It only takes one movement, one split second of Alfie taking my bottom lip between his, before something inside me comes alive. It’s passion, passion I didn’t realise I had, and it’s all for him. Now we’re kissing – really kissing. I lie back on the blanket, pulling Alfie down with me with my lips. It’s been so, so long since I had a great kiss, I’d almost forgotten how amazing they can feel.
I wrap my arms around his neck, only for us both to be suddenly brought to our senses by Alfie’s phone ringing.
I furrow my brow, as he goes to take the call.
‘It’s my alarm,’ he says. ‘We need to set off now if we’re going to make it home before the tide comes in.’
We both hurry, to pack everything up, to make sure we don’t leave any rubbish behind. We bundle everything into Alfie’s car and then set straight off, hitting the causeway while it’s still open, with plenty of time to get home without getting stuck in the middle.
I feel breathless, but it’s not from rushing, it’s from that kiss.
I puff air out of my cheeks.
‘Are you OK?’ Alfie asks.
‘I am, I…I just haven’t had a kiss like that for a while.’
‘I haven’t had a kiss quite like that, ever,’ he replies with a smile.
The butterflies in my stomach are flapping their wings harder than ever, so much so I can’t help but place a hand on my tummy.
‘So I, er,’ Alfie starts, but as we pull up outside Clara and Henry’s, we spot Henry and Frankie outside.
I hurry out of the car.
‘Is everything OK?’ I ask.
‘Fine. It’s fine,’ Henry says. ‘We saw a hedgehog so we brought him some food out.’
‘He reminds me of Richie,’ Frankie says excitedly, not looking up from his new friend to say hello.
‘Richie was, erm, the rat that once got trapped in the hall of his old school,’ I say, wincing at how awful that sounds.
‘Better he makes friends with a hedgehog,’ Henry laughs. ‘Well, Frankie, run in and get your things so your mum can get you to bed.’
Frankie does as he is told.
‘You two have a good night?’ Henry asks, his eyebrows rising curiously. There’s a little glimmer in his eyes that doesn’t go unnoticed by either of us.
‘Yeah, great,’ Alfie replies. ‘We went to find the Hopeful Ghost. The actual ghost, not the pub.’
‘Young love,’ Henry laughs, just as Frankie reappears.
‘Right, well, say thank you to Henry for having you,’ I instruct.
‘Thank you,’ Frankie sings, running over to give him a cuddle. ‘Can I come again soon?’
‘Sure thing, lad,’ Henry replies. ‘Goodnight all.’
He waves as he heads back into his house.
‘OK, in the car then,’ I say.
We all get in Alfie’s car and begin the short journey home. Neither I nor Alfie say a word – I don’t think either of us knows what to say, not in front of Frankie anyway.
‘Well,’ I start as we pull up outside. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he replies.
I turn around and look at Frankie in the back of the car. He’s grinning like a Cheshire cat.
‘Out, cheeky chops,’ I laugh.
‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Alfie says as I climb out of his car.
‘OK,’ I reply, all smiles. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Sweet dreams, Blossom,’ he replies.
Chapter 18
Three…two…one…I’ve been counting down the seconds to lunchtime and it’s finally here. This morning I made sure I was up early so that I could wash my hair, do my make-up and slip into something nice.
‘Look at you,’ Mike said when I walked into the deli this morning. ‘Give us a twirl.’
I obliged and he and his workmates woo’d in appreciation – probably just being polite though.
Today I’m wearing a fitted white shirt – with maybe one less button fastened than I should have – along with a tight black skirt, combined with my red patent leather heels and a bright red lipstick to match.
‘How’s it coming along?’ I ask Mike, making conversation as I linger by the door, waiting for Alfie to pick me up.
The place finally looks like a real deli now. The counters are all in place, the fridges are installed and the plumbing no longer turns my stomach. As soon as we get some tables and chairs in here all we’ll need is food and we’re good to open – providing we have some customers, of course.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘We’ll be done in a day or so.’
My heart jumps into my mouth.
‘So soon?’
‘Yeah, well, we were at it for a while before you arrived. It’s nearly ready.’
Mike is my ally from the south, I don’t want him to leave.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I tell him honestly.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he laughs. ‘You’ve got someone looking out for you.’
Mike nods towards the Range Rover outside the deli. He knows all about our lunch date today – without a girl friend to talk to, poor Mike has become my confidant.
Alfie steps out wearing a pair of jeans, a muscle-fit white T-shirt and a pair of aviator sunglasses. Damn, he looks cool.
‘Don’t wait up,’ I joke to Mike as I head for the door. ‘Really though, I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
‘OK,’ he laughs. ‘Have fun. Tell him he’s got me to answer to if he messes you around.’
‘Hello,’ I say brightly as I walk outside.
‘Wow, Blossom, look at you,’ he says, lowering his sunglasses to get a better look. I love that he’s started calling me Blossom. Well, I suppose it’s snappier than what everyone else refers to me as – the Apple Blossom Girl. I don’t like that at all, it makes me sound like a kid.
‘What’s the plan?’ I ask.
‘Hop in,’ he instructs. ‘We’ll figure out where to go.’
