Chapter Eighteen
There was an exhibition at the gallery, an up-and-coming artist who Anthony admired and Jen had never heard of. She liked the paintings; stark black-and-white pictures of crows with splashes of red featuring somewhere in each. She didn’t know what they meant, though.
That didn’t seem to matter. Anthony stared at the paintings, drinking them in, dark hair falling into blue eyes, lips slightly parted. Jen tried to stop herself imagining kissing them, and focus on the art.
‘I don’t know what it is about them that has such an impact, I just – I think they’re so stark, you know?’
‘I like the contrast,’ she said. ‘You know, the monochrome and then just that one colour that’s so—’
‘Striking.’
‘Exactly.’
He turned to her and smiled, and she felt as though she was intelligent and impressive and someone completely other than her goofy messed-up self.
The open mic hadn’t helped her prepare for cultured art gallery visits, fun though it had been, but she’d spent the night reading up on art movements on Wikipedia.
Anthony turned back to the picture. ‘I wonder what it represents,’ he mused.
Jen had no idea. And she was back to being her awkward self, more comfortable drooling over Bake Off than analysing art.
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s like the impressionists did, you know, painting sort of mundane subjects but using them to show something special, like the light?’
He snapped his head round towards her, eyebrows raised, a laugh firing from him. ‘What?’
Jen blushed. ‘I just mean . . .’ She had no idea what she meant. She needed to get better at this stuff if she was going to impress him.
He stepped closer to her and brushed a stray hair from her face gently, his eyes searching hers, a soft smile playing on his lips. ‘You’re cute, you know that?’ he said.
And for a heartbeat they stood like that, so close they were almost touching, so close she could smell his aftershave. Everything in her was poised, longing for what happened next.
She didn’t know whether she kissed him or he kissed her. She only knew that his lips were every bit as soft and sensuous against hers as she’d imagined, that his arm as he held her by the waist and pulled her in, was every bit as strong as she’d dreamed.
When they pulled away they stayed close, his arm around her, her hand resting on his chest, both smiling as though their lives depended on it.
He cleared his throat, flicked his hair from his eyes. Still grinning. ‘Shall we . . . ?’
She nodded. Still smiling. ‘Uh-huh. Yes, let’s . . .’
And so they moved on, through room after beautiful room of the gallery, standing among hushed visitors, staring at paintings Jen didn’t understand.
His arm stayed at her waist the whole time, his eyes finding hers at every opportunity.
She felt that, now they had touched, they would never let each other go.
After the gallery they went for dinner, and after dinner, drinks.
Jen couldn’t eat; her stomach was fizzing with excitement, and a small amount of fear.
Because, as they leaned in to each other, hands touching, heads touching, sharing pieces of themselves, she knew that this was something different.
Something she hadn’t felt in years, hadn’t let herself feel, and there was still a part of her that didn’t want to let herself open up to it.
She knew what it was to need someone and then be abandoned by them, and she had little faith in true love; sure, her friends and sister had optimistically tied the knot, but only time would tell whether they’d be unscathed by that decision.
But she couldn’t help herself. She found herself pouring out her stories, the good and the bad, while Anthony listened, his gorgeous eyes on her.
He laughed as she told him about the cute things Amy and George had done, and he told her about how his nieces liked to put his hair in ribbons and paint his nails.
‘I’m sure you look very pretty,’ she said, laughing.
‘You know what? I do.’ He took a sip of whisky, averting his eyes. ‘Maybe one day you’ll get to see.’
She shrugged, secretly thrilled at the idea of becoming such a part of his life. ‘I don’t know, you might be prettier than me, not sure I’d like that!’
He smiled. ‘Not possible.’ Gently, he ran his finger over her wrist, and she felt her skin prickle in response.
‘You planning to stay with your sister a while?’ He bounced his leg under the table and smiled a little sheepishly.
‘Because my mum might need looking after for a bit and . . . I’m trying to be casual about it, but careful how you answer.
