She was wearing a dress over a bikini, and every time he glanced at her it was a struggle not to register that the dress was slightly see-through. It felt really inappropriate to be noticing so much. He shook his head slightly and reached out to start on the green scarves, at exactly the same moment that Lily did. Their hands brushed and he almost leapt backwards from his crouch, in serious danger of knocking another display unit over.
God, this was annoying. She should not be having any kind of effect on him.
‘What’s the purple thing you were holding?’ he asked, for something to say while he moved himself into a sitting position a little bit further away from Lily.
‘A sarong. For tying round my waist. On the beach. I have a lime-green bikini it’ll go nicely with. You know, purple and green go well together. I mean, not every purple and green. But most of them. Definitely deep purple and lime green. Actually, most purples and greens. Well, not dark green. Unless the purple was like a lilac, or a very light vibrant one.’ She stopped babbling, looked at him briefly and pressed her lips together.
Matt couldn’t help smiling. Pretty satisfying, if he was honest, that she was clearly feeling as jumpy around him as he was around her.
He picked up the finished pile of folded green scarves and placed them on a shelf.
‘No.’ Lily shook her head.
‘No?’
‘You can’t put them there. They look horrible next to those yellow ones.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes. Seriously. Look at them.’ She gestured.
‘But they must have been next to each other before. Look where they fell.’
Lily shook her head. ‘No. They really don’t look good. Put the green ones there.’ She pointed at a higher shelf. ‘So that the pink ones are between the green and the yellow.’
‘So we’ve knocked their display down and now we’re rearranging how they display their scarves because we know better than they do about colour combos?’
‘Yeah, when you put it like that, I actually did them a favour knocking the display over.’ She shot him a grin and, ohGod,he loved that smile. ‘I should knock more down.’
He smiled back at her – he couldn’t help it – and then they worked on the scarves in silence; and a couple of minutes later, they’d finished.
Matt stood up, stretching his muscles as he did. ‘I’m getting old. Genuinely feeling the effects of sitting bent down like that.’ He reached a hand out to help Lily, just as she pushed herself up in one fluid movement from cross-legged to standing. He blinked. ‘Wow.’ That was new, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t he have known if she could do moves like that?
Lily laughed. ‘Yep, not just a skilled scarf arranger. Meg’s a Pilates teacher now and she’s had us doing all sorts of new stuff.’
Matt felt a flash of, what was that? Misery? That she’d had a whole eight years without him, living her life, doing things like learning to stand up in an absurdly supple way? Ridiculous. He’d lived his life too. They’d split up. Not his choice at the time but it was what it was and that’s what happened when relationships finished. You moved on.
‘Impressive,’ he said.
After too long a pause, Lily said, ‘So, thank you for helping with the scarves. Can’t believe I was such a klutz. And I can’t believe the shop assistant hasn’t noticed yet.’
Matt looked over. ‘Aaliyah’s doing an amazing job distracting him.’ She was talking very animatedly and waving different pairs of sunglasses around.
‘I’d better own up, now that things don’t look quite so scarf-apocalyptic.’
They both moved towards the counter.
‘Oh hello.’ Aaliyah put down the sunglasses she’d been trying on and said to the man behind the counter, ‘Thank you so much for all your help, Jason. I’m going to think about it and come back later. Your sarong’s here, Lily. I’ll meet you back at the beach. I need to pop to the pharmacy. Thank you again, Jason.’
And off she went – really quickly – definitely, no question, purposely leaving Matt and Lily together in the shop. Did she think they had stuff to discuss? They really didn’t. They might have done eight years ago – well, from his perspective theyhadleft important discussions undiscussed then – but it was all way in the past now. Matt caught Lily’s eye and she gave a half smile and then shifted her eyes from him to Jason.
Lily began to explain to Jason what had happened with the scarves while Matt wondered how quickly he’d be able to escape.
‘To tell you the truth, I saw you putting them away and I let you carry on because I was enjoying talking to your friend.’ Jason was leaning on the counter, grinning at Lily.
She laughed. ‘Cheeky. But totally fair enough. So what do you think of our arrangement?’ She did a ta-dah gesture with her hands.
‘You are right. It looks very nice now. You want to change all my other displays?’ Jason twinkled at Lily and she laughed some more, and Matt suddenlyreallywanted to leave. He just didn’t want to be here, watching Lily being Lily.
