Chapter Twenty-Eight
The delicious aroma of barbecue was on the wind. Even if I hadn’t known the way to Mel’s front door like the back of my hand, I would only have had to follow the tantalising airborne trail to find their house.
‘This would be a really bad time to tell me you’ve gone vegan,’ I teased, knowing perfectly well that he had not.
‘You don’t have to worry on that score. I’m still very much a caveman carnivore.’
An image of a Stone Age Rhys popped into my head and my reaction was purely primal.
I had no idea why suddenly everything seemed to have sexual undertones, but I was hearing double meanings and hidden innuendoes all over the place.
I really hoped Mel had plenty of ice-cold drink on hand, because I definitely needed to cool down.
We walked side by side along the pavement until we reached Mel’s house, our shoulders occasionally colliding.
It made me miss the guiding hand he usually placed against my back whenever we walked together.
But Rhys’s arms were filled with flowers for Mel and beers for Steve, while mine carried the bottles of Rioja.
‘This is it,’ I said unnecessarily, as the noise of the party drifted over the rooftops from the back garden.
‘Nice area,’ Rhys said, his eyes travelling up and down the street, where every other front lawn seemed to have a child’s bike, a swing set, or a football net.
‘It looks like a great place to raise a family.’ For once I found myself looking at the rows of houses not through the eyes of an estate agent, but through those of a best friend.
I crossed my fingers superstitiously and hoped that Mel and Steve’s front garden would one day soon match their neighbours’.
As I juggled the bottles of wine in my arms to ring the doorbell, I noticed the speculative expression on Rhys’s face had been replaced by one that I hardly ever saw. If I didn’t know better, I would have labelled it trepidation.
The familiar Ring chime echoed in the hallway beyond, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Rhys shift his weight from one leg to the other. He was nervous.
‘Are you okay?’
He gave a small half laugh. ‘I kind of feel like I’ve been brought home to meet the parents.’ He shook his head as though even he couldn’t believe he was anxious. ‘It feels strange.’ He bit his lower lip, which immediately made me want to do exactly the same thing – in a totally different context.
‘I guess I just want to make a good impression. I want them to think I’m good enough for you.’
I freed up one hand to give his arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘They’ll probably end up saying I’m not good enough for you,’ I said, only half joking.
It was a conversation I would really have liked to explore further, but I could already hear the heavy tread of footsteps approaching the door. It was flung open with such force it practically bounced on its hinges.
‘Ellie,’ declared Steve, who was looking decidedly harried and uptight for someone who was meant to be in party mode.
‘Hey, Steve,’ I said leaning in and giving his cheek a kiss. He smiled vaguely and I saw then that his attention was focused primarily on Rhys.
‘You must be Ellie’s new bloke,’ he said artlessly.
I was too busy feeling mortified to leap in with a correction, and I probably wouldn’t have had a chance, because our stressed-out host reached for my date and practically hauled him over the threshold.
‘What do you know about gas barbecues, mate? And please don’t say “nothing” because I’ve got thirty hungry neighbours who are about to turn feral if I can’t get ours going again. ’
More than anything, I loved how Rhys never seemed fazed by the unexpected.
‘I know a bit,’ he said, allowing himself to be dragged farther into the hallway. ‘My friend has one that I’ve helped him fix a couple of times.’
‘Thank God,’ said Steve, raising his eyes to the Artex ceiling as though that was where he was most likely to be found. ‘I knew Ellie would have a boyfriend with home maintenance skills.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I said, but I was already talking to their retreating backs.
‘I’m stealing him anyway,’ Steve sang out as he instructed Rhys to dump the beer and the flowers and follow him.
Before he allowed himself to be press-ganged into action, Rhys turned around and gave me a look that managed to say, Don’t worry, I’ve got this.
I don’t mind helping. I won’t be too long.
And I really want to kiss you right now.
Okay, maybe the last one was a bit of a stretch, but it didn’t hurt to dream, did it?
‘You’re here!’ declared Mel dramatically, as though she’d been about to send out a search party for me. She looked at the empty space beside me and her face fell.
‘Didn’t Rhys come with you?’
I couldn’t help but smile. The people I’d known for years were far more interested in my plus-one than me. Rhys had clearly been worrying about nothing.
‘Your husband already kidnapped him at the doorstep,’ I said, picking up the flowers that Rhys had left in the hallway. ‘These are for you, from him.’