I might be more invested than I let on.’
Her heart melted that he would put his feelings out there like this. She sighed. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I hadn’t expected to, but now, I might. For – for a number of reasons.’
Staying in Babblebrook had never been a long-term plan; Jen had a real life waiting for her, she had bills to pay. Thank God the savings she’d set aside for her annual December escape to the sun were seeing her through. For now.
She laid her hand on his firm thigh, and he grinned, nodding and taking another sip of his drink. ‘Oh yeah, I know. Your niece and nephew, right?’
She smiled. ‘Exactly.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But you know, things with Julia are a bit – we have a bit of history that’s . . . not good, so—’
He said nothing for a moment, and she felt the sympathy in his eyes. ‘Families can be tough.’
‘Yeah, and it – it was a long time ago now, and she has said she’s sorry.
She’s said it a lot, actually.’ She thought of all the messages and voicemails and cards over the years.
‘And some of my friends – well, one really, my friend Ted – I know he thinks I should forgive her and move on, but . . . it’s not so easy. ’
‘Hey,’ he said, taking her hand in his and gently playing with her fingers. ‘She hurt you, right? You’re not obliged to make her feel better about it.’
This was exactly what she wanted to hear, and she let the validation overtake the niggling of guilt in the pit of her stomach. Overwhelmed, she excused herself to visit the bathroom.
Staring at her face in the mirror as she retouched her make-up, her soft auburn curls and brown eyes so similar to Julia’s, she felt a longing for the days before everything had turned sour, not just between the sisters, but also between their parents.
Once, she would have shared every detail of what happened between her and Anthony with Julia.
The loss of that closeness hit her like a punch, bringing tears to her newly mascaraed eyes.
She longed to rush back to Railway Cottages, to drag Julia to the sofa and unpick everything Anthony had said and done with her over a cup of tea or, preferably, a glass of wine.
Julia would giggle and her eyes would flash with vicarious excitement, she would want every detail of Anthony’s sharp cheekbones and strong arms. She would know whether he was trustworthy.
She could tell Jen whether this was real, whether she should let herself dare believe in it.
She had known before, hadn’t she.
Jen blinked at her reflection, saw for one awful moment the girl she’d been then staring back at her, bewildered and broken.
She shook herself, wiped her eyes and straightened her skirt. She wasn’t that girl now. She was on a date with a gorgeous, free-spirited man who believed she was creative and brave and special. Everything she so badly wanted to be. So she would bloody well go out there and be those things for him.
He was writing when she returned, so intent on his notebook that he didn’t see her until she was almost at the table. He looked up, smiling, and flipped the page over so that the lines he’d filled were hidden.
‘Don’t let me stop you,’ she said, sliding into the seat next to him. ‘I wouldn’t want to get in the way of a genius at work.’
He pulled a face. ‘No danger of that here, and there’s nothing wrong with stopping an idiot at play.’ He smiled.
‘I’m sure it’s brilliant,’ she said, and she was. ‘What are you working on?’
‘Oh.’ He screwed up his face, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Just some nonsense.’
She didn’t push it. He’d show her when he was ready.
‘I do have something you can see, though.’ He flicked through the book which, from what Jen could see as she glimpsed the pages rapidly turning, was filled with doodles, poems, snippets of writing and pages of text.
At last he came to a page with a pencil drawing and, as he held it out to her, Jen saw it was a portrait of herself in profile, looking down, her curls falling softly over her shoulders and her eyelashes resting on her cheek.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s beautiful. You made me—’
‘Beautiful. Because you are.’ His eyes travelled over her face. ‘All I did was draw what I see.’
This time she kissed him, glad of the dark corner of the bar they sat in, giving some privacy as he responded passionately. When they broke off, he took her hand and kissed it.
‘We’ll see each other again, right?’
She nodded.
‘Soon?’ he asked.
She smiled. ‘Soon.’