AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Bloody hell, I’ve missed a lot. But you have to tell me.” He leaned in. “What happened with your dad after?”
“That was the biggest surprise. That weekend changed all of us. Before Christmas, Mum left him. She said she’d stayed with him for us, but after that weekend, she realised that he did more harm than good.” Lucie sighed. That year eased the pain and sadness that had lived inside her for years. “Mum and I talked about my anxiety attacks too. She ensured I got the best help. Unfortunately, she carried a lot of guilt about those attacks and blamed herself for years. It wasn’t her fault. Living with Dad for so long destroyed her confidence and self-belief.”
Lucie wished she could go back and tell herself that it would all be okay and that she didn’t need to be scared of everything.
“Wow. I don’t know what to say,” Chris uttered.
“You’ll never guess what my mum is doing now. She’s getting ready to move to America with her new husband, who she met online. They were in a forum for parents of children with anxiety attacks. They fell in love, and he moved to the UK to work for a company in Birmingham to be close to her. Now they want him back at their head office in California, so he’s taking Mum with him. She’s happier than I thought possible. Sometimes, I catch her berating herself or reliving some horrible stuff Dad had said to her. But when she does, I make her tell me three positive things about herself. She used to struggle with two, but she can think of lots now.” Chris grinned back at her. Did he realise the impact he’d had on her entire family? That Chris was a teacher now, inspiring hundreds of kids, couldn’t be more perfect. The students were lucky to have him. “I don’t speak to Dad anymore.Every time I tried, I came away feeling like a worse version of myself, so I cut him out of my life.”
Chris took her hand. “I’m so proud of you, Lucie. You’ve surpassed every dream I had for you. I wish I’d known you during that time.”
She took a deep breath and held him tight. “You have to tell me. What happened to you that last night? Did you come to meet me? I considered that you might not have wanted to meet me. I’d never kissed a guy before and wasn’t sure if I’d done it right. I presumed you’d pitied me.”
“That kiss was amazing, and I’m as sure now as I was then it was the best kiss ever! I got there early that night.” He was nodding emphatically as he spoke. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind. I thought you might have hated the kiss or not fancied me anymore, or maybe you didn’t want to be around me again. I cursed myself for being so full-on about you visiting me at university. I waited around for a while, but I was on a deadline because of a family emergency. When you went home to your birthday tea and I got back to the lodge, my dad told me my grandma was ill. After a heated debate, Dad let me stay around long enough to say goodbye to you. But when you didn’t come, I presumed you’d changed your mind. He picked me up from the beach before eight, and we drove straight home. We must have just missed each other.”
“And was your gran okay?”
He blushed. “I love that that is your first thought. Yes, Gran was fine. Nothing gets to her. She probably has these medical crises to keep us on our toes. She has the strength of an ox. Seriously, I’m not joking. That eighty-year-old woman beats me in an arm wrestle every time.”
Lucie grinned.
“I was too scared to search for you online. I thought if I got in contact, you’d reject me. Also, Lucie Smith and Emma Smithare common names. I did search for you a couple of times,” he confessed.
“Chris Jones isn’t that unusual either,” she joked back.
“I waited for you at the café a week later like we agreed,” Chris added. It wasn’t an accusation but a request for information. His voice dropped, weighted by the sadness that filled his words. “But you never came.”
“I was grounded for weeks. Even though I refused to speak to him, Dad wouldn’t let me out of his sight. But eventually we had that big argument, and everything changed. As soon as I could, I went to the café. I sat in the Rainbow café most days after school and on weekends on the off chance I’d see you, but you’d gone to university by then.”
“I went to the café every day before university. I sat and waited in case you came, even though I believed you’d made your decision and decided you didn’t want me. I was upset, but I couldn’t forget you. I presumed you agreed with your dad and had returned to your life of working towards university to study law.”
“No way? We probably kept that café going for a couple of months. I eventually found you on Instagram, even with your generic name. You were having the best time at university, and I realised I’d missed my chance. Once we moved, I didn’t come back here and didn’t bother trying to contact you. The self-conscious negative version of me won over and told me you never really fancied me anyway.”
“I did though,” he added, his green eyes still fixed on her. “I really did. You were everything. I never forgot you.”
“I never forgot you either.” They stared at each other. She held her breath. Should she make the next move?
The memory of Bradley suddenly hit her. She couldn’t do anything until she’d spoken to him. It was unfair on all of them. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth,contemplating her next words, when a familiar tune caught her attention. The first bars of “Hold Me in Your Arms” by Ray LaMontagne played from the pub’s speakers.
“That’s not a coincidence?” she asked, her head tight from the intensity of her furrowed brow.
“I queued it on the jukebox when I got our drinks. I hoped it would play in time,” Chris said, his dimples showing.
She beamed back. He hadn’t forgotten their song.
“I played it every day for weeks,” he admitted. “Eventually my university housemates told me that if I didn’t stop playing it, they would destroy all my electronics. So I got headphones. I listen to it once a month now.”
She held her phone up to show him her favourites on Spotify. “I listen to it regularly too.”
“Do you want to dance?” he asked, standing and holding out his hand.
She skimmed the patrons. It was a mixture of students getting cheap meals and wizened men nursing their pints.
Be the exception.
“Sure.” She took his hand, and they swayed to the tune, oblivious to everyone else in the pub. It was as if they were back in the forest, lost in the moment when she’d wanted him to kiss her. Only now, they weren’t awkward teenagers but two changed adults.
The familiar shivers skittered down her arms, and the butterflies flew around her belly. She breathed him in, wondering if he had any Lynx left in a drawer somewhere. Her head was light, and her thoughts of the past disappeared. The heat from his hand against her back made her body thrum. Lucie closed her eyes and stroked the nape of his neck with her fingertips before letting the music guide them. The notes of the song she’d had on repeat after that weekend carried her through emotions until she was back in his arms in that forest, hoping fora future with the boy with the beautiful green eyes and dimples when he smiled. She wasn’t sure if it was the memory of first love or that they were something special to each other. But she couldn’t let him leave again without taking his number. She needed to give them a chance.
