‘I don’t want to give you a dead leg.’
It would have taken amputation at the waist to get less blood circulating the lower half of my body at this point in proceedings.
‘Elle.’ I tugged her closer. ‘Get comfortable.’
Her cheeks were still flushed, but she let me take her weight properly, slipping her arm around my shoulders for balance. The heat of her thighs pressed to mine and the side of her body grazing my chest made me itch to turn her towards me fully, crush her against me…
‘I think it’s safe to say that power play back-fired spectacularly on Damon-the-Douchebag,’ Caitlin raised her glass. ‘A toast to Elle, her literary prowess and improved taste in men.’
I tried not to let that go to my head, as we all reached for our glasses, clinking rims — ‘to Elle’ — before taking a drink. I might not have noticed how she’d stiffened up at the mention of her “taste in men” if she hadn’t been sitting on my lap. A seed of doubt about how much I was reading into this, and why she was doing it, niggled.
I took advantage of her closeness to speak quietly to her, for our ears only. ‘I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to put on a performance to get back at him. Is this too much?’
‘No. I mean. I don’t think it will make any kind of dent to his ego, so it doesn’t really matter…’ She smoothed her skirt with the bottom of her glass, over and over, one section, then another.
I ducked my head so I could see her face properly. ‘But?’
All the amusement was absent from her expression as she regarded me for a long moment. She took a deep breath that I felt against my chest and stomach. ‘I don’t want you to be acting.’
My heart skipped a beat so hard it hurt. That was the closest she’d come to saying that she wanted this thing between us to go somewhere. It took me a second to pull the part of my brain responsible for verbal communication to the forefront again.
‘Elle,’ I shook my head. ‘There’s not a thing I’ve done tonight that I haven’t been wanting to do for weeks.’
Saying it reminded me of the observation she’d made back at the start, about how I didn’t know any other way to be. And here was more evidence. I’d tried to behave for weeks, and I’d tried to be her friend for a grand total of ten days, maybe? But I had failed. And maybe when the regret caught her up, she’d console herself with the fact she’d been totally on the money. However, right now, her pupils were dilating as she stared back at me, and I needed to kiss her so badly. I was a weak, selfish man, only being held at bay by the fact we were at a table with her friends and Boyd was announcing that Keisha had a new three book deal she’d been keeping to herself.
‘Boyd — you know that’s because I haven’t actually signed, I don’t want to jinx it.’
‘It’s happening and we should toast to that, too.’
Elle looked away from me and my head swam at the sudden release from the intensity of the moment. ‘Oh my God, Keesh, that’s brilliant. And Boyd’s right, you know he is,’ she exclaimed.
We all raised a toast again, and then once more to Caitlin for adding five more ideas to her “want to write” pile, and then Boyd for successfully unclogging their garbage disposal unit, and then me for rolling up my shirt sleeves perfectly evenly, and for increasingly more ridiculous things, until our glasses were empty.
Elle was nestled into my side so comfortably it was like she’d been designed for it, and she smelt of strawberries and her coconut sunscreen and liquor. There was a gnawing ache at the pit of my stomach urging me to bury my face in her neck and bite her shoulder and run my tongue over the mark. I contented myself with occasionally massaging the muscles that had caused her trouble the night before and she stretched and hummed in appreciation which made everything better and worse all at once.
Every time a new song started, I watched her eyes lose focus as she concentrated, trying to place the pop song now reimagined with drums and accordion and fiddles and flutes. She wanted to guess it before the singing began, like she was in competition with herself. Why was that so fucking adorable?
When she lit up with the latest one, she leaned forward so fast to speak to Caitlin that I had to wrap my arm around her middle so she didn’t slide off my lap.
‘Was this your request?!’
Caitlin laughed in response and nodded. ‘It’s just so accurate. Except he doesn’t even have a dog. Or a car.’
Elle collapsed into her hands laughing and I held her steady as her body shook. I couldn’t resist looking over at her ex who was acting as though there was no vehement music playing about a woman telling her ex “eff you”, his jaw set and his date so clearly having a terrible time.
When Elle finally sat up straight, wiping her tear-stained cheeks, she looked at me. ‘Sorry. The sentiment is just too perfect.’
‘Was there anything decent about him?’ I found myself compelled to ask, because otherwise,why? Why would she waste her time with someone so unworthy of her? ‘At least tell me he was good in bed.’
She snorted. ‘Of course he wasn’t.’ She took a deep breath and tightened her hold on my shoulders, turning her face so her cheek brushed against mine. ‘That’s what Type A’s are for.’ Her breath teased at the shell of my ear and a shiver rushed down my neck.
Iwas a Type A, wasn’t I? That’s what her family had all said, anyway. And if that’s what she wanted from me, I’d be the best Type A she’d ever had.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Elle
The night grew blurry around the edges. We slowed down with the drinking but the fizzing in my bloodstream hardly had a chance to ease with me being sat on Stephen’s knee. My cheeks were permanently flushed, my hair sticking to the back of my neck as the beat from the music vibrated through my chest.
