Chapter Thirty-Four #2
‘I’ve been doing the work too.’ Just the thought of the work, the miles she still had to go, made Tess retreat slightly so that Gabe frowned even as he tried to muster a smile.
‘I think you got the better end of the deal, reading lots of romantic fiction and watching romcoms while I’ve been getting to grips with the fathers and the forefathers and the much less-known mothers of philosophical thought. ’
‘I love your new column too,’ Gabe said. ‘Gargi Vachaknavi was quite chuffed to be quoted. Seneca the Younger too.’
‘I owe everything to the copy of Philosophy for Dummies that I had to buy,’ Tess admitted.
‘I could help you,’ Gabe offered quickly. ‘Maybe we could make it a quid pro quo thing. I’m designing a new module for next year. The Philosophy of Romantic Fiction. I’m going to need quite a lot of assistance with the reading list.’
‘It really sounds like you’ve got it covered. Can we walk?’ Tess was already rising to her feet. ‘I feel the need for a walk and talk.’
‘Of course.’ Gabe looked very tense, his jaw tight, as if he had a good idea of what Tess was going to to say but he held out his arm and she took it.
Then as they strolled across the lawn, she tried to find the words to explain what was going on in her head, her heart and, well, she’d try to keep her other body parts out of it.
‘I meant what I said before, I have missed you so much,’ she said. ‘We hardly know each other at all and yet I feel like you know me better than pretty much everyone in my life, apart from Saskia and Jay.’
‘I’d like to meet them one day …’ Gabe murmured, glancing at Tess’s face, and she tried hard to set her face on neutral, but she didn’t really know how to do that so she bit her lip instead.
‘All I could think about was my potential book boyfriends when we met and you were so standoffish, that you got my most unfiltered, most unvarnished self,’ Tess continued.
‘The self that I’d never normally show a man, particularly a very handsome man, and it turns out that you’re not at all repulsed by that self. ’
‘Because that self is utterly authentic and always all in. How could I be anything but charmed?’ Gabe asked as they strolled along the path that led back to the marquee.
Tess could sense his expectation. He’d been so honest with her in the letter, which was the most romantic thing she’d ever read. Hands down. No contest. She owed him that same honesty.
‘I want to be all in with you,’ she said because it was the truth.
‘I want to do all those romantic clichéd things like long walks and snuggling up on the sofa, except they wouldn’t feel clichéd, they’d feel right.
And there are so many novels I want you to read and films I want you to see and I know we’d be one of those couples that are constantly quoting our favourite lines at each other.
And that one time in the library was, absolutely, the best sexual experience of my life … ’
It was meant to just be her head and her heart but when Gabe shot her another look, full of dark intent, Tess could feel other parts of her anatomy pulse at the memory too, but she would not be deterred.
‘Now, where was I? Oh yes! I want to meet the rest of the Sharmas because you and Ella are both feeders and I know that a Sharma Sunday lunch would send me into a week-long food coma. I want to listen to you talk about your philosophers because I love hearing your voice. I love your beautiful hands and the way you polish your glasses when you don’t know what to say or you need time to think and I even love your baggy tweed jacket and I really love what’s underneath it and I love that you see me, you really see me, Gabe, and not many people do that.
But I see you too. That you might want the world to think that you’re stern and lofty and that you exist on a higher plane and you are all those things but you’re also funny and kind and maybe the cleverest person I’ve ever met and I didn’t even realise that clever could be sexy, but it is and you are.
Not as sexy as when we were, you know …’
‘Having sex?’ Gabe asked in a voice that needed to be banned by every government in every country.
‘That was next-level sexy. I mean, all the levels.’ Tess was getting sidetracked again.
She had to get back on the tracks. ‘I think I only wanted the men in the books because I didn’t know that men like you really existed.
Or rather I didn’t know that you existed and, you’ve never seen Love Island and I think that might be a step too far for you, but you’re one hundred per cent my type on paper and in real life too and I wish …
’ Tess sucked in a much-needed breath. ‘This is much harder than I thought it would be.’
She had to stop talking because she was doing a great job of convincing herself when …
‘There’s a but coming, isn’t there?’ Once again, Gabe proved that he knew Tess only too well.
She nodded sadly. But kept on walking, though they’d been walking in a circle for the last ten minutes or so.
Walking, then talking. Opening her mouth and saying the things that needed to be said.