I knew I was still running on the porridge Amy had made for me earlier and the nervous energy flowing through me. What I couldn’t fathom out for the life of me was why every time the thought of bumping into Raff entered my head, a burst of panic erupted inside me, followed quickly by my heart rate accelerating and butterflies flying around my stomach like a summer’s afternoon in a meadow.
I had been dashing around all morning, helping the “real” chefs create the extensive menu Winter had devised and had tried in vain to push him far from my mind. That had been made more difficult as Cade seemed to have made it his number one priority to get Winter to sleep with him. I’d forgotten just how full on he could be, until he’d swaggered into the kitchen for the first time, hugged me so tightly he’d lifted my feet off the ground and declared that I was a very welcome sight. It was as if no one else was in the room, even me, as his eyes and actions thereon had all been for Winter. Some of his antics had made me laugh as I watched my normally well put together friend blush under his administrations, then she’d snap back to normality and tear him a new one.
We had come to the end of what needed to be prepared first and were now waiting on some more deliveries. Now with my stomach once again moaning, and knowing I needed to take better care of myself, I decided to set up brunch for us all to one end of the L-shaped kitchen.
I had fetched everything we needed and placed it on the centre island, when from behind me I heard the familiar sound the large swing door made as it opened into the kitchen.
I inhaled a deep breath, steadied myself and forced my head to turn around, prepared to face my demons head on. I looked over my shoulder and recognition washed over me at the sight of the young man who strolled through the open gap. Instinctively my fingers clutched at the metal work surface to steady myself. His gait was familiar and my stomach turned over in equal amounts of excitement and apprehension. He looked up from under his baseball cap and his silver coloured eyes found mine. He offered me a small smile and continued walking towards me. I swept my eyes up and down him. He was the correct build and on first glance his eyes were an exact match to Raff’s.
Surely my eyes were playing tricks on me?
I slowly blinked, trying to focus to get better clarity and started to shake my head with realisation as he came closer. It wasn’t Raff. The adolescent boy that was now stood in front of me looked like Raff, walked like Raff, but he was his own person. In those few seconds, I could see his mannerisms were completely different.
I let out the breath I’d been holding and attempted a smile when I saw a look of concern come over his face.
His hand thrust out in front of him as he offered to shake my hand. I released my fingers from the work surface and held it out to receive his.
‘Hi, I’m Flint,’ he smiled. ‘Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
I nodded my answer, too stunned to reply, and he carried on.
‘Is there any breakfast going? I know I’m late, but I thought I’d give it a try.’
‘Flint,’ came an almost scream from the other side of the kitchen.
Of course, it had to be. The last time I’d seen him was as a baby on the cover of Hello magazine, when the celebrity mag had done a feature on Raff and his family. I’d looked at it more than once as I dreamt of what might have been, and then I’d marched down to the end of our garden and thrown it on the bonfire my dad was having.
I watched as Winter came running towards him and pulled him into her for a hug. Embarrassed, Flint wriggled away from her hold, but she persevered and clutched him by the forearms as she gave him the once over.
‘Just look at you!’ she exclaimed as she looked him up and down. ‘You grow like a weed.’ Then she looked at me and smiled. ‘Sorry where are my manners?’ she grinned. ‘Lauren this is my nephew Flint, Raff’s son. Flint this is Lauren, one of my best friends.’
I went for a broader smile now as he turned away from Winter and looked at me again. ‘Hello, nice to meet you. You can join us for breakfast, we’re just about to eat.’ I waved my open arm towards the island.
He took in the area I had gesticulated at and moved quickly towards it. ‘Thanks.’
Without any guidance from me he immediately began to look around for nearby stools we could use and began to position them around the island.
I sat down on one and watched as Winter took the stool next to her nephew, so she could interrogate him as they ate. Although I smiled and listened to their conversation, inside my head I was lost to the memories that seeing an almost exact replica of a teenage Raff had brought to the forefront of my mind. My head took me back seventeen years ago, to the day I had found Raff waiting at the end of the long school driveway.
