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“I love you, too.” He kisses my ear and holds me tight, our bodies flush, pressed tight together.
His breathing settles and he eventually sounds calmer, feels calmer, all the tension in his muscles earlier completely gone.
I don’t know if it’s because of my profession, but I have so much to say. So much to discuss, and yet I know, he’s not ready for that – moreover, I don’t know if he ever will be.
However, there’s something that’s been bugging me all day, and so if we’re going to have any conversation, it’ll be this one where he has to admit I’m pretty alone here in believing he can change.
“I saw Theo today. We had lunch.”
His hold on me doesn’t change. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he still hung up on Susan?”
“Didn’t even mention her, funnily enough,” I chuckle nervously.
“Oh.”
“He’s leaving in three days for a tour abroad. You two should catch up. I don’t think he knows when he’ll be back. He says these tours are always looking for people and if he gets the bug, well, who knows…”
“I might have to do that. I haven’t got anything on.”
I go quiet and I’m the one who tenses this time.
“What’s wrong, Lily?”
“I didn’t tell you about lunch because I knew he’d be sceptical about us and he was.”
He chuckles a little, burying his face in my neck. “I guess even in the best of circumstances our friends would be concerned, given we’ve all known one another so long and it might seem weird. But who cares?”
“I don’t care,” I blurt. “They can think what they want.”
“Then we’re all good. Let them think what they want. We know the truth.”
Paul leaves the bed and hurries to the bathroom to pee and start running the bath. It’s nice to have a man running a bath for me again; it wasn’t like that between me and Ian in the last year or so of our so-called relationship.
My body stings and I feel lethargic, dehydrated and exhilarated, all at once.
In this moment of euphoria, it doesn’t feel like I will ever love anyone more than I love Paul. I truly believe that. It’s not just that it’s hot between us, it’s that we’ve got so much history. I remember being in biology class, sitting next to him, happy just to have his sleeve brush against mine.
My crush came out in Year 10 after I’d confided in Chloe the blabbermouth. He and I snogged behind the proverbial bike sheds a couple of times but he decided we were better off as friends, seeing as though it’d be complicated if we ended up splitting, especially sharing all the same friends.
I never got over that, not the teenage me, nor the adult me, because in my eyes, he’s the one and there’s nothing that could ever change that.
Ever.
Chapter Nineteen
A week later, we’re walking into town to meet Susan and Adam at my favourite Indian restaurant. We’re celebrating his new job and life, basically.
Walking past people smoking outside pubs and bars, we huddle together against the cold weather, still pretty chilly for late March. There’s a lot of banter from the city’s revellers and plenty of idiots whistle as I walk past with Paul, who cringes beside me, trying to rein in his desire to lamp them one. I suppose, maybe, Paul might be a little insecure about how compared to me he isn’t what you would call the aesthetic. That’s not to say he doesn’t have bags of sex appeal because he does. Women notice him as much as men notice me. He’s a scruffy-faced geezer and women love that about him, me included.
We get to the restaurant which is quiet and peaceful, thank goodness. It’ll be later after everyone’s had a skin full that they pile in here, boozed up and hungry.
We’re led to our table and discover Susan and Adam aren’t here yet.
“Probably stuck in traffic,” I mumble to Paul.
