Chapter Nineteen Daisy
Chapter Nineteen
Daisy
“What are you doing here?” Daisy asked, when she saw Tom tap his card on the bus and walk toward her. It was the private viewing
of his exhibition that night and she’d presumed he wouldn’t be around so early on in the day. “Too excited to sleep?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
He pulled his hat off and put it in his puffer jacket pocket, rubbing his hands together as he sat down, the twinkling lights
of Angel shining through the window behind him.
“Well, that is the face of a man who can’t wait for his grand opening!”
He turned to look at her and she instead recognized the face of a man who hadn’t slept. His hair was now mussed from the removal
of his hat, his eyes bloodshot with dark rings beneath them.
“Want to talk about it?”
“The way you talk about things, you mean?” he said, not unkindly, raising an eyebrow as the bus pulled away from Angel. “You’ve
clearly got your own stuff going on.”
“How do you know?”
He nodded toward her. “You haven’t rotated your outfit, you’re wearing the same one as yesterday. You’re staring out the window instead of writing on your phone, and, most importantly, you look fucking sad,” he said, a laugh spilling out of Daisy for the first time in what felt like weeks.
She and Clara had been ignoring each other at work ever since their falling out. It was a week when Clara was on the later
shift and they’d normally have lunch together, and it hurt Daisy to get up and leave her desk without inviting Clara to join
her, but she was still so angry. So hurt and confused that Clara would react that way without giving Daisy a chance to explain
herself. To explain how it was different for her and Zack. She’d just thrown her opinion at her, and yes, Daisy had snapped
and she shouldn’t have, but what else was she meant to do?
She was desperate to talk to Tom about their fight. She knew he’d make sense of it and offer her some wise words that would
help, but she couldn’t tell him. If she did, she’d have to tell him the truth about how she and Zack had met and if Clara’s
reaction was anything to go by, it wasn’t something people took lightly. Daisy understood that, she did, but had he conned
her? No. He loved her. They fell in love with each other, and in one month they were getting married.
“I didn’t apply for the job and now it’s gone and I regret it,” Daisy said instead, needing to offer Tom some reason for her
apparent fucking sadness. Tom looked right at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling gently as he shuffled upright in his
seat. “And I’m not even sure it was just because it was the wrong time. It feels like there’s more to it.”
“Like what?”
Daisy thought about how to say the next bit without sounding weird, but actually that was sort of who they were to each other.
Their whole selves, including the weirdness. “I’m not used to acting on things. Stepping out of my comfort zone. Jobs have
appeared before, and it’s like my body and my brain don’t let me do it. Then I go home and Zack assures me I did the right
thing. That it just means I wasn’t ready and we’ll know when I am.”
Tom watched her and she waited as his eyes glanced to the ground and back up. “Do you think you can do the job?”
Daisy pondered the question. “I’d work hard until I could.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you,” Tom said gently as someone passed behind him to get to the doors. “I’m asking if you think
you’re good enough to do it.”
She stared at the seat in front of her.
“Okay,” he continued. “What about your current job? Do you think you’re good at that?” His eyes weren’t leaving her face.
Daisy bit at her thumb. It wasn’t something she’d ever questioned. “I definitely try and do the best job I can, but that’s
always been to kind of . . . keep out of the way.” She’d had no idea she felt that way until the words left her mouth.
“It seems like you do that with a lot of stuff,” he said. “Try not to cause a scene. Stay in the background with your family.
Don’t go too big on the wedding. Won’t go for the job . . .”
Daisy leaned toward the window, her chest lifting slightly. She hadn’t thought about it like that. Maybe she did hang back
more than other people. Maybe more than she should. “I guess that’s true,” she said, her breath quickening as the truth of
his words sunk in. He was describing her so accurately. More accurately than she’d ever be able to describe herself even,
and she hadn’t had that with anyone in years. She didn’t need to explain herself to Tom, he just knew.
“I’m telling you now, you’re good enough,” Tom said, his voice firm as lightheadedness stilted Daisy’s vision when she looked
at him. “You can do that job. I saw the articles. ‘In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Now!’ That was you. I believe
in you, Daisy. You just need to believe in yourself a bit more.”