As my eyes first sought him out leaning against the old wire fencing, my heart had skipped a little. He was simply the coolest thing I had ever seen. I had offered Winter’s big brother a smile and tried awkwardly with only one hand to sort out my vile burgundy and grey school uniform as I prepared to walk past him. Then I’d looked around me as I clutched my school books to my chest, expecting to find some other lucky girl running down the drive to meet him. When he peeled his sunglasses off, his eyes had found mine. A blush hit my face as he said my name and then didn’t look away. In shock, I’d stood in front of him as he told me that he wanted to go out with me and he was going to walk me home to ask my dad’s permission. I never answered him as we walked, but just occasionally I’d nodded my head at him as he spoke. I remember looking at the frozen puddles on the lane as we walked home and seeing the almost magical shimmering in them for the first time.
He had entered my world and suddenly everything about it fell into place.
With my hands on my lap under our kitchen table, I had pinched my flesh on the back of my hand as I watched him chat effortlessly to my mum as she plied him with her fresh baked biscuits and warm milk, at the same time as she banged on the kitchen window at my brother Mark to stop kicking his football against the wall or she would box his ears. Finally, my dad had arrived and taken him into our lounge and closed the door behind them. All the while they had been talking I had stood outside the glass panelled door with my fingers crossed, occasionally daring to peak through one of the glass panes. I had watched as Raff had thoughtfully nodded at my dad’s words, with his hands pushed down into his jeans pockets.
The glass panelled door had eventually opened and he’d strode back into the hall, grabbing me by the hand on the way past. He had pulled me with him while shouting out his goodbyes and thanks to my family, then led me into the porch and closed the door behind us. Before he even spoke to me again, he pulled me tight into his arms and pressed a chaste kiss to my lips.
“Your dad said yes, Lauren.” He had still held me close in the cramped porch, filled with coats, shoes and family life. “Now you’re my girl.”
‘Hey, Flinty boy, how are you, dude?’ came the booming voice of Cade as he re-entered the large kitchen.
Flint jumped off the stool he had been sitting on and with a broad grin on his face he made his way towards Cade to receive his welcome. With elbows bent they clasped their hands together and slapped each other on the back, finally pulling each other into a hug. Cade stole the cap off Flint’s head and turned it backwards on his own, making his dirty blond hair lift away from his face, exposing his dark, Mediterranean eyes. Without another thought he promptly sat down on Flint’s vacated stool next to Winter.
‘Hey, that’s so not cool,’ shouted out a smiling Flint as he searched around for somewhere else to sit. Finally, he pulled up a small step ladder, turned it around and put it in the only space available, next to me. He perched his backside on the handle at the top before he grabbed at some more food.
The distraction of watching Cade interact with Winter was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Cade had sat down and had not removed his eyes from her once. I watched as he took her knife out of her hand, placed her plate in front of him and began to butter her wait
ing croissant.
‘What the hell are you doing now?’ she exclaimed in anger but with a half-smile on her face.
‘Feeding you,’ he retorted as if she had asked the most stupid question in the world. ‘You’re going to need all your energy, Winnterrrr,’ he overly pronounced her name and I looked on in amusement, her eyes watching his exposed tongue in his open mouth, as he deliberately rolled the R in her name.
Oh, my God. Cade most certainly has her number.
I rolled my lips over my teeth and inside my mouth, biting down on them slightly as I tried to contain my amusement at his antics. Winter shot me a look across the island to let me know I hadn’t fooled her and I stared her out while pulling my small croissant into small pieces, placing them into my mouth and chewing slowly.
I looked at Flint next to me and smiled at him again as his eyes caught mine. Thank heaven he was either so used to the way the guys in the band acted or he hadn’t caught on to the game Cade was playing. But taking him in again I could see he knew exactly what was going on, he was much older than his years. I was about to look away when a small movement behind Flint took my breath away and all the air in the large kitchen was suddenly vacuumed out. I couldn’t see his face but knew without any doubt it was him.
