by Alexis Hall
“And in any case,” Fen was saying, “whatever my dad has or hasn’t done with his life, he has no right to make decisions about mine. And neither do you.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think he might be right about this? You shouldn’t have to stay in South Shields for me.”
Fen made a noise so frustrated it was almost a growl—and would have been adorable on some other occasion. “Perfect segue, Alfie Bell, because this is where we get onto what you are: which is a clueless, arrogant, cowardly twat.”
“Um . . . yeah?”
“Yes. I mean, I know you might find this hard to believe, but there is actually more for me in South Shields than you. My mum, for example. All the places she loved. And the things she taught me. Every time I make a bouquet, it’s like she’s holding my hand.” His voice wobbled and he stopped abruptly.
Alfie folded Fen into his arms. “Oh, pet.”
“I know you’re going to think this is grief, but it’s not. It’s nothing like it.” He pressed his face briefly against Alfie’s shoulder, sniffing. Then pulled away, anger snapping into place again like armour. “And, yes, I have some fucking terrible memories of this place, but when you were with me—when you weren’t being a complete arse-dick—the ones we were making together mattered more.”
“I’m sorry,” said Alfie, helplessly, a few pathetic little tears of his own slipping from the corners of his eyes. “I’m really sorry. I’m everything you said, but can you at least believe I thought I was doing the right thing?”
Fen gazed at him, his expression utterly unreadable, full of too many things and not enough. “I genuinely don’t know if I liked it better when I thought you didn’t care about me.”
“Of course I care about you. I love you.”
“Yes, well.” Fen’s lips got very thin and mean. “What that seems to mean to you is making decisions for me. Treating me like a child. Assuming I don’t understand where my happiness lies.”
“That’s . . . that’s not what love means to me.” He tried to wipe the wetness from his cheeks. “I just didn’t want to take anything more from you. Or change your life in a way that made it worse or smaller or less full of all the stuff you dreamed about.”
“You changed my life the first time you shoved me into the wall and called me a nancy puff. My life changed when I dropped out of university. When my mother told me she had Alzheimer’s. The day she died.” Something like a smile softened Fen’s mouth, reminding Alfie of all the times he’d kissed it. All the times it had laughed for him. Called out his name. “My life changed when I saw you in the Rattler. And it changed two weeks ago when you came back to South Shields for me. Change means you’re alive. And—” Fen clenched his hands and pushed them hard against Alfie’s chest, deep shudders running up the length of his arms, making his shoulders shake too “—the day you didn’t trust me, the day you chose for me, was the day you took more from me than you ever have.”
“Will . . .” Alfie swallowed. The barbed wire was back, clogging up his throat, shredding his heart. “Will you forgive me for it?”
Fen’s eyes were steady on his, moonlight slipping down his bared throat, pooling in the hollow at the base. “Ask me and see.”
“Please, forgive me, Fen. I’ll never do summin like that again. I swear.”
No answer. No mercy in that look.
Brackish despair sloshed around in Alfie’s stomach. “I’m not good with pretty talk and fancy promises, but you’re the most important thing in the world to me. And there’s nowt I want more than to spend my life being in love with you. If you really think someone like me can make you happy.”
The slightest upwards curl at the edge of Fen’s lips. “Not someone like you, Alfie Bell.”
“I’ve pretty much quit my job,” he blundered on desperately. “And you can apply for that theatre thing. And we’ll figure everything out together.” Alfie paused. Dug around in his soul, looking for the right words. And, suddenly, there they were. Tumbling out of him like the pied piper’s rodents. “I was thinking maybe I could learn to cook? And we could listen to musicals. And you could drive my car sometimes. And I could suck you off every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. And you could top me whenever you wanted cos when it’s you I like it and it’s okay. And maybe we could watch The Shawshank Redemption some day and you wouldn’t laugh if I cried.”
He stopped for breath. Discovered he was gasping and slightly light-headed. Rushed on anyway. “And we could walk on the beach and maybe get a dog. I’d quite like a dog if you would. But not if you wouldn’t. Only let’s not have a cat because they’re snooty buggers. And maybe we could do this all the time, until, y’know, we’re not here anymore. Cos . . . well . . . that’s what love means to me. But it doesn’t mean anything at all really, without you.”
For a long, anguish-filled moment, Fen was silent. Then he was in Alfie’s arms, wound all around him like a climbing rose, sweet and wild, and not without his own dear thorns.
“Um,” said Alfie, “this is a yes, right?”
