Chapter 9
This fort is my home now
My head pounds with each tiny movement. My mouth is drier than the desert. I don’t dare open my eyes; if I’m this dizzy with them shut, I dread to think how much the room would spin if I opened them. Am I dying?
Then I remember finishing off Ivy’s bottle of blackberry gin last night with Connor.
Not dying, then. Just very, very hungover.
My stomach churns at the thought of how much I drank, mixing with the loaded fries Connor had made me eat before we got too wasted to cook.
I move to roll over, away from the sunlight, and realise I’m not in my bed.
I’m not actually in a bed at all. I’m lying on top of the duvet from Ivy’s room with a grey duvet spread over me.
I slowly turn my head to look around and see that I’m in a very poorly constructed blanket fort.
But that’s not the weirdest thing. Lying next to me under the duvet, his naked arm thrown across my waist, is Connor.
His deep, even breathing tells me he’s still asleep, so I take a minute to take a shaky breath and try to remember what led to this.
We started on gin and lemonades, watched some TV, moved onto double gins with a splash of lemonade, talked, did some tequila shots…
and then I told him how my parents would always build me a blanket fort when I was upset as a child.
We’d climb inside, all three of us squished together, have ‘fort snacks’ and watch a film on my mum’s laptop.
It never solved my problems, but it was a huge source of comfort for me.
Connor and I must have made this one and fallen asleep.
That doesn’t explain why he seems to be naked, though.
I gingerly lift my head and peek under the covers to reveal, to my relief, that I’m still fully clothed and that Connor is still wearing his joggers.
They’ve shimmied lower on his hips, so I can see the elastic of his boxers above them, the white contrasting with his tanned skin.
He’s lying on his front, his arm still resting over my waist, giving me a perfect view of his toned back. Who knew backs could be sexy?
Did I just think of Connor as sexy? I must still be drunk.
“Are you ogling me?”
Shit. I drop the duvet like it’s a venomous snake, which only makes Connor chuckle more.
“I was just checking…”
“If we were naked?” he finishes, smirking. I mumble something incoherent, my face flushing scarlet. “Between the alcohol and the layers of fluffy blankets in here, I got hot when we were talking so I took off my shirt.”
“Oh,” I say, my body relaxing a bit. Connor must have felt it under his arm.
“I tried to get you to take yours off too, actually, but you were having none of it,” he jokes.
“Don’t make me laugh, my head hurts too much.” I cover my face with my hands.
“Feeling a little delicate?” he asks, his tone more serious than before.
“Shocking. I’m too old to be drinking like that.”
Connor’s arm is instantly pulled away from my body, leaving me feeling suddenly cold.
“Stay here,” he commands as he disappears through the opening of the fort.
That won’t be a problem. I have no intention of moving any time soon.
I curl up on my side and close my eyes, trying to remember any more details about last night.
None come back to me, but I get a warm, contented feeling when I think about it, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I smile.
Ten minutes go by before Connor comes back. I’m still in the same position in the fort, trying to combat the waves of nausea with deep breathing.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty.” I can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks, releasing butterflies in my stomach. But it could also be post-alcohol jelly-belly. “Let’s get you sorted out.”
“I can’t move. I’m worried my head will actually explode if I get up. I think this fort is my home now.”
Connor laughs quietly to himself, then puts one hand along my back and one under my knees. Panic washes through me, making my nausea ten times worse as I realise what he’s doing.
“No, no, no! I don’t like to be picked up!” I try to roll away from his arms, but he’s got a firm hold on me and scoops me up anyway.
“Yeah, so I’ve heard,” he mutters.
I remember now that he and Rhys had disagreed about it the day we went to collect my stuff.
“Seriously, please put me down!”
“Why?” He sounds a little annoyed, but I’m not sure if it’s at me or not.
“Because I don’t like being lifted up.”
“Why?”
I speak before I have chance to think it through. “Because I’m too fucking heavy for someone to lift! You’ll end up dislocating your shoulders or something if you don’t put me down.”
Connor looks at me with a mixture of compassion and frustration. “Tilly… That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He carries me out of the fort while I keep my body tense, as if it would make me any lighter. Connor carries me over to the couch, careful not to jostle me around too much, and puts me down gently.
“Look at that!” He sarcastically looks down to inspect both of his arms. “No dislocated shoulders! Seems you’re not that heavy after all.”
I try to roll my eyes at him, but my head starts to throb again mid-roll. Connor must notice my wince, because he gestures towards the coffee table where he’s set out a box of paracetamol along with a glass of water.
