He was still angry with me. He screamed it with every movement his body made. He was good-natured, had a sense of humour and was extremely skilled at charming anyone into anything with just one smile, but one thing he wasn’t good at was hiding how he really felt.
I hated myself today more than I had done in a while. I might not have seen it straight away when he forced his way into my life, but Theo was the best thing to happen to me in so long that I couldn’t remember the last good thing that had happened before him, and I’d treated him with all the respect that Elliot showed any pair of shoes.
Did he still like me or had the Countdown theme finally hit the last bong?
I jogged after him, my lungs burning more and more with every step.
The wind rustled the leaves of the trees, which glowed with the smouldering autumnal colours that made them look like fire, dancing in the same breeze that rippled the grass like the surface of water.
I jogged to keep up with Theo, but he wasn’t waiting up for me and it was over an hour before either of us spoke. Theo had stopped to take a drink and stroke the dog of a passing walker – a giant panting Bernese mountain dog that spent enough time dribbling onto Theo’s shoes for me to catch up.
‘Well,’ I panted as the dog and its owner passed by, ‘I think we can well and truly tick this one off the list. I haven’t got a bloody clue where we are.’
Theo slowed and turned around, his face reddened by the aggressively cold wind. He shook, either from the cold or the anger that was so clearly etched onto his face. He parted his lips as if to speak and I steadied myself for what I feared would be the beginning of a goodbye, but all he did was take a swig of water. When he was done, he crushed the empty bottle in his hand and shoved it into his pocket. He turned his back to me and began walking again.
‘Theo!’ I called, my throat hoarse. ‘Theo!’ He carried on walking as if I hadn’t uttered a word. ‘Theodore Alwyn Morgan, stop walking right now!’ He stopped and turned, his eyes coming to rest an inch or so above my head. ‘Are you ever going to speak to me again?’
Silence.
‘I apologised to you. I told you that I’m sorry. I make a mess of everything – that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.’ I was on the verge of crying again. For God’s sake, Effie. Stop crying, you’re not a crier! ‘I fail at things – that’s always what I do. You knew this about me when you met me.’
He scoffed loudly and stepped towards me. ‘I don’t know how much apologising you’ve done in the past—’ he drew his hands from his pockets and held them out in front of him in frustration ‘—but an apology is where you admit that you are in the wrong and take some responsibility for your own actions. All you’ve just done is give a list of excuses.’ He took another step closer. His brows knotted in the middle, his nostrils flared. ‘It isn’t some higher power that’s been willing you to fail that made you do all of those things last night. You did and you said all of those things.’ He took a breath before beginning again. ‘It’s like, no matter what I say or do, you won’t accept me and it’s not because of anything I’m doing wrong. It’s because you think so little of yourself that you think I’m going to break your heart and leave, so you won’t even contemplate letting me have it.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I stepped closer, his image nothing but a blur in my slick eyes. ‘You’re right about everything. I acted like a child. I drank too much. I made a fool of myself and I insulted you. I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t do this.’ He gestured to me and then to him. ‘I don’t date. I don’t chase girls. But for some unknown reason I just don’t seem to be able to leave you alone, no matter how hard you try to push me.’ He moved as if about to take my hand, then thought better of it. ‘The world isn’t against you. You could be happy. We could be happy, but if you insist on drowning yourself in this ocean of self-pity then I won’t let myself be dragged under too.’
I knew then that I’d pushed too far. I knew then that I could lose him.
I stepped closer again. ‘Look at me.’ I placed my hands on his cheeks and gently angled his face downwards; he winced when I touched the bruise that still stained his jaw. ‘You haven’t looked at me all day and I need you to look at me. I need you to see me.’ He rebelled for a moment or two more until his blue eyes finally fell on mine. I knew now why he hadn’t looked me in the eye all day, because the instant he did he softened. ‘I can’t tell you that I’m suddenly going to see my own worth, because that problem was there long before you arrived. But I can tell you that I’m not going to act like that again and I’ll stop trying to push you away. Starting now.’
I saw, in the way that his mouth hung ajar with unsaid words and his eyelids flickered, how much this meant to him. How much I was beginning to mean to him.
I felt the heat bloom in my chest again and it was the closest I’d ever been to loving someone. I looked at his lips, parted and shivering slightly from the cold, and took hold of his collar, pulling his face to mine. I could feel the resistance as he pulled back.
‘Stop.’ He held up a hand to keep me back, his palm landing on my collarbone. ‘I asked you not to do this until you meant it. Don’t do this if it’s just an easy way to get me to forgive you.’ His voice was quiet, his breath hot as it hit my face.
‘Forgive me or don’t. Either way, I still mean it,’ I said before I pulled him closer, my lips finding his, my fingers gripping his collar tightly. His lips were warm, soft, and all I could focus on as he placed his hand on the small of my back and pulled me towards him. Fireworks burst inside my chest as his fingers traced a line up the back of my neck and found their way under my beanie and into my hair. He paused for a moment and pulled away an inch. I opened my eyes and felt the disappointment that it was over. I felt like I could carry on kissing him forever. He smiled a blurred smile, his face too close to be in focus, before returning and kissing me again.