Just like he said he would, Alfie starts sounding off ideas about where we can eat. All I can think about is kissing him again.
‘Do you want to go to the cottage?’ I ask, interrupting him.
‘Your cottage?’ he replies, sounding a little surprised.
‘Yeah. Well, I’ve got loads of food in, and some more bits and pieces from the deli that I’m sure you’d like to try.’
‘OK, yeah,’ he replies. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Let’s go,’ I say excitedly.
It’s only a short drive and, by the time I pluck up the courage to say something, we’re outside the cottage.
‘Last night was great,’ I say as we walk up the path.
‘It was,’ he replies. ‘It’s a shame it was cut short.’
‘It was a shame…what do you think would’ve happened if it hadn’t been cut short?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘I didn’t want to stop though.’
As I unlock the cottage door, I can feel my body tensing up with nerves. I can’t feel Alfie standing close behind me, but I can sense him. All I can think about is feeling his hands on me again.
‘Back in a sec,’ I say, hurrying off to the bathroom. I close the door behind me and look at myself in the mirror. What am I doing? Why have I brought him here? More importantly, why does he think I’ve brought him here? To put the moves on him? God, I want to put the moves on him. What moves though? I don’t think I know any moves any more.
‘Just be cool,’ I whisper to myself, quiet enough so that Alfie can’t hear, but loud enough to hopefully pay attention. ‘Now get back out there.’
With my pep talk having zero effect, I find Alfie in the kitchen and lean on the worktop next to him.
‘What do you fancy?’ I ask. ‘We’ve got a bunch of stuff for sandwiches – the company I work for keep sending me new samples…’
The air feels thick with sexual tension, which makes it hard to breathe. I bite my lip in an attempt to disguise my shallow breathing.
‘I fancy you,’ he says.
‘For lunch?’ I joke awkwardly. Ah, me and my jokes. It’s no wonder I’m single.
Alfie takes a step closer to me slowly. Then another one. My breathing quickens as I hang in suspense. It’s like we’re playing chicken, trying to decide who makes the second move first.
Deciding to just go for it and see what happens, I reach forward and pull him close to me, and that’s all it takes for us to resume our passionate kissing from last night only this time, it’s kicked up a gear.
Alfie grabs me by the hips and sits me down on the kitchen worktop – the worktop that I’m so glad I took the time to clean last night. I’d been thinking about inviting Alfie for lunch, so I did it just in case. God knows what I’d be sitting on right now if I hadn’t.
I am very conscious of the fact that, other than a couple of awkward encounters over the years that never went anywhere, the only person I have ever had regular sex with is my ex – Frankie’s dad – and that was nine years ago. Sex hasn’t changed, right? People are still doing the same stuff…I see it in the movies and, other than the things you see in Fifty Shades, it doesn’t seem like it’s changed much. It occurs to me to grab a spatula from the drying rack next to the sink, just in case he’s that way inclined. I giggle to myself through our kisses.
Probably best I just pretend I know what I’m doing and see what happens.
I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist as we continue to kiss. This is so unlike me, being ravaged by a sexy farmer on my kitchen worktop – mostly, I suppose, because I’ve never met a sexy farmer or had clean worktops. This just feels right though – so right.
A loud knock on the window behind me destroys our passion once again. I’m too frustrated to even think about who it might be.
‘There’s a man in your garden,’ Alfie says breathlessly. My mind darts back to my Daniel Craig dream – but only for a second. Now I’m mostly just mortified someone was watching me, erm, in a…romantic clinch – that’s what we’ll call it.
I glance over my shoulder to see who is lurking in the back garden, for whatever strange reason. It’s probably not Daniel Craig, is it? It’s a miracle I’ve got one man interested, there’s not about to be another one.
‘Oh God,’ I say softly, staring at the man on the other side of the glass.
‘Lily, are you OK?’ Alfie asks me. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Who is that?’
I swallow hard.
‘It’s…it’s Frankie’s dad.’
Chapter 19
Nathan was my childhood sweetheart. We met the week we started secondary school and became almost immediately inseparable. Before I met Nathan, I was a good, simple girl. I loved pop music, trashy movies and make-up; I just wanted to grow up and marry a member of a boy band and live a happy life. Nathan wasn’t like the kind of guy you’d find in a boy band though. He didn’t care about being cool or dressing like the other kids, he cared about the environment and whether or not my lip gloss had been tested on animals. He made me care about things that your average teenage girl didn’t care about, and I felt like it made me a better person. I adapted to his vegan lifestyle, which, if truth be told, I probably wasn’t very good at. My mum didn’t understand it, so I was responsible for my own food consumption, and without all the trash your average teenager eats, I quickly lost weight.
‘You look like a starved and abused animal from an RSPCA poster,’ I remember my mum telling me one day, when I came home with a patch of my long hair shaved off at one side.
