by Rachel Dove
‘Do you need to call someone?’ Will enquired, a brow raised in question.
Lily shook her head. ‘No, Stuart will be working late anyway.’ She had finally addressed the elephant in the room, even though Nellie wasn’t in Will’s room, just in hers.
‘Stuart, your fiancé, right?’ Will asked breezily. See, no elephant. It’s in your head, Lily. Get a grip.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He manages the golf club, runs the lessons there.’
Will nodded. ‘Wedding plans going well?’ He looked at her intently, and Lily had to remember to draw a breath, let alone form an answer.
***
God, she’s beautiful. What? Shut up, Will. You can’t. We have been here before. Will looked at Lily, noticing a flash of something pass across her face before she hid it away. Pain? Come to think of it, in the many months he had used the florist’s, he hadn’t heard talk of any impending nuptials. Her mother didn’t strike him as the type to keep information like that to herself either. She always seemed so proud of her daughter. He felt a surge of hope in his gut despite himself.
‘Er, well …’ She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. ‘We have had a bit of a long engagement.’
Will felt elated and cheated at the same time. Still engaged. Damn. What a jackass though. Who does a long engagement these days? What where they waiting for, the war to end, world peace, One Direction to get back together? Will couldn’t comprehend wasting a second of life by not being with this woman. She was too bright, too happy to leave hanging in limbo. Will knew what it was like to be trapped. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and if he could sort out his own life, he would do it in a heartbeat.
‘Because of you taking the shop on?’ Lily raised her eyebrows, and he cursed himself for revealing that he knew. ‘Your mother told me,’ he divulged. Lily rolled her eyes, obviously used to her mother’s loose tongue.
She picked up her empty bottle from the table, idly pulling at the label with her fingernails, which Will noticed had been painted to match her dress. ‘No, it’s not the shop. I guess something else has just always come first, you know?’
Will nodded slowly, but he didn’t really get it. He knew how cruel life was. You had to squeeze the happiness out of every drop. Not that he followed his own advice much these days. He saw a cash waitress glide past and motioned to her, ordering another round and placing a twenty on her tray. She winked at him and slinked back into the crowd.
‘So, nothing planned at all?’ he broached again, mentally shaking a vision of himself running into a packed church screaming, ‘I object!’
‘Nope,’ she replied, pulling at the last bit of sticky label on her bottle. Will realized it was somewhat of a sore subject, and Lily was no longer present in the conversation. She looked thoughtful, and he watched her from the corner of his eye while he pretended to look out at the revellers. She had two deep brow furrows when she frowned, the same as when she was concentrating in the shop. The difference was that when she was working on her creations, she didn’t look so sad. She looked at him now as though she had wrestled with something in her own head.
‘I am moving out,’ she stated, and a little smile emerged. Will smiled in response before he could stop himself, and Lily looked relieved.
‘Oh really?’ he asked, trying to sound nonchalant. He noticed that she said out, rather than in, and he swallowed the pang of jealousy he felt that someone else got to wake up next to this person every morning, taking it for granted. ‘Not far away, I hope?’
She shook her head, the light catching her styled hair and making it shine. ‘I am leaving my parents’ house, for the first time in my life, and moving into the flat above the shop.’
I. She said I, not we. I – singular.
‘That’s exciting. Are you both moving in, or …?’
Pleasesaynopleasesaynopleasesayno. Will, get a grip. She will never be yours. You are not even you. Not really.
She flashed him a guilty smile, and he was drawn to her lip as she nipped it between her teeth. ‘To be honest, I haven’t even told Stuart I’m moving. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but I am pretty excited. I will live there on my own. Stuart has a place with his job anyhow.’
Jackpot. Ding ding ding! Will was relieved when the waitress appeared before him with the drinks. He had been seconds away from an air punch, celebration air guitar riff, big hooray moment that would have been a bit of a giveaway. They both thanked the waitress, and Will lifted one of his bottles.
‘To new beginnings,’ Will said, clinking his bottle against hers.