The moment that I had played out in my head for more years than I wanted to think about had arrived.
I tried desperately to pull my gaze away, but I knew it was hopeless. My eyes were literally magnetised into watching him approach. Slowly, he came near enough for me to see him around his son. I swallowed a large gulp and hurriedly wiped off the few crumbs of croissant from my lips with the napkin I had previously held in my lap. I knew I had seen him over the years on TV, in magazines and newspapers, but nothing compared to seeing the man I used to love, in the flesh.
He was wearing his dark hair shorter at the sides than he used to wear it, and longer on top and due to his exertions, I could see that it still flopped forward over his eyes. His face was the same shape as I remembered, although now it was covered in a thicker dark stubble and his bottom lip had been sucked into his mouth in thought. At last he stopped walking and I cast my gaze over his body, the body of the slim boy I had once known and loved had filled out. Raff was broader, taller and beneath his dirty, sweat stained T-shirt I could see he was harder and more muscular.
Bloody hell.
In my head, this wasn’t how this part of our story went. I was going to be calm, polite and resolute at our first meeting. He would then be able to see that I had moved on, that I’d grown up and first loves that had gone on to become hot rock Gods were unquestionably no longer on my radar. We would pass the time of day and move on with our lives.
To conclude my ridiculously long perusal of a man I shouldn’t even want to look at, I forced my eyes to travel up to his. They progressed slowly up the T-shirt that was stretched so magnificently over his torso, and they stopped to watch as he crossed his arms over his chest. Then they skipped over his large Adam’s apple, skirted over his still sucked in bottom lip, and at last my eyes found his. I tried so very hard to put a look of friendly welcome on my face, but knew I’d failed magnificently when I heard a gasp leave my mouth.
My whole body awakened. It was as if I had been hibernating for years. My heart accelerated and opened up like a flower in bloom. My skin began to tingle, with the hair on my exposed forearms standing to attention.
This can’t be happening, it’s fucking crazy.
My heart was banging in my chest and I felt punch drunk, but still I couldn’t remove my eyes from his. I had to fight to keep my hands still, my whole body was screaming at me to stretch out my hand to touch him. In response, my hand lifted to my chest and covered over my heart, trying to add another layer of protection.
The world around us had disappeared and although I’d spent years climbing out of the deep, painful place he had left me in, I was instantaneously catapulted back. Seventeen years had come and gone. In that time, I had grown, discovered the real me, I had laughed, cried and even managed to somehow love again, of sorts. But in the exact instant my eyes found his, those experiences were erased. They became rapid eye movement dreams, dreams that I could barely remember having after I’d woken up.
Yet he’d awoken me just by walking into the bloody room.
This isn’t good.
I just about managed to talk myself out of physically shaking my head.
I watched as small creases appeared at the corner of his eyes and he offered me a warm smile.
‘Loz, it’s really good to see you.’ He emphasised every word. Listening to him say my name like he used to, was too much. Seven simple little words that oscillated themselves through the many layers I’d taken years to fabricate. He had exposed me and opened me up raw, in one minute flat.
‘Please don’t call me that, no one calls me that anymore.’ I felt flustered at my reaction and got down suddenly off my stool. I was aware that all the conversation around the island had stopped and they were now watching the two of us. ‘Nice to see you, Raff. I can’t stop to chat, I’ve got far too much to do. Excuse me.’
I moved away as far as I was able, refusing to allow myself a second glance.
I made myself stand still as she walked away. The urge to follow her and to try to make her listen to everything I wanted to say was overpowering.
It was a relief when I could no longer hear her feet on the slate flooring and I knew she was no longer in the same room.
‘FUCK!’ I roared as I kicked the small step ladder Flint had recently vacated as he stood up to watch Lauren go.