Mel reached for the bouquet with one hand while rummaging in a cupboard for a vase. ‘I knew I was going to like him. And if he manages to fix the bloody barbecue, Steve will probably adopt him.’
‘What happened to it?’ I asked, peering through the open kitchen doors where a group of men were all standing around the broken barbecue, scratching their heads, some literally.
‘Halfway through cooking the first load of chicken, it curled up and died. So if Rhys can’t figure out what’s wrong, I’m about to give half the street salmonella.’
She looked flushed and kind of glowing, with what I assumed was the heat in the kitchen, where Plan B, ‘we’ll have to cook it in the oven’, was about to go into operation.
I glanced once more in the direction of the men in the garden and felt my heart skitter in my chest as I saw Rhys in their midst. He was taller, broader, and altogether more gorgeous than any other male in the group. It was, of course, not an exactly objective opinion, but I was sticking with it.
As if sensing my eyes on him, Rhys suddenly looked my way as he began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. I gave a totally ridiculous wave and he returned it with a huge grin.
Mel was clearly distracted and doing a piss-poor job of arranging the flowers, so I took them from her. ‘Why don’t you take a breather? I’ll do these for you and then you can put me to work. You look kind of hot and bothered.’
Mel took hold of the neckline of her floaty boho dress and flapped it in an attempt to fan her cleavage, which was looking particularly impressive and in danger of spilling out of the low scooped neck. ‘It is rather warm in here.’
With the degree of comfort that you only really know in the homes of your very good friends, I went to her fridge and extracted a can of ice-cold lemonade.
‘Sit,’ I commanded, proffering the drink, then quickly popping the remaining flowers into what looked like the right gaps. I stepped back to admire my handiwork. It wasn’t exactly up to Beth’s standard, but it was a pretty good effort for an amateur.
‘So why are you and Steve so convinced that Rhys will be able to fix the barbecue?’
Mel looked at me as though out of all the ridiculous questions I had ever asked, that one might pip all the others to be top of the list.
‘Because he’s an engineer.’
‘No, he’s not.’
Mel’s expression froze somewhere between disbelief and horror.
‘Yes, he is.’
I was trying very hard not to laugh, but it was getting harder by the second.
‘He’s a graphic designer and a pretty amazing artist, but he’s definitely not an engineer.’
‘Shit!’ Mel cried, leaping to her feet. ‘Why did he volunteer to fix it then?’
This time there was no holding back my laughter.
‘I don’t think he did. He was kind of pounced on by your other half.
’ I threw another look into the garden, where people were passing Rhys various tools.
It looked for all the world like a surgical operation.
‘But apparently his Australian mate has a fancy barbie, and if he’s willing to have a go at fixing yours . . .’
Mel plonked back down on the stool. ‘I feel like such an idiot. I don’t know how I muddled up engineer with designer.
I guess I’m distracted at the moment.’ She must have sensed my gaze sharpening.
‘You know, what with having this many neighbours round for a party. We’ve not done it before. I just want everything to go right.’
‘It will,’ I said, my eyes going to the kitchen table which was overflowing with bottles of wine, Prosecco, and beer. ‘You’ve got enough alcohol to make everything run smoothly, and if all else fails, we’ll just get takeaway pizza for everyone.’
Mel looked at me as though I’d just found a cure for cancer. ‘I knew you’d come to the rescue.’ This time she looked out into the garden. ‘Was he that hot the night we met him in the bar?’
I smiled. ‘He sure was.’
‘Then I commend your excellent taste.’
‘Pwah. I didn’t get to choose him. The lightning did that.’
Mel rolled her eyes expressively. ‘However he came into your life, perhaps this one is worth hanging on to.’
‘I worry we’re too different. He’s nothing like any of the men I’ve dated before.’
‘To use your estate agent language, I think that might be his biggest USP,’ Mel said, with best-friend candour. ‘He might have some issues . . . but, hon – and I say this with love – you do too. If you both want to make this thing work, don’t let him be the one who got away.’
I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t, but nothing about Rhys and me was a foregone conclusion. We were about a million miles away from a happy-ever-after ending, but for the first time I was willing to take that journey.
‘I bloody love your boyfriend.’ I’m not sure if it was enthusiastic gratitude, or several cans from a six-pack talking, but fifteen minutes later Steve came charging into the kitchen in search of the tray of sausages and burgers. ‘He’s only gone and fixed it.’