Chapter 14
Struan never expected to find himself joining a book club in his early thirties, but Eiley’s weekly gatherings were one of his few opportunities to socialise during quieter seasons, so he’d fast become a regular.
With the tavern growing busier every day, their host had decided to create a temporary meeting space in her bookshop, where Struan was currently trying to cram his long legs between the pillow-littered couch and the low coffee table.
He sat beside the woman who had forced him to join in the first place, Harper, a bubbly but stubborn author who had only lived in Belbarrow for a couple of years.
‘You need shorter legs,’ she groaned, sidling to make room for Dot, the town’s unofficial organiser of almost everything. If Harper got any closer, he’d be squished against the window like a pancake, but she didn’t seem to mind the fact as she gave him a final shove.
‘Maybe we should just go back to the tavern,’ Struan suggested, crossing his legs despite the discomfort it brought to his balls, also in danger of becoming crêpes.
His reflection in the window was pretzel-like, but it was the view of Main Street beyond, that left him most agitated.
He’d woven between those same shops with Rae last weekend, trying to pack as many conversations as he could between sample deliveries.
Despite living in Belbarrow his whole life, being next to her had felt like touring a new place: he’d wanted to make the most of every second, learn all of her narrow side streets and alleyways while he had the chance.
He hadn’t realised that until after, when she’d rejected him and he’d gone home to his empty house to stare at the ceiling, the taste of tayberries refusing to leave his tongue.
He’d fucked it up. Of course she wouldn’t want him that way. She was a hotshot chef, for Christ’s sake – and his sister’s best friend, no less. Martha had been trying to set him up with people for years, but never once had she proposed Rae as an option.
Because they didn’t make sense. His life was in the mountains, where everything was simple. Where he could be useful. Hers was in Sydney, Tokyo, Barcelona, wherever she planned to jet off to once the summer was over. He’d be punching well above his weight.
She hadn’t texted him since, and he wasn’t brave enough to face a second rejection. Besides, she’d set the rules. They weren’t allowed to be alone together. It felt an awful lot like saying, ‘Stay away from me.’
‘We could barely hear each other over the noise last week,’ Eiley said, perching on a stool at the head of the coffee table. Her porcelain features were far more elfin than her sister’s, Cam, with more shades of gold in her hair and freckles dotting her rosy complexion.
‘We don’t talk anyway. We drink,’ Dot pointed out, already flipping through the pages of her book.
It had been her pick this week, probably not for the first time considering her copy of Mrs Dalloway was both worn and decorated with pink annotation labels.
Struan’s, on the other hand, had been borrowed from the library and skimmed over at most. One of the non-Harper reasons he came was to try to improve his concentration skills, but Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness storytelling had gone straight over his head.
He’d gotten distracted by the birds on his window in minutes.
Dot was right: book club was mostly an excuse to get tipsy at 5 p.m. on a weekday.
Harper flicked her blond hair, the lavender-scented waves whipping into Struan’s face.
He rolled his eyes. He loved the woman, but she’d been an endearing pain in his arse from the minute they’d met back in February, when he’d come across her and her fiancé, Fraser, in a rather compromising position during a hike on Valentine’s Day.
With their clothes lost somewhere down a ravine, they’d been ‘huddling for warmth’ by the falls, apparently.
He’d helped them out with spare clothes and hot tea, and the rest was history.
‘Well, actually,’ she began, a wide grin spreading across her bonny features, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to sit out the drinking part for the next few months.’
‘Oh, God. You’re up the kyte,’ Struan said without thinking.
She turned and gave him a chastising slap on the chest. ‘That’s a very strange way of saying congratulations.’
‘Is that what you were doing on the hills? Did I witness a conception?’
‘Shush!’ She flushed, sinking lower in her chair.
Eiley giggled. As Fraser’s other sister, she’d likely known for a while now, and she sparkled with joy in a way Struan rarely saw of the reserved bookshop owner.
Dot bounced out of her seat to hug Harper, tears flooding her cheeks. ‘Oh, congratulations, dear. What wonderful news!’
‘Thank you so much, Dot.’ Over Dot’s shoulder, Harper gave Struan a pointed glance. ‘That was the reaction I’d been hoping for.’