As it skidded across the slate tiles the noise was deafening. It was only when it finally crashed into an aluminium bank of cupboards and fell silent that I remembered that our whole couple of minutes meeting had witnesses. I lifted my eyes up from the overturned step ladder, pushed my hands into my back pockets and turned my head to stare at them all.
Shaking his head, Cade immediately shifted to go and right the steps.
The kitchen staff stood and made their excuses about having to get on and that left Winter and Flint.
‘Well that went well.’ I heard Winter’s sarcasm trip off her tongue smoothly.
‘Don’t say another fucking word.’ I growled over at her and stomped away.
My feet moved automatically until I found myself once again in the large space at the back of The Manor. What would have once been the ballroom stretched across almost the whole of the ground floor at the back of the property. All the windows were floor to ceiling to capture the light, with arches that matched those in all the different buildings on the estate. The room was traditionally decorated in duck egg blue with golden tones and dated back to a more opulent time. I’d fallen in love with it as soon as Winter had shown it to me this morning.
I had no reason to be in here again, but walked around running my fingers over the tablecloths as I tried to connect with the beautiful room and control my overflowing emotions. I looked at the layouts and centrepieces on the tables, pretending to check on things and smiled at the decorators as I did so. I even straightened things that didn’t need correcting in the first place. Luckily, they in turn got on with everything they needed to do and didn’t question my reasons for being there. Eventually, I found my way to the end of the room and moved quickly behind a small makeshift stage that I knew at some point tomorrow Default Distraction would be playing on.
Behind the stage was a square bay window with a window seat. I knew I couldn’t be away for too long, but I needed a few minutes for me. I sat down on the overly-stuffed cushioned seat and leant my back against the purposefully placed back cushions, which were hung by tabs from the white gloss wood panelling.
I heard myself sigh as I sunk further into the downy comfort and closed my eyes, sighing loudly at the embarrassing predicament I now found myself in.
I need to get over this.
I had moved on, my life was complete without him in it. Wasn’t it? My eyes opened widely as I h
eard the question go around my head.
YES. YES. YES! Inside my head, I screamed at myself in reply.
I tried to clear my thoughts of Raff and closed my eyes once again, to think of Toby. We hadn’t been together long but he had a good job, treated me well and had even hinted that he wanted to settle down with me. I could have the life I’d always wanted and maybe even a child if I looked after my diabetes well enough. But as I envisioned a picture of Toby in my head, like a slide show my brain replaced it with a picture of Raff.
As he smiled at me in my mind, I quickly opened my eyes, ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I punched my tightly closed fist into the plump cushion by the side of my thigh.
Refusing to give in to his smile, I looked out of the window to watch the sun’s reflection glistening on the thick ice of the large lake to one side of The Manor. I slipped off my Converse by treading on the back of them and put my bare feet up on the cushion. With my knees bent in front of me, I hugged them with one arm and trailing one finger from my other hand through the condensation at the base of the window I semi-reluctantly gave in to my memories. Closing my eyes again I leant my head to the side and onto the welcoming strip of cushioning.
‘Mum, I’m off, Raff’s here,’ I shouted behind me, expecting my voice to travel down to the kitchen. Then turning back to the window, I lifted a hand to wave at him. As the car came to a complete stop his head turned towards our house and I watched him smile as he saw me there waiting for him. The four weeks we had been apart had been torture, but at last his A-levels were finished and he was home.
My heart completely stopped as his eyes found mine and then it restarted, accelerating into a full, very excited gallop. The butterflies in my stomach joined in instantaneously, reacting to the corners of his mouth lifting in greeting. My flesh prickled in anticipation of being with him, being near enough to have our skin touching each other’s and him holding me tight in his arms like I might break if left to my own devices. I let the pristine white net curtain fall back into place and behind its camouflage I took in a deep breath, placing a hand over my heart before I propelled myself forward. I grabbed at my Kipling rucksack, flew out of my bedroom door and down the stairs as quickly as possible.
Rafferty (Default Distraction Book 2) Page 5
