‘I’m laughing because I can’t believe you thought you needed to tell me that.’
‘You knew?’
He put his hands on the sides of my face and pulled me into a soft kiss. ‘Probably from the first time I met you.’
‘You knew?’
He looked at me incredulously. ‘You can’t handle the feel of sweaty palms, you’re a walking thesaurus, you flap your fingers when you’re nervous, or happy for that matter, jokes go over your head, you mix up your idioms, you can’t take a hint, you sometimes say the most inappropriate things in public at the top of your voice, like talking about mermaids’ genitals in a room full of schoolchildren, you get overwhelmed with noise and crowds easily, you’re hysterically funny without knowing that what you said was funny. I’ve never met anyone that collects as much stuff as you do, you play Pokémon with a group of some of the most neurodiverse people I have ever met, you say exactly what you mean all of the time, you need time to think about things and process them, don’t like spur-of-the-moment arrangements, or changes in plans, and you’re the only person that Leroy lets hold his hand . . .’
‘Oh.’ I was flabbergasted. ‘And, you’re . . . It’s . . .’
He kissed me again. ‘And those are literally all the things I love most about you.’
It felt like a bomb had dropped. There was an imaginary explosion in the air around us as he said those words, but when the exothermic reaction stopped and the mushroom cloud dissipated,silence.Horrid, vacuous silence. My brain continued to race, and the silence continued to drag. It started feeling like one of those moments where I needed to just say something, anything. Drop any word vomit into this silent space between us, or the silence was going to overwhelm me.
‘Did you know that an octopus can lay up to eighty thousand eggs at one time?’ It flew out of my mouth.
‘And you’re also a treasure trove of the strangest yet informative facts.’
‘Octopuses often eat themselves after mating.’ That also flew out of my mouth like an unstoppable word bullet.
‘That’s awful,’ he said, pulling my hand up to his mouth and kissing the back of it.
‘Basically, they self-destruct after sex.’ His kisses were slow and soft. They moved down to the crook of my elbow. The feeling was so torturously ticklish yet erotic all at once that a shiver ran the length of my body. And when he was back at my hands, drawing each finger into his mouth, I let out a breathy whimper and shuffled closer to him.
‘So, you know I need time to process all this information, right? It’s taken me by surprise!’ I whimpered as he started kissing my neck.
‘I know.’
‘I might need a few days for this one, it’s very . . .’ I moaned as he kissed my jawline, working his way to my chin. ‘Very big,’ I murmured.
‘It is,’ he said, running his lips over mine.
‘Fuck. I think I’m going to self-destruct if we don’t have sex,’ I said, climbing onto his lap and wrapping my arms around him.
‘You read my mind.’ He drew me into another kiss. A kiss that didn’t stop until we were covered in sweat and gasping into each other’s mouth as we rode our orgasms together there on the patio furniture.
CHAPTER44
In the blink of an eye, the holiday was over and Andrew had to fly to Cape Town for work. I would stay on at my parents’ house for a few more days, while he would be up there in the skies above my head. I stood at the front door looking at him, my parents behind me, the Uber behind him. I didn’t want him to go. And neither did my parents. In fact, during the holiday, they’d already organized that his family would come over to our place on New Year’s Day. When Andrew had warned them just how big his family was, my mom had said that she would hire caterers and butlers. My dad had pointed out that perhaps butlers was taking it a little too far, and after a playful argument she agreed to only hire one. We all said our goodbyes at the door, but as Andrew walked up to his Uber, as he was about to climb in, I pulled him back and threw my arms around him. I didn’t let go straight away like I normally did, instead I allowed my body to fold into his.
‘I see we’ve moved on from pugging,’ he whispered against my ear.
‘I think we have,’ I whispered back. ‘Just give me a little more time to think about what you said, okay?’ Andrew hadn’t said he loved me again after we’d made love last night, or when we’d fallen asleep holding each other. Or in the morning, when I’d opened my eyes to find him watching me. Not during breakfast either, when we’d held hands so much that it had become difficult to eat our pancakes. Not when I’d openly kissed him in front of my parents, something I don’t think they’d ever seen me do. And not after lunch, when I was feeling so full that I had to lie down and he’d come up behind me and stroked my head while I closed my eyes.
He nodded against my face. ‘I know you, Pippa. I really, really do.’
I was back at work a few days later, and I’d run Andrew’s declaration over in my head so many times. I had concluded that there was a ninety per cent chance that I loved him back, but I wasn’t entirely sure, since I’d never been in love before. I needed someone to talk to, and Jennifer had taken Colleen away on a romantic trip as a way of trying to salvage the relationship. I was not going to disturb her. But I needed to talk to someone else.
‘Blessing, are we friends?’ I asked, walking straight into the business class lounge. Blessing leaned across his reception desk and looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘I would like to be friends with you, and I’ve tried to be friends with you, but I’ve noticed that there’s a certain line with you that you don’t really let people cross. But I enjoy the friendship that you’ve allowed me to have.’
‘You once said you were good at understanding people, right?’
‘That’s true,’ he said.
‘Can you give me some personal advice then?’