Suddenly the air wasn’t so cold, the wind not as harsh. Everything around me evaporated; except him.
We may have been physically lost, with the sky darkening around us and no idea of where we’d left the car. But for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel lost at all, not even a little bit.
The thing about kissing someone new is that once you’ve started it’s pretty hard to stop. We found our way back to the car, with some difficulty, and Theo drove us back to his. As soon as we set foot in the lift, we started where we’d left off on that hillside. We fumbled through the apartment, blindly in search of the sofa.
I banged my knee on the coffee table and let out a yelp as Theo stripped off my coat and let it fall beneath our feet.
I think it was pretty safe to say that I was forgiven as he cradled my face in his hands and kissed my lips, my cheek, my neck, my collarbone. His weight was stifling as it pressed me to the sofa. I could barely breathe, but I would gladly suffocate if it meant that he was touching me.
I should have been focusing on him, on the way his body pressed against mine, on the way that he breathed me in like he was gasping for air and I was the oxygen that he needed, but all I could think of was that I hadn’t shaved.
I’d done the basic – ankle to knee and armpits – but not the ‘first time with someone new’ shave. I wanted him to carry on and get lost in the moment. I wanted to let his hands continue their timid exploration beneath the hem of my sweatshirt. I wanted all of him, now. But I didn’t want our first time to be sloppy, unprepared for. I wanted it to be what all the other times hadn’t been.
‘Don’t you think this is a little fast? I mean, only this morning you could barely look at me,’ I said, my breathing slowing.
‘Fast?’ he asked, clearing his throat. He pulled back a little further, his eyes refocusing as he climbed off me. ‘You’re right.’
I sat up and smoothed my hair down; I seemed to have lost my hat and both of my shoes in the scuffle.
We both took a beat to regroup and shake off the hormones that had made us both regress to o
ur teenage years.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, adjusting his clothes, heading over to the kitchen and pulling a bottle of wine from a rack.
‘Not wine,’ I called. I really had meant what I said. I wanted Theo and I to work out and if that meant drinking less then that’s exactly what I would do.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise and pushed the bottle aside. He brought me a glass of water instead and sat down beside me, his leg touching mine.
Trying to keep myself from touching him, from leaning over and kissing him again, was an exercise in my own self-restraint. I began fiddling with the hem of my sweatshirt to try and take my mind away from him.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes tight.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’ He stretched his eyes wide and blinked several times in quick succession. ‘Just a headache.’
He grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV. He made himself comfortable and began flicking through a list on the screen. ‘I was thinking that we could watch some films together. You don’t have a favourite film and that’s just too upsetting for me to even contemplate, so we need to find it.’
The list was a geek’s paradise. Anything that involved spaceships, sword fights, superheroes, wizards or aliens was on it.
‘I’m getting the vibe that you’re a little bit of a nerd,’ I said with a smirk. ‘Am I dating a nerd?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said as he turned to me, ‘are we dating?’
I turned red and looked down at my hands in my lap. ‘I don’t know … I mean … if you wanted to we could … but it’s fine if you—’
His fingers were under my chin as he guided my mouth to his.
His lips remained on mine for a moment before sadly falling away. ‘Feel free to take that as a yes.’
Chapter Thirteen
There comes a time in every child’s life when they imagine killing their mother.
It can sometimes be only a fleeting daydream in which you smother her with a pillow or push her from a window. Other times it can be a high-budget brain production, starring A-list celebrities and with special effects that would rival even Michael Bay.
That morning Joy had woken me at six thirty by storming into my room, without knocking, and placing a pile of laundry on the bed, which I was still in, I might add. That had been her first fatal mistake. The second mistake had been to inform me that I looked tired and that it wasn’t healthy for a person my age to not be in a routine. The third had been to go outside and start painting the shed when Theo and I were out in the treehouse, just so she could keep an eye on us like we were four-year-olds on a play date.
‘Can’t we go to yours?’ I asked under my breath as we watched Joy paint the shed a grotesque shade of green.
‘Some people are viewing it today. I can’t go back until six,’ he replied, staring disgustedly at the colour being smeared over the boards.
‘I’m suffocating here.’ I grasped at my throat because the metaphor was literally choking me. Joy sighed with satisfaction and stepped back to view her handiwork. ‘What is that colour even called? It’s giving me cataracts.’
He looked at the shed as if it was about to make him gag. ‘I believe it’s called Mint Green.’
Joy turned her face up to us and shouted, ‘What do you think?’
‘Great job, Mrs H,’ Theo called, being polite as usual. She smiled and wandered inside to wash her brushes.
‘You don’t have to lie to her, you know,’ I said, looking away from the shed before it made me go blind.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being polite – you should try it some time.’
‘I once heard someone say that there are two types of conversation: polite and true. Politeness is the same as lying.’
‘If the truth is negative, then why say it?’ he asked, leaning back on his hands. ‘What’s the worst that can come from lying about the colour of that shed? For example, I didn’t tell her I liked the colour, I told her she’d done a good job of painting it. That wasn’t a lie; it was just an omission of the truth.’
‘That’s the same as lying.’
‘If she’s walked away happy, then what does it matter?’ he asked.