‘To living life to the full,’ Lily countered, clinking again. Will smiled, but he didn’t meet her eyes as he took a long pull on the bottle. If only.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stuart was so mad that he couldn’t even enjoy the pert wiggle of his client’s cleavage as she lined up an easy putting shot in her low-cut golfing clothes. It was January and the weather was freezing, yet people were still (thankfully) booking golf lessons with the resident pro to get themselves up to par for the better weather. His current client, complete with nipples a jailor could hang a bunch of keys from, was no doubt learning golf to impress and entice some rich old guy.
Stuart found himself quite jealous of these types of men lately, and it soured his mood even more. He glanced at his phone for the tenth time that morning, frowning. Nothing. He had texted Lily before breakfast and she hadn’t replied. She hadn’t sent him so much as a tipsy text either on her night out. She always texted him. The silence was quite unsettling the longer it went on, and he was now quite put out. It surprised him, and he didn’t like the feeling of being ignored one bit. Lily wasn’t the type of girl to do that. Something wasn’t right. What compounded his unease was the fact that Lily didn’t even tell him about her night out. He had only found out by ringing the shop.
He was sure that Roger didn’t like him. He got the distinct impression that the cardigan-wearing git had taken great pleasure in telling him she had just left to go to Leeds with Simon and his girlfriend. He had been as nice as pie, of course, nothing Stuart could call him on, but he just got the distinct impression that Roger was chuffed that Lily had kept him in the dark.
He’d always had the power in the history of his dating life. He was the one who left the opposite sex hanging on the back foot, wanting more. Even with Lily, he walked the perfect line of meeting her just enough, but never quite going all the way across the threshold to an equal relationship. He made sure she chased him just a little, even now.
The balance of power had shifted, and even Stuart didn’t realize it fully yet.
***
Lily woke up on the floor of the flat, laid on a makeshift bed of cardboard boxes. As she moved her head, her whole body protested loudly. A zap of pain hit her square between the eyelids and she crossed her eyes at the jolt. She tried to open her mouth to moan but it felt as though it had been cauterized and covered in birdseed. Gingerly touching her tongue with her index finger. She found it was bone dry and cracked like the Sahara mudflats.
‘Ugh,’ she mumbled. Pulling herself up slowly, every limb clicking and popping back into place, she rested on her knees, waiting for her brain to stop bouncing around on the inside of her skull. Lily was trying to remember her own name when one word came screaming into her head: Saturday.
‘Holy crap balls!’ she shouted, immediately collapsing panting on her back again as her hangover sent her whimpering for cover. Christ, no wonder people watched what they drank. She had a flashback to her and Will knocking back various DayGlo shots and then mixing them together by attempting to twerk, throwing their bodies around the dance floor with carefree abandon.
‘Oh Lord.’ Lily grimaced as her bottom began to vibrate. As she jumped up, wondering for a second if she had actually caused a twitch in her bottom from using muscles she usually never acknowledged, ‘Flashlight’ by Jessie J rang out. Right, her phone. Roger? Stuart. Oh man alive.
By the time she had rolled herself sideways to pull it from where it lay beneath her the call had rung off, and Lily gasped when she saw all the messages and missed calls. Bugger. She scrolled to last dialled, seeing it was from the shop phone. Looking at the time on her phone, she saw that not only did she look and feel like a walk of shame, she was also two hours late for work, and the shop was open. Roger’s bonus looked more and more attractive by the day.
***
One hour, thirteen and a half minutes later, Lily was just about feeling human again. She had dressed in the clothes she had luckily left at the shop when she had been hijacked and made over, and she had a can of deodorant and some gum in her bag, so she looked acceptable for public viewing again, if a little crumpled and rocking the ‘dug up’ look.
