugging lightly in an attempt to mask how wistful I suddenly feel for a world in which Asher and I could’ve met with no strings attached, ‘if we’d met somewhere else with no drama, no spectacle? I think we’d probably be good friends. I don’t know. Maybe even great ones.’
His lips curve into a slow, deliberate smile. The type of smile that makes everything else blur around him. ‘Yeah,’ he says softly, almost like he’s saying it to himself. ‘I think I’d have liked that.’
My heart does a ridiculous little flip, and I force myself to nod farewell. ‘Goodnight, Asher.’
‘Goodnight, Imani.’ He doesn’t step back from the kerb immediately and walk to his own car. Instead he lingers, eyes locked on mine, and for a moment it feels like the world has shrunk to just the two of us.
I think about stepping closer and offering another high-five or even just brushing my fingers against his, but I get the sneaking suspicion that if I did, I wouldn’t want to let go.
So instead, I settle into my car, close the door and watch him through the tinted window. He doesn’t look away as my driver pulls off, and neither do I.