“I’m still angry about you carrying me.” I glare at him. “But I’ll take the pain killers, thank you.”
He waits for me to pop two out and hands me the water. Then he throws me a blanket (it was actually the roof of the fort) and disappears into the kitchen. He returns seconds later with a tray loaded down with bacon and egg sandwiches, bottles of Coke and mugs of tea. It’s the hangover jackpot.
“How aren’t you suffering as much as I am?” I ask him as I drain half a bottle of Coke. “I’m pretty sure we drank about the same amount.”
“Yeah, but that’s a lot for your tiny girl body to handle. I have a lot of weight on you, so it doesn’t affect me as much. Speaking of your tiny girl body, eat up!” He hands me a plate with a sandwich but notices the look on my face and sighs. “I’ll make you a salad for dinner to make up for it.”
Reluctantly, I take the plate and bite into the sandwich. Connor beams and sits beside me on the couch to eat his own sandwich. My stomach feels better already.
“So, do you want to go shopping today or leave it for later in the week?” Connor asks and takes a sip of his tea.
“What do you mean?”
“Clothes shopping,” he says, as if it’s obvious. Seeing my confusion, he continues. “Last night you said you needed to go shopping for something to wear to your work thing and I said I’d take you. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” I choke out around a mouthful of bread. “You don’t need to do that, I’ll just order something online.”
We both sit and eat in awkward silence for a couple of minutes before Connor speaks again, with something like guilt tingeing his voice.
“Is it because I joked about going to the lingerie shop the other day? I didn’t mean to make you feel—”
“What? No!” I put my plate down and turn to look at him. “That’s not it at all.”
“Then what is it? I thought we were friends now?” He puts down his own plate and turns so we’re facing each other, knees touching.
His hands move, and for a second, I think he’s going to reach out and grab mine, but he quickly pulls them back and puts them on his lap.
Connor looks me in the eyes, and I find I can’t look away. “Please talk to me.”
I don’t know if it’s the remaining alcohol in my system or if I’m just letting my guard down a teensy bit, but I find I want to talk to him. Not about everything, but I could let him see a small part of me. I take a steadying breath before speaking.
“I don’t handle clothes shopping very well.”
Connor doesn’t react other than shuffling slightly closer towards me.
“I go with the intention of buying something nice, but then when I see the clothes, I get this little voice in my head that tells me that I’d look ridiculous in it or I’m too fat for it.
Not like a real voice or anything,” I clarify, realising how crazy I sound, “just my own critical voice telling me I don’t deserve nice things.
Anyway, I usually end up getting upset and not buying anything.
Then I get upset because I didn’t buy anything, and the whole cycle starts again.
So I end up wearing the same old thing day in, day out.
That’s why I won’t make you come shopping with me.
I don’t want to subject you to my stupid reactions to normal things. ”
At some point, without realising, I must have looked away from Connor as I spoke. Feeling embarrassed, I tuck my hair behind my ear and wait for Connor to speak, to dismiss my feelings as ‘stupid woman hormones’ as Rhys always had.
“Look at me,” he says softly, but there’s no mistaking his commanding tone.
I turn my eyes towards him but keep my face turned away.
“I’m glad you talked to me, I know how hard it must have been for you. But now I need you to understand a couple of things, okay?”
I give him a small nod and turn to face him a little bit more.
“First of all, I want you to feel like you can talk to me about anything, any time. I might not always say the right thing, but I promise I’ll always listen and never judge you. I just want to be there for you. Okay?”
Again I nod.
“Second, we need to do something about your self-esteem and get you to realise just how beautiful you are.”
Oh, shit.
I don’t know where to look. After darting my eyes around for something to focus on other than Connor’s serious face, I finally gaze at the cuffs of my hoodie and pick at a loose thread.
“There is literally nothing you could wear that would look bad on you. Even your fluffy dressing gown and slippers look good on you. But me telling you that doesn’t mean shit if you don’t believe it yourself, and I really wish you would.
That’s my second promise. I’m going to make you realise how incredible you are.
The rest of the world sees it. It’s time you did too. ”
Wow. The difference between this and my previous conversations with Rhys…
Well, there’s no comparison. Any attempts at speaking to Rhys about this sort of thing always led to me feeling worse, so in the end I stopped bothering.
But speaking to Connor makes me feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel heard, validated.
“And my third promise—”
“Don’t you think two promises is enough to be going on with?” I laugh and Connor laughs with me, the tension broken a little bit.
“My third promise,” he says, “is to take you shopping and get you an outfit that makes you feel as good on the inside as you look on the outside. Today, so you don’t have chance to back out.”