After she had managed to make her way down the back stairs like a snake, slithering down one at a time, she had made it to the back doors just in time for Roger to open them to bring out some delivery boxes. He had taken one look at her, balked slightly, then disappeared out of the front of the shop. He returned minutes later with a large caramel coffee, two mahoosive bacon sarnies, some paracetamol and a bottle of water. Lily had made a sound, which Roger took to be gratitude, and he had kissed the top of her head and got back to work.
‘So,’ Roger said after the shop was thankfully briefly empty. ‘Did you sleep upstairs?’
‘Yep.’ Lily nodded. ‘I didn’t fancy climbing through my bedroom window at 3a.m. with my mother already swinging the rolling pin. If I had rocked up at 3a.m. singing “I Will Survive” like I did here, I think she would have had me sectioned. I told her I am moving out, and that they can’t work here. That they are retired, and that they need to get their act together. I am sick of being a peacemaker. It’s exhausting.’
Roger said nothing, just stared at her blankly. Lily flushed. ‘Too harsh? Am I wrong?’
Roger shook his head slowly, giving her a slow clap. ‘No, my darling girl, I am proud of you. Bit taken aback, but very proud!’
Lily waved him away with her hand, flumping down onto her stool. ‘You should have seen my dad, bless him. He was trying to be happy for me you could tell, but he was so upset. What with them fighting, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t recognize them any more.’
Roger made all the right noises in all the right places as she went on, telling him about the day’s events.
‘So you had fun?’ Roger asked, grinning. They had moved on to the events of the night, Lily recounting Simon and Elaine being happy and in love. ‘What about the end of the night?’
Lily looked away. ‘Nothing interesting – we left the club, got the minibus home, and Will got dropped in the village. He was staying with Archie for the night, convenient for work.’
Roger looked at her but she made herself busy attaching a teddy bear to a blue arrangement for a hospital order for a bouncing baby bundle of boy. ‘And?’
Lily cut the blue ribbon, adjusting the soft toy so it looked comfy in its setting. ‘Nothing, Rog, it was a brilliant night.’
Roger slunk off back to work, chuntering to himself about missed opportunities and drunken fumbles needing to be experienced. Lily tapped the little teddy bear’s nose with her finger, happy with her work. She didn’t tell Roger, but the events of the night had disappointed her too. She could barely admit that to herself half sober this morning, but she knew if he had made a move last night, she would have let him. It didn’t quite work out like that though, resulting in her singing Gloria Gaynor to Foxley Street as Simon and Elaine waved, laughing in the taxi as they drove to Baker Street.
‘I win and you know it! Twerk King of the North!’ Will declared as they headed back to the booth they had commandeered for the night. It had stayed thankfully empty all evening, but that was probably due to the fact that there were crazy-dancing people or a very happy couple sucking face attached to it in tandem. Elaine and Simon had gone to the bar, but they had been a while, and Lily could see that they were in no rush to push their way into the queues.
Lily flopped into the booth next to him, quickly making sure that all her body parts had remained covered during their exertions.
‘It’s dancing, not Game of Thrones.’ She laughed, feeling her whole face flushed from the exercise.
‘Silence, wench,’ he said, looking her dead in the eye. ‘I win, and I get the iron throne.’
Lily tittered, pulling out a little compact that Elaine had thrust into a clutch bag she had thrown at her before they came out.
‘I bet I look like a tomato,’ she moaned, trying in vain to open the little clasp. Will’s hand covered hers quick as a flash, and he took it from her. Flicking it open, he turned the mirror to her.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, looking straight into her eyes. Lily blushed, but held his gaze. The air in the booth changed, and it was as though the music had been muted, the throng had subsided, and they were rotating around each other like magnets. He looked away, and it was gone. Lily jumped when the music grew louder, and the people came back to life around her.
‘Well,’ he said, looking mad suddenly. ‘Not bad for a tomato, anyway.’
She nodded numbly, clicking the compact shut. What just happened?
Simon and Elaine came walking back over, bottles in hand. They both looked from Will to Lily, and to each other, an unspoken exchange passing between them. Simon pulled Elaine onto his lap as he sat down and she snuggled into him happily.
‘So, guys, one for the road?’
