Just The Way You Are(59)

Woah.

He was less than a blanket away. Even with Nesbit curled up between us, it wouldn’t take much to lean in until our mouths met. It felt as though there was no room inside my ribcage to breathe, my heart was so inflamed with desire and intimacy, blending together into what might have been the tiny beginnings of love.

His eyes dropped to my lips and he swallowed so hard I could almost hear it through the stillness of the night.

As if drawn in by an invisible magnetic force, my body swayed a tentative inch towards him. Sam moved closer in unspoken reply.

Oh my goodness! The thoughts whined about my brain like a mosquito. Are you really going to do this, Ollie? If you lean another millimetre forwards then this MAN, who you are meant to be staying away from, given that he’s a MAN, and you’re on a NO-MAN MANDATE, is going to kiss you.

SHUT UP! I argued back, trying and failing to come up with a split-second counterargument. Just… shut up!

He’s not interested in a relationship, remember? the thought mosquito continued to drone. He thinks you’re some chilled out, grown-up woman who can handle a casual kiss and not turn it into something awkward that will ruin everything, making you regret it forever.

While this was racing through my head, Sam must have seen the conflict flit across my face because he paused, very deliberately, and then slowly sat back up, twisting around to face the trees in front of us, resting his wrists on bent knees. After another potent silence, he swallowed again, coughed, ran his hands through his hair and assumed his usual easy-breezy, affable expression.

If it was meant to dispel the tension, it didn’t work. Sam mumbled something about how it was late and he’d better be getting back, and he left me to burrow down into my sleeping bag and wonder what on earth just happened, and whether I was a fool to so fervently hope that it might happen again.

‘Hello, Earth to Ollie?’ Steph said, unnecessarily loudly, her eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.

‘Sorry. Sleeping on the ground has left me shattered.’

‘Hmmm.’

I hadn’t fooled her for a second. But my best friend was patient; she’d form her own conclusions, confident that the evidence would prove them right soon enough.

I, on the other hand, had no clue what to think.





By the end of the week, I was still clueless. I’d spent more time replaying that night than was healthy or constructive.

Every time my mind wandered back to Sam it was like the thoughts ignited a sparkler in my stomach, sending nervous longing fizzing and whizzing through my insides. On the one hand, I admonished myself for being embarrassingly pathetic. An uncommonly kind and attractive man had been nice to me, in a professional capacity, and my imagination had ramped up to maximum.

But then again… I wasn’t a total romantic novice. Every other time I’d seen that look in a man’s eyes he’d been about to kiss me.

Sam might have been about to kiss me.

As I twisted myself up in my duvet one night, hot and bothered and increasingly irritated about the whole situation, I concluded that Sam owed me a kiss.

And if the opportunity ever happened again, even if he was only interested in a one-time, casual thing, I was going to make sure I was ready for it.

I had two items left on the Dream List, and more than enough motivation to get cracking.

Only, then came a terrified knock on my kitchen door and suddenly Dream Lists and uncollected kisses were roughly shoved to the side by real life.





19





I’d spent most of the Saturday after the camping trip with Joan. Leanne had picked up an old oven going free on the Bigley Facebook group, so they were now able to cook, but I’d still been coming up with excuses to send a meal round as often as possible. Leanne knew what I was up to, but she swallowed her pride for her daughter’s sake. They also made use of my shower two or three times a week. I had suggested that if they walked over to mine carrying a towel and a bottle of shampoo, Ebenezer might erect an outdoor shower in the garden, but Leanne replied curtly that she still had some pride left. Her stooped shoulders and air of exhaustion suggested that if she did, it was the tiniest shred.

After a ramble in the woods and a subsequent dog bath, thanks to Nesbit finding a swampy pool to investigate, I’d snuck a load of Joan’s laundry into my washer and helped her do a quick tidy and clean of New Cottage.

She’d been reluctant to talk about much beyond Nesbit and her newfound obsession for Terry Pratchett novels, which she fed using my adult library card when Irene was distracted elsewhere – something that was happening more and more, thanks to the rather inexplicable popularity of the Library Lady.

By mid-afternoon I’d left her to it, planning on catching up on some of my own to-do list, and I was upstairs changing my beautiful new duvet cover when I heard the knock. Even from that distance I could sense the urgency .

Dropping the bedding, I half ran, half tumbled down the stairs and raced into the kitchen, flinging open the door to find Joan, her tear-streaked face the colour of cold ashes.

‘Mum!’

Forgoing the seconds required to put on a pair of shoes, I sprinted across to New Cottage, praying that this was an emergency where speed could make a difference, rather than a tragedy where it was too late for swift action.

I found her on the bedroom floor.

For a heart-splintering moment, I thought she was dead.