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Chapter Sixteen
Sweet smells wafted around Lucie and Chris. It brought back memories of Saturday mornings with Emma and her mum when Dad was sleeping off an evening of “difficult work.” That was what their mum said, although it was only as a teenager that she realised he hadn’t been tired but hungover from schmoozing clients. Their mum would fill them with pancakes and then take them to city centre on the bus to give their dad peace. Even though they had to eat quietly, they had fun. One of their favourite games was silent karaoke, where one of them mouthed a popular song while the others guessed it. The silent disco was fun too, until their dad shouted at them for shuffling too loudly.
Lucie’s mum made all their mornings fun, taking them around the city to the big local clock where a little statue hit a bell on the hour and to the river to feed the birds. Although there were never any birds, Emma would eat all the bread and then pretend to be a duck and quack around the park to make them laugh.
But I’m turning into an adult now. Those days are gone.Although if she asked Emma nicely enough, she’d probably repeat her duck impression and make Lucie smile.
Chris, who was air drumming with his knife and fork, smiled back at her. He’d probably make a duck impression too, if she asked. He didn’t care how people looked at him.
He lifted his head suddenly. “Are you smiling at my awesome drumming? I am brilliant. I have air drumming trophies. I’d show you, but you’d probably tell me you couldn’t see them. The trophies are made of air too.”
She rolled her eyes, but her lips squeezed into a smile, much to her annoyance.
“Very funny. Although I’d love to ‘see’ these imaginary trophies,” Lucie said before tipping her head to the side and giving a pouting grin.
“Woah, who said they’re imaginary?” he replied with a cheeky smile.
Lucie sighed loudly and shook her head. “I was smiling because I can’t believe I beat you at adventure golf. Well, I would have beaten you if we’d finished. I was winning,” she said as they sat at the pancake house. The loser paid for pancakes, but she wasn’t going to hold him to it; she had money. “I’m rubbish at all sports.”
“Three positives,” he replied, quickly stopping her in her stride. His hair had more gel in than the day before. He’d pushed up the sleeves of his baseball shirt. It fitted him well, as the bending and stretching at adventure golf proved. A blush returned to her cheeks when she remembered the skin of his back again. What would his chest be like? Would it ripple as she’d seen on guys on television, or would it resemble a footballer’s, flat and smooth?
She took a deep breath.
“I’m good at art, I wear a great ponytail, and I was beating you at adventure golf?” Her voice went up at the end, and she pulled on her earlobe briefly. Her dad often pointed out that it was another one of her nervous ticks. Had he said it to make her stop or make her more nervous?
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Chris replied with a smile.
“How do you do that?” she asked. A blond waiter, around Chris’s age or a bit older, plopped their pancakes down. With his bright blue eyes and perfect cheekbones, he could have been a YouTube star. If she’d bumped into him a week ago, Lucie would have crushed on him and daydreamed their first conversation, where he’d declare how much he fancied her. But with Chris in front of her, his green eyes sparkling with warmth, she only wanted him or to be around him.
“How do I do what?” he asked, his knife and fork clanging together as he ripped into his pancake.
Lucie paused to rest her serviette on her lap. She smoothed it across her shorts to avoid ruining them with a spillage. “How do you manage to be so confident all the time? You asked for a chocolate chip face pancake, but they’re for kids. You weren’t embarrassed.”
He held a lump of the pancake smothered with the melted chocolate chips to his lips. Chocolate dripped down into the pool of melted ice cream on his plate. “If I don’t ask for one, then I won’t get it, and I wanted a smile on my pancake. Did you want one with chocolate chips on top too?”
She did, but she was too self-conscious to admit it. Instead, she yanked on her ponytail. She was more embarrassed that she hadn’t had the confidence to ask for it. Slowly she cut her pancake into bite-sized pieces while contemplating Chris’s words. A lump of banana squidged out from the pancake, and she chased it around the edge of the plate with her fork. Chris’s choice of chocolate chips and vanilla ice cream looked yummier. Why did she choose the healthiest option on the menu?
“Can I let you into a secret about my confidence?” he asked quietly, leaning forward.
Lucie nodded keenly before dragging her chair closer to the table so she wasn’t straining to hear him. It made a scraping noise on the floor. At the sound, she looked down and raised her shoulders as if to hide her face.
Chris continued, oblivious, “If I pretend to be confident, then people believe I’m confident. So, therefore, I am confident.” He grinned before shoving another lump of pancake into his mouth.
“You’re telling me that to be confident, all I need to do is act it? That’s your big secret?” It couldn’t be that simple. Chris must have another explanation for his self-assurance. Maybe this was a game, and she had to work out what was real and what wasn’t. But as she gazed at him, he shrugged. That was it? She’dfurrowed her forehead so tightly that she was in danger of giving herself a headache.
Lucie sighed and shook her head to get rid of the tightness before popping a piece of banana-filled pancake into her mouth.
He shrugged. “Yep, that’s all you need to do. Act confident, and then people believe you’re confident, and they haven’t got anything to prove otherwise.”
But it couldn’t be that simple. She couldn’t imitate it and then get away with people believing it. But Chris had appeared so sure of himself since the moment Lucie met him.
“You’ve finished your drink,” Chris said, pointing at her glass with his knife. “I dare you to ask the waiter for a refill and then ask for some chocolate chips to go on your pancake because you want to make a smiley face.”
“But won’t that annoy him because I didn’t ask for it for the first time? Also, what if he’s not allowed to do that? Or he might ask me to leave for being rude.” How embarrassing would it be to get thrown out of the holiday village pancake house? And what if her parents were passing and they saw her?
“Lucie, chill out and stop overthinking everything. What if he says yes, or even no, and he never thinks about it again because it’s no big deal?” Lucie bristled at his comments. Maybe he sensed it because Chris continued softly, “It isn’t a big deal. Imagine what a confident person would do and then fake it like they’re probably doing. He’s coming over now.”
Lucie’s fingers trembled as she stared down at her pancake, now cut into perfect squares. She wouldn’t be able to put a symmetrical smiley face on it anyway. She hid her shaking fingers under the table, but that made it tricky to tug on her ponytail.
