And she’d just exposed her throat.
‘Yes,’ I said, tone cool. ‘They are.’
I sipped my coffee again, locking down my expression. The second she saw how fast the wheels in my brain were turning, I’d lose my advantage.
I’d played a lot of people in my time. Usually, it wasn’t very difficult. They assumed you would have qualms about playing on their weaknesses, because they would have qualms. They never saw you coming. Most of the time, they didn’t even realise they’d been played.
Lily was different. She knew all my tricks. She knew I didn’t have qualms, because she didn’t either. She knew exactly how my mind worked, because usually, we were playing people together.
I had tried to play her exactly once. Six years ago. I had sat opposite her in our favourite bar and tried to call her bluff.Yes, youareright that we’d never work romantically,I’d told her, hoping to provoke her into disagreement, convinced that if I gave her time and space to think about it, she’d come around, that she’d realise she felt about me the way I had slowly been realising I felt about her.
To say it hadn’t worked was an understatement, given it had ended with her marrying the bartender.
So I was going to have to tread very, very carefully. If I told her everything was all right and assuaged her guilt, I’d lose my way in. But if I just snapped my teeth at her throat, the way I’d been doing for the past few weeks, she’d withdraw, and we’d be right back where we started.
This would require finesse. Patience. Strategy.
‘I appreciate the coffee, Lily,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want or need your apology over the Heather thing. She deserved what she got.’
I drained my mug. I could, in theory, make a play now. Lily’s apology, combined with all the late-night meals she’d been bullying me into eating, showed that my wellbeing wasa weakness for her. I could take an impassioned route. Fall to my knees at her feet and tell her I was drowning without her.
It would be true.
But she could already see I was drowning. And I’d tried impassioned sincerity, all those times I’d practically begged her to tell me why she was here. All it had got me was handwaves and half-truths.
I’d showed her how much I cared, and it hadn’t done a fucking thing.
So, ‘But I need you to leave,’ I said.
‘Not before you eat.’
I was starving. The bacon smell was delicious. I wanted to fall on it like a wolf on a carcass.
‘I’ll eat on the way down the hill,’ I said instead.
I got up, pulling last night’s shirt over my head with one hand and throwing it in the vague direction of my laundry pile. ‘I don’t blame you for last night, but I don’t have time to discuss it either,’ I said, grabbing a clean shirt. ‘I’ve got to go and fix it. Fuck knows how I’m going to do it, but I’ll figure that out on the way. Where’s my radio?’
‘I hid it.’
I turned slowly to face her, shirt clutched in my fist. ‘You what?’
‘I hid it. And I’m not going to tell you where it is until you eat something, have a shower, and drink at least two litres of water.’
I was right. This was it. My way in.
That small victory was swept away, though, in a tornado of frustration and panic. ‘On what fucking planet do you think I have time for that?!’
I grabbed my phone, and nearly had an aneurysm when I saw that it was 3pm. I’d slept for almost ten hours!
‘Lily,’ I said, ‘if you don’t give me my radio right now—’
‘What? You’ll use the daddy voice on me some more? Oh no.’
I threw my shirt to the floor and started rummaging through drawers.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘As if I’d hide it somewhere you could find it.’
‘Are you trying to ruin my life?’