Nathan’s middle-class parents didn’t approve of his rebellion either, so when he was 16 he finished school, got a job and started renting a flat. Sixteen-year-old me though she was so cool, with her boyfriend who had his own home. Most 16-year-olds spent their time sneaking around, trying to grab private moments with their boyfriend, but not me. We would hang out on an evening, like an old married couple, watching documentaries and cooking healthy vegan meals (he did most of the hard work, if I’m being completely honest, but he let me help). It was just the two of us against the world, until I finished my A levels. I got a place at Middlesex University – my mum was so proud of me, she said I’d be the first person in our family to go to uni – but Nathan didn’t want me to go. We’d never really talked about what the plan was, but I thought I was going to go to uni and hopefully start some kind of career after, and he thought I was going to move in, get a job and start contributing towards the bills. We fought about it for days before eventually breaking up. I tried my best to think of a compromise – I was only going to be living in student accommodation a couple of hours away, and the plan was to come home at weekends – but Nathan wasn’t interested in any of them.
By the time I was halfway through my second year, I’d changed – a lot. While my hippy style remained (it just felt like a big part of my personality) I found myself with less free time for all the causes Nathan and I would spend our days fighting for. I also found myself dropping my vegan diet which was down to a combination of opting for quick and easy foods, and trying to put a little weight on because I was self-conscious of my lanky, skeletal frame, and I didn’t know how else to tackle it. It worked though, and soon enough I was just your average student, living in a flat that I shared with my friend/course mate Jasmine. Until one night that changed everything.
‘I really don’t think that’s the answer to your problems,’ my friend Jasmine said, looking at my laptop over my shoulder as she leaned forward to grab another slice of pizza. A piece of pepperoni fell off, landing on the living room floor; my friend simply shrugged her shoulders.
‘Online dating or eating chocolate?’ I asked.
‘Both.’
‘I’m just seeing who’s out there,’ I replied. I took a break from staring at my laptop screen to grab a handful of chocolate buttons. As I attempted to remove a few, I struggled to free my hand from the bag. I sighed.
‘Are the bags getting smaller or are my hands getting bigger?’ I ask my friend.
‘It might be a bit of both,’ she laughed. ‘And you’ll have an even harder time bagging a date with fat hands.’
Having been single since Nathan and I broke up, I began browsing dating websites that evening, and this was before they were an everyday thing like they are today.
‘I’m just looking because I’m bored,’ I admitted, shutting my laptop before placing it on the beanbag next to the sofa.
‘You should take my advice,’ she replied.
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I have a date tomorrow and you don’t,’ she reminded me.
‘Is this the same guy as last week, or a new one?’
‘A new one,’ she replied casually. ‘Haven’t heard from that guy from last week since I slept with him. I’ve sent him a few texts and he hasn’t replied so, that’s it, I’m not gonna text him any more.’
‘Oh, wow, that’ll show him,’ I teased. ‘You want to try withholding sex instead of text messages.’
Jasmine grabbed a cushion from the sofa and launched it at me.
‘Hilarious.’
I remember walking over to freezer to check for ice cream, but we didn’t have any. We had plastic ice cubes, slimming meals that no one wanted to eat and a bag of peas that had been defrosted more times than I’ve probably ever eaten peas, because we only used it for icing injuries – I’m sure, by now, you appreciate just how often I experience those.
‘Ergh, we ate all the ice cream,’ I moaned.
‘You’re only eating because you’re bored anyway,’ Jas said, pouring the remaining chocolate buttons into her mouth as she hit play on another episode of Scrubs.
‘I’m bulking for the winter.’
‘We’re nearly into February,’ she reminded me. ‘You should be working on your summer body.’
‘Yeah, that’s why I was looking for ice cream,’ I replied, stretching out my arm to grab my laptop again.
There were two tatty old sofas, so naturally we’d always take one each. Jasmine lay back before lifti
ng up her T-shirt and patting her belly, which was bloated from all the carbs we’d consumed that evening.
‘Ahh, if only the men of London could see us now,’ she joked.
My phone buzzed with a text message – something it didn’t often do which made me eyeball my phone suspiciously.
‘Someone loves you,’ Jasmine said. She would say this every time anyone got a text.
I picked up my phone and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a message from Nathan – after over a year of no contact. He was just texting to see how I was doing, but we ended up swapping messages back and forth for a couple of hours before chatting on the phone until 5 a.m.! It was weird, like we’d never been apart, and it made me realise just how much I missed him. A couple of months later, when I went home for Easter, we ended up meeting up and then one thing led to another – and by ‘one thing led to another’ I don’t mean that we had sex that night. Well, we did, but what I actually mean is we realised we still wanted to be together and the only way that seemed possible was for me to drop out of uni after my second year and move back home to be with him.
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, that was an insanely stupid thing to do for a boy, but I thought I was in love, and I was so much happier with him around. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying uni, because I loved student life, but I knew that was only ever going to be a temporary arrangement and my relationship with Nathan was for the rest of my life – or so I thought. Jas thought I was stupid, quitting for a boy (I told myself she just didn’t know – or love – him like I did), and while I’d guess my mum thought the same, she told me that she’d always support me, so long as I was sure of what I was doing.
Of course, I was terrified that he’d hate me if he knew I was a dairy-consuming, meat-loving ‘murderer’ now, so I never owned up to that fact, snapping back to vegan life for the man I loved. Sure, cheese seemed like an insignificant thing to give up when you compared it to something like my education, but I thought I was in love.
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