Fen laughed and kissed him. “Yes, Alfie Bell, it’s yes.”
“Fuck. Oh fuck.”
“Not quite the reaction I was hoping for.”
“Sorry. I’m just so . . . fucking relieved. I really thought . . . Fuck.”
“Come on—” Fen slipped from his embrace “—let’s get you inside before you swoon.”
“Oi. I’m just happy, alreet?”
“I’m not sure you deserve to be, the hell you put me through last week.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
Fen managed something like his old smile—toothy and crooked and wicked. “I expect no less.”
Hand in hand, they made for the side door. Then Alfie stopped.
“What’s wrong?” asked Fen, warily.
Before Alfie quite knew what he was doing, he was on one knee on the pavement—which was really hard and a bit painful, jabbing right into him.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?”
“I’m not proposing,” he said quickly. “I just realised . . . I was sort of hoping that maybe one day, it’s okay if I do?”
“Wow.” Fen gave an odd sort of laugh. Tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. Wriggled his bare toes. “Not to fall back on cliché, but this is so unexpected.”
“Can’t be that unexpected. You know how I feel about you and about stuff.”
“I really shouldn’t be into this.”
“Are you, though?”
A telltale flush stole across the arch of Fen’s cheekbones. “I . . . I think I might be. But only because it’s you.”
“Well, you can look forward to me doing it properly, then.”
“Is that a promise?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Though I haven’t got anything to make it official like.”
“I do.”
And, with that, Fen unwound the green wire from his finger. Dropped it into Alfie’s outstretched palm, where it landed as lightly as a butterfly.
Epilogue
He had to get a train, then a metro, then a bus, and then he walked. It was a porcelain-pale day on the furthest edge of winter, and after only a few weeks inland, he had somehow forgotten how cold it got this close to the coast. The way the wind had teeth, and how it came at you, as though it wanted to peel the skin from your bones and unhouse your soul to fly wide and wild with the ever-shrieking gulls. He’d never liked it much, or seen much beauty in this rough, forgotten corner of the world. He would never have imagined he would one day want to call it home again.
Ahead of him, in a rush of colour, spilling across the pavement, flowers, so many flowers. Spring hues mainly, fiery pink and buttercup yellow interspersed with terracotta pots of purple pansies, their intent little faces turned up in search of sun.
The sign had been repainted too. It gleamed like a smile.
He pushed open the door. The bell was just the same.
Shelley glanced up from some monstrosity she was tending. “Hi.”
>
“Hi.” It was always better not to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What in God’s name is that?”
She contemplated it sombrely. “I call it Woe.”
He flinched from Woe. “That seems about right. How are you, Shelley?”
“I bleed inside for the untrammelled misery of the human condition.” She grinned. “So, basically I’m ducky.”
There was movement from the cold room, and Straighty emerged, his arms full of greenery. “Is there any more of the alstroemeria? Another order came in for the Flowerati Bouquet.”
“That sounds new.”
“It is.” Straighty preened behind his foliage. “One of mine, actually. A scintillating fusion of fashion and floristry that I call . . . horticouture.”
“I call it the end of days.” Shelley gave a theatrical shudder.
“Is he here?” asked Fen.
Which earned him one of Shelley’s best stupid-arse-alert looks. “Course. He’s in the office.”
He made his way upstairs. Someday, probably, he would take the changes for granted. His mother had used this area mainly for storage, he’d lived in it when he didn’t really feel like living at all, and now it was something else. Something Alfie Bell had made and filled with light and his own strangely irresistible sense of order.
A couple of the internal dividing walls had been taken down, opening up the space, although Fen could see down the corridor to what had been his bedroom, and the bathroom where Alfie had once knelt patiently on the tiles and vanquished Fen utterly with his strength and his vulnerability and a little bit of looking quite extraordinarily good with his shirt off. Those muscles. That tattoo. The memory still gave him shivers. And he was suddenly so very glad that Pansies was partly Alfie’s now. For he’d gathered it up, just as he had Fen, cared for it, and reminded it how to flourish.
Except now he was nervous—or not nervous, really, so much as fluttery with longing and excitement. In his head he swept into the office gloriously—accompanied by a brass band—ready to reclaim his lover after too long away from him. What he actually did was peep hesitantly around the corner. And there he was, Alfie Bell, leaning forward as he sat at his desk, staring intently at not one but two computer screens, his long, knotty-knuckled fingers curled lightly over the mouse.