Will and Lily nodded to them, taking their bottles sheepishly. Lily didn’t look at Simon, but she knew he was looking at her with an odd expression on his face.
Damn, Lily. A few drinks and you forget your manners. And your fiancé. She glanced across at Will, but he was staring across the club with a look of horror on his face.
‘Will?’ she asked, the concern for him blanking out her feelings of awkwardness.
He turned to her, and his face fell as though he had just remembered that she was there.
He nodded across the club, his face dark.
‘I won’t be a minute. Don’t leave, okay?’
His face was pleading and Lily nodded at him. She reached for his hand across the table, but he had already turned, striding towards a small group of men sat in a booth of their own.
Lily tried not to watch, but she noticed that Elaine and Simon were following the exchange too. Will had approached one of the group, a younger man in a white shirt, and they did not look friendly. The younger man had stood up straight away, and had poked Will in the chest. Will stood his ground, but his stance told anyone watching that he was trying to control his temper. Will was speaking in the man’s ear, gesturing with his hands. The young white-shirted man looked straight at Lily, and Will followed his gaze. White Shirt guy said something to Will, and he exploded.
Lily was on her feet, running across the club before she could second-guess her reaction. She heard Simon call after her, but she kept running, pushing her way through the crowd with as much force as she could summon. Will drew back his right fist, grabbing White Shirt by the collar with his left, and Lily heard herself scream ‘Stop!’ as she raced towards them. Simon and Elaine were calling their names behind her.
Will’s fist connected with White Shirt guy and his nose exploded, red mingling with the stark white of the collar. Lily grabbed for Will’s arm as the man fell back, and Will rounded on her momentarily. Lily flinched as she caught sight of him, eyes black, anger ruling his features. He saw her and his whole face changed, and he was suddenly Will again. He pulled her to him tight, embracing her, backing her away from the crowd that had now gathered. Simon went to pull her away from him, but Will placated him, not letting go.
‘Simon, it’s okay,’ he said solemnly. ‘I would never, ever hurt her.’
Something passed between the two, and Simon stood back, accepting what he said. Lily watched the man stagger back to his feet, glaring at his opponen
t. Will turned around, keeping Lily close to him but putting her behind him. Elaine tapped her on the shoulder subtly.
‘You okay?’ she mouthed. Lily nodded. As funny as it felt, she felt safe in Will’s arms. She believed that he wouldn’t hurt her, even given his violent outburst seconds before. Something very wrong must have happened for Will to act like this. She couldn’t explain it, but she trusted him. He was a good man.
White Shirt guy took a step forward and Will rumbled out a snarl. ‘Back off, Ryan. Back off now, before I hit you again.’
Ryan snorted, a bubble of blood coming out of his nose. Lily noticed the bouncers coming forward, two from each side, and Simon pulled Elaine off to go and speak to them.
‘Come on, Lily, let’s go,’ Will said in a softer voice. He slipped his hand into hers and they started to walk away.
‘Lily, is it?’ Ryan shouted after them, wiping the blood from his mouth with the sleeve of his now ruined shirt. ‘Wonder what Kim would make of that if she knew, eh Will?’
Will tensed beside her, and Lily squeezed his hand, giving it a little tug. Ignoring the slap in the face she felt hearing Ryan mention a woman, she knew she needed to get Will out of there, before he pounded the guy to dust. Will looked at his hand in hers, back at Ryan, and squeezed her hand back.
‘Don’t talk to me about what she would say about things, Ryan, and you ever open your mouth again about my girl, I will come and find you. Remember that before you open your big trap.’
He gave him one last look that could kill a man stone dead at ten paces, and wrapped his arm around Lily, pushing her through the crowd to Elaine and Simon, who were stood by the entrance. The bouncers gave him a cursory nod as he went past, and he nodded back. Simon’s veggies must have been good, to be given a pass like this. Lily took one last look back before the door closed, just in time to see Ryan blow her a kiss, his palm half covered in blood.
