Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [69]
‘No, you won’t. I will.’ Marianne stuck her head round the kitchen door.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Patrick.
‘Us too,’ the girls chimed in, anxious to escape any jobs that might still be lurking.
Alec gave Lucy the briefest glance, but she couldn’t read his face. She couldn’t believe their families were forcing them to be alone together. ‘Let me go,’ she offered again.
‘Don’t be daft – you’ve been on your feet all day. You stay here and Alec can make you a cup of tea. Patrick will take me, won’t you? We’ll feed them at Burger King on the way back. Then, maybe, if you feel like it, we could get a curry in, have a couple of bottles of wine. The kids’ll please themselves. If you’ve got nothing else on tonight?’
Patrick spoke first. ‘Sounds great, Marianne. Thanks.’ He doesn’t want to be at home with me, Lucy thought.
And then they were gone.
It felt shocking to be alone together. All those months they had avoided it. For a moment they stood awkwardly in the hall. Alec spoke first. ‘Cup of tea, then?’ They both laughed, at nothing.
‘Sounds great.’ She followed him into the kitchen, watched him fill the kettle and switch it on, collect mugs from the hooks under the cupboard, take teabags out of the caddy. ‘This is weird.’
It felt a little like a trap and a little like a chance.
In the end, Alec was braver: ‘So, what are we up to, Lucy, you and me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know it isn’t just me. Is it?’
She couldn’t look at him. ‘No.’ Her voice was very quiet.
‘You know me, don’t you?’
‘I think so.’
‘I think so too.’
Tiny staccato sentences. Vast distances.
‘I can’t stand it, never being able to talk to you – really talk.’
‘I know. I feel that too.’
‘So, let’s talk now.’ And now it was the last thing she wanted to do. It felt like you felt on Christmas morning, when you come roaring into the living room and see all your presents lying there, and you don’t know which to open first because you’re desperate to rip the wrapping off all of them. She wanted to talk to him, she wanted to listen, she wanted to touch and be touched. And it seemed like this was the only chance, the only moment, that they were ever going to get. She was aware of a flutter of hysteria. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Tell me, Lucy-who-knows-me, I-don’t-know-how. Tell me how I feel about you. I want to hear you say it all.’
‘Okay.’ And then the words were there, spilling out: ‘You care about me. We’re in a room together, with a hundred other people, and you know where I am, who I’m talking to. We enjoy each other. We’re a bit alike, but different enough. You see things in me that you don’t see in your wife and you know, deep down, that if we had met in another time, when it wasn’t impossible for anything to happen between us, that we could have had something. And you think it might have been spectacular. And you know you might be a different person if you were with me, and that scares the hell out of you. And when you’ve had a few drinks, you fancy the arse off me.’ She looked him squarely in the eyes. Her heart was hammering with the effort and the excitement of saying the things that had been in her head for such a long time.
He gave her a little sideways smile. ‘Nearly right.’
She raised an eyebrow. God, this felt good.
‘Wrong on just two points.’ He was suddenly nearer. She could feel his breath. ‘I don’t have to be drunk to fancy you.’ His lips were near her ear. ‘And it isn’t impossible for anything to happen between us.’
‘Isn’t it?’
They both knew the answer.
‘Just to be sure we’re both clear on this, I’m about to kiss you, Lucy.’
Just once, she thought. Just once. Perhaps she was telling herself that it would burst the unbearable bubble of suspense. Perhaps she was telling herself that it couldn’t hurt. Perhaps she wasn’t telling herself anything, just feeling, not thinking.
At first only his lips touched her. Rested against her mouth so gently that they almost tickled. It felt to Lucy that they stayed that way for a full minute, adjusting to the change between them. Her nerve endings screamed.