I rolled my eyes and looked down at my phone and glanced at the time. It was after five. The itch to open a bottle of wine came again, intense like a fire in my gut. I took a deep breath and tried to shake the thought but it stuck ‘like shit to a cinder’ as my dad always said.
I leaned back on my hands, the dust from the floor sticking to my nervously sweaty palms. Theo copied my pose and a few moments later I felt his fingers falling over mine. I couldn’t help the smile that came to my lips, the red that flushed my cheeks.
I knew that yesterday had been the start of something new for us both. That he’d said that we were dating and sealed that promise with a kiss. But as I looked at him, every dazzling inch of him, I found it impossible that I could now call myself his girlfriend. His thumb made gentle circles over the back of my hand and a breath, almost a sigh, fell from my lips. I imagined leaning over and kissing those lips that were all I could focus on. I imagined his hands at my neck and his weight pressing down on me. I imagined feeling his skin against mine and I felt my heartbeat in my skull.
I leaned forward, the distance between us too much to bear. I reached a hand up to his jaw and let it slide to his hairline. He leaned in to it and he set his sights for my lips. I inched closer, his lips so close I could almost feel them …
‘Effie?’ Joy’s voice came from below. The magic was broken; the hormones dissipated and were quickly replaced by fury. I looked over the edge. Her annoyingly cheerful face beamed up at me from the foot of the ladder, her phone pressed to her chest.
‘What?!’ I almost bellowed.
‘What is the name of that singer I like?’ I barely heard her words over the grinding of my teeth. ‘The girl with the ginger hair.’
‘Jess Glynne,’ I barked. ‘Anything else?’
‘No, dear. I just wanted to tell Julie.’ She took the phone from her chest and began jabbering back into the microphone.
I leaned back and loosed an angry breath. Oh, for a place of my own where my mother didn’t destroy every fleeting moment of happiness.
I looked over at Theo who smirked as he took an apple from the stash we’d brought up and bit into it.
I couldn’t help but envy that apple. His lips pursed against the skin, his teeth biting down on the flesh of it. If my bloody mother hadn’t interrupted, then I could have been that apple.
‘What are you doing next weekend?’ he asked, apple juice trailing down his chin.
‘Working at the shop – why?’ I asked leaning over and wiping it away with my thumb.
‘I’m going down to see my family and wondered if you wanted to come with me?’
‘Have we reached the “meet the parents” stage already?’ I asked, feeling slightly nervous.
‘You don’t have to come. I know it’s a bit soon, but the offer is there if you want to.’ He looked at me with hopeful eyes.
The idea of spending three whole days away with him was something I didn’t want to turn down.
‘I’ll ask Arthur if I can have the time off.’ I smiled, leaned over and kissed him, the sweet tang of apples sticking to my lips.
‘I can’t stay late tonight,’ he said disappointedly. ‘I’ve got loads of work to get done by tomorrow.’
‘Don’t leave me alone with them,’ I begged. ‘I’ll have no choice but to sit with them and watch some inane drivel like The Midlands’ Best Tearooms or Gardening for Geriatrics.’
‘I’m sorry, m’lady, I must abandon you to your fate. But don’t worry, you’ll have a few days away from them to look forward to.’
I watched my parents from the armchair in the window, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of the TV screen. They were creatures of habit, watching the same mundane sitcom week after week and laughing at the jokes they’d hea
rd a thousand times before or watching a documentary on farming and getting the idea into their heads that they would like to become farmers, even though they wouldn’t last five minutes once the rain started or they got a little cold.
They had been born normal and had remained so their whole lives. In fact, they would probably still fit perfectly into the mould that forged them. I wasn’t cast from the same mould; I hadn’t even seen it. I had been hand sculpted by a half-witted amateur with a tremor.
I had no idea how I had been the product of those two, sitting there smiling and nursing their cups of tea while I sat in the corner, a grimace on my face and a glass of wine, half drunk, in my hand.
I know, I said I wasn’t going to be drinking as much, but you can’t expect me to go cold turkey now, can you?
At my age, my mother already had her own house and had been working full-time for seven years; I knew this because she told me every bloody chance she got.
She hadn’t gone to university, but then not many had in those days, and she’d instead begun working as a seamstress in a shop that sold wedding dresses, the shop she still worked in to this day. She met William when she was nineteen and she’d married him by twenty-two. They’d worked hard to earn the money to get themselves a house and by the time she was twenty-five they were settled and stable in a way that my generation had no hope of being until we were in our late fifties.
She thinks it’s so easy to go out and do the same things she did: to get a job that pays well, to get married and buy a house. But what if the jobs are all gone or they don’t pay well enough? I knew I had a cushy deal at the shop, but the pay was garbage. Even if I started saving now, I wouldn’t have enough to move out until I was ancient and by that time, my parents would be dead and I’d already have their house anyway. There were other ways of moving out, of course. Marrying a rich twat like Kate had done, not that she’d needed the extra money. But what if you don’t want to get married and have to settle for the money that you make yourself and not your spouse’s? And what if the housing prices are so high that the only way anyone can even dream of owning one is if a family member dies and leaves it to them?
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