She swallowed, shivers working their way up her arms and down her spine as she turned away to look out the window.
She needed to pull her focus from his face.
It wasn’t just the words coming out of his mouth that were having this effect on her, it was him.
Just one moment of their eyes connecting and she didn’t know how to still herself.
Everything in her felt like it was fizzing.
The bus fell quiet for a moment and a low hum filled the air, before the automated announcement said the next stop was Euston
Station. They weren’t far. It was as though he realized it too.
“Have you got time . . . How do you feel if we . . .” He shook his head. “Will you get off and walk with me?”
Daisy looked at her watch. She could just about make it, and she was enjoying this morning with him. It felt different to
others, even if she wasn’t really sure why.
“Sure,” she said.
He reached forward to press the button and the bus pulled in opposite the station, a few of them stepping off and onto the
pavement.
Daisy wrapped her soft white scarf around her neck, pushing it up above her chin to fight against the bitter cold.
“What’s up with you?” she asked as they started walking. Tom was wearing a black North Face jacket which he zipped right up,
pressing each hand under the opposite armpit. Over the road Euston Station was lit up by the neon lights of the bus stops.
There were no signs, out on the pavements, that it was nearing Christmas.
“We’re not done with that deep chat,” he replied. “But I’m aware you have a limit of how much you can talk about yourself
in one go and we just reached it, so I’ll answer and then we can switch back to you. Deal?”
Daisy laughed. She didn’t even know she had a limit, but he was right. She was starting to get uncomfortable and rather than
push her, he’d noticed and backed off.
“Deal.”
It was as though they were purposefully walking even more slowly than the previous time they’d done this trek together.
God, it felt so long ago that they’d run hand in hand from the bus stop.
When was it? Two months or so? In that time Tom had gone from being an endearing stranger to one of the most important people in Daisy’s life.
Someone she now absolutely couldn’t imagine not being there.
Someone her fiancé had no idea she spent so much time with, but that was okay.
She hadn’t done anything wrong. It was an innocent friendship that started because he stood up for her.
They stood up for each other, really, and it had gone along like that since.
Wanting the very best for each other, as friends.
Of course it was just friends. It couldn’t be anything else, even if she wanted it to be.
Even if Clara had gone ahead and implied there was something
more to it with this man walking along beside her. The golden retriever who loyally strolled by her side. Because Daisy was
getting married. Soon. She shuddered involuntarily. Somehow it had gone from seeming like a date sometime in the distant future
to one that was close. Too close. So close she could no longer avoid it.
And Tom . . . Tom was in love with someone else. Her throat tightened at the thought of it. That without that—without Sophie—they’d
never have spoken again after that day.
As if he’d been reading her mind, Tom’s next words shook her. “My best mate, Ralph, suggested last night that it was time
for me to move on from Sophie and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. About whether he’s right.”
They passed the entrance to a building, the reception lit up, an empty desk sitting inside. Daisy noticed a hum in the air,
as though every office around was pumping heating ready for the arrival of people in a few hours.
“Well do you think you should?” Daisy asked carefully, shivering as a cold gust of wind hit the back of her neck. “That’s more important
than whether he’s right.”
Tom reached into his pocket and got out his gray beanie, lifting it upward before he glanced across at Daisy and stopped, causing her to do the same.
Turning to her, he placed the beanie onto her head and pulled it down over her ears, moving his hands slowly around to the
back to adjust it, his fingers brushing against the nape of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt him moving
the hat farther down, covering more of her. Warming her even though she was pretty sure her entire body was now on fire. Licking
her lips, she stood motionless, worrying that any sudden movement would prompt him to stop. To let go. She could make out
tiny fogs of her breath in the air—the only sign she was definitely still breathing. Finally he dropped his hands, smiling
at her.
“I think it is probably a good idea,” he said and Daisy was short of words for a second. “I can’t go on being this obsessed
with it all. It doesn’t feel like a life.”
Recently she hadn’t got the impression he was as obsessed with Sophie as he used to claim to be, but it seemed as though he