He smirked. Of course he was happy for her, and gave her shoulder a soft squeeze to make sure she knew it.
Still, heavy lead landed in his stomach.
It was strange, having such a restless brain and body but never really feeling like he was going anywhere.
Stuck on the same looping trails while the rest of the world veered somewhere new, a bit like a hamster on a wheel.
He didn’t want kids, but he wanted something.
Something that made him as happy as Harper was now.
What if he spent the rest of his life this way, never meeting the right person, never finding a family that was his to keep?
Only in the orchard, exploring Rae’s body, had those worries quietened.
He’d been a participant for once, not a passer-by in someone else’s narrative.
He’d found synchronicity in the rhythm of her breaths, the softness of her moans, and his body had woken up, brain chatter lulled, in a way it only ever usually did during adrenaline-fuelled emergency rescues.
He’d had a hold of something, but it had slipped through his fingers before he’d had time to understand what it was.
‘I’m going to have to find a new club,’ he joked once the gushing settled. ‘I can’t do this sober.’
‘Oh, be quiet. You love us. We all know it,’ Harper chided.
‘I’d love you more if you weren’t cutting off my circulation.’ He shook the pins and needles from his thigh, only half joking. If they were going to do this, they needed more furniture, preferably built for people over the age of ten.
‘So, now the news is out, can we start wedding planning?’ Eiley questioned, clapping her hands excitedly.
‘I am way ahead of you.’ Harper tugged out a hefty ring binder that thwacked when she dropped it onto the forest green coffee table.
It spilled open to reveal plastic wallets filled with notes and collage cut-outs that Struan could only stare at, dumbfounded.
This was a woman who had come prepared – for an apocalypse as well as a wedding, it seemed.
‘Originally, we wanted the wedding to happen this autumn, but the dress I’ve picked out isn’t made for a baby bump, so it needs to be soon. ’
‘I don’t feel like I need to be here for this.
’ Struan shuffled off the couch to stretch his legs.
At the same moment, a tinkling of the bell above the door signalled a visitor.
He expected to see their newest book club member, Blair, in the entrance – but the short woman in the doorway was not nearly as energetic as the flirtatious teaching assistant, even if they did share similar dark hair and curves.
No, it was Rae who hovered awkwardly on the sunflower-patterned rug, skin dewy from the humidity outside and bun scraped even tighter than usual, as though she was trying to ensure that not a strand would escape after last week’s disarray.
She didn’t seem to notice Struan, and he stood still in the hopes it remained that way.
‘Hello!’ Eiley greeted, standing and nudging her stool aside. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m so sorry to interrupt. Is this a book club?’ As Rae’s eyes danced over each of them in turn, Struan held his breath. It whooshed out of him a moment later when, finally, they landed on him.
He tried not to feel the pressure on his chest, or worse, the lurch in the very pit of him that seemed to respond to every movement she made. Tried not to remember berry stains on her lips and the bucking of her hips, and the bolts of pleasure she’d pumped through him.
But it was impossible. She’d given him a summer night that he’d only ever seen in movies, and even if it had been unplanned, a mistake swiftly corrected, his body refused to let it lie.
‘Oh,’ she breathed, wringing her hands. The daisy-patterned skirt she wore was a little like the pink one of malfunctions past, only it reached her ankles. No danger of another underwear sighting. ‘Hello. Wait… Are you in the book club?’
Her surprise felt offensive – proof that, like everybody else, she saw him for the plain, unintelligent man he usually felt like. ‘Why? Does it surprise you that I can read?’
‘No, of course not.’
Puzzled, Harper’s head darted between them. ‘Wait, what did I miss? What manner of awkward sexual tension is this?’
‘Harper!’ Eiley poked her in the arm. ‘You can’t just say that about everyone you see.’
‘I can when they very clearly want to jump each other’s bones. Besides, I’m always right!’
‘Nope. No. No bones being jumped,’ said Rae adamantly. Kick a man while he’s down, thought Struan. ‘We just… We know each other. Anyway, I should come back at a better time.’
‘No, stay. We weren’t getting much reading done here, anyway.’ Eiley joined her by the door, and Rae’s shoulders relaxed at her warm smile.
‘Who is she?’ Harper whispered under their quiet conversation without much subtlety.
‘Just a friend.’
‘Liar.’