God. His focus. So steady and sure, as though he could change the world simply because he thought it was worth trying. A study in contradictions, this man—his blunt hands and his thoughtful gaze, the ridiculously gym-honed body he had yielded to Fen’s taking—a rough-backed cockle shell, all tender and shining on the other side.
“Alfie. Oh, Alfie.” Another thing that was definitely not a glorious sweep. It was, in fact, more of a desperate scamper. But it got him into Alfie’s ever-welcoming arms, which was all that mattered.
“Uh. Wow. Fen.” This was when Fen finally stopped hugging him. “Wasn’t expecting you for a while.”
“I left David and his snotty new boyfriend to finalise mortgage things with the bank. Because I missed you and I wanted to be with you. We need to celebrate . . . everything properly, and I’m sick to death of phone calls.”
“I knew you’d get the job.”
“I knew you’d save Pansies.”
“Well—” Alfie squirmed a little goofily “—I’m working on it. And, honestly, it’s good you’re back. I could really do with someone who’ll just make bouquets, y’know? Not expressions of artistic blah blah blah.”
Fen laughed, suddenly self-conscious in the purity and simplicity of his happiness.
“You’ve cut your hair,” Alfie said.
“I felt like another change.”
“I like it.” He reached out and traced Fen’s jaw, the ridge of one cheekbone. “No hiding your hotness.”
Fen felt the heat gathering under his skin, drawn there by words and a touch and Alfie Bell. He shivered a little, exposed, flayed by this gentleness. And, strangely, made savage by it. He slithered between Alfie and the desk, and perched on the edge, catching Alfie by the collar of the T-shirt and dragged him close.
In this regard, at least, and honestly in a lot of others, Alfie could always be counted on to take a hint. He bossed his way between Fen’s thighs, spreading them wide, and forced him onto his back, right across some papers. Which probably weren’t important.
“Fuck me,” was what Fen meant to say, because he was very much in favour of that happening. But what came out was, “Love me.”
Alfie made this deep, rough sound, dropping his head into the curve of Fen’s shoulder. “I do. I do. So much.”
Fen didn’t need to reply because there were kisses, all the kisses, and Alfie’s hands were everywhere, hard and certain, pulling Fen tight against his body, branding him with promises, today, and tomorrow, and every day that followed. And Fen came to him at last like a shipwrecked sailor finding himself safely beached on beloved, familiar shores.
Alfie Bell’s Hashtag Eggplant Wednesday Lasagne
Best way te make this is te do up the sauces first. If you’re proper organised aboot it ye can double up the ingredients and freeze the rest for later.
* * *
Tomato Sauce Bit
1 tbsp olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 chopped garlic clove
1 chopped carrot
1 tbsp tomato puree
100 ml white wine
1-2 400g cans of chopped tomatoes
Basil leaves if you got ’em lying around
Chili flakes if you fancy
Salt ’n’ pepper
Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onions, garlic, and carrot and cook till it’s all gone soft like (usually about 5 minutes on medium).
Then add the tomato puree and cook for another minute. Throw in the wine and whack up the heat for aboot 5 minutes more until everything’s reduced doon.
Toss in the tomatoes and the basil and mebbe some chili flakes if you’re into that. Season te taste. Then bring everything to the boil and leave te simmer for 20 minutes.
Me mam let it cool doon again and then gave it a whizz in the food processor, but we don’t have one yet. And, anyway, Fen prefers it a bit rough. The sauce. I was talking aboot the sauce.
* * *
White Sauce Bit
45g butter
45g plain flour
375g milk
Sometimes I stir in a 250g tub of cottage cheese as well cos Fen really likes it
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Then stir in the flour for aboot 2 minutes. Slowly whisk the milk in and bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Then turn the heat doon again till the sauce has thickened.
Ye can also toss in some parmesan or the cottage cheese if you want it te be cheesier like.
* * *
Lasagne Bit
3 de-seeded and chopped red peppers
2 chopped aubergines
3 tbsp olive oil
300g fresh pack lasagne sheets
125g mozzarella
Mebbe cheddar
Salt ’n’ pepper
* * *
Heat the oven te 200°C. Grease a baking tray and lay out the peppers and aubergines, covering them with the oil and giving them a good ol’ season. Usually takes about 25 minutes te broon up proper.
When they’re done, turn the oven doon te 180°C and get one of those Pyrex oven dish things. Put a splash of oil in and do a layer of veg along the bottom like. Pour over a third of the tomato sauce, then a layer of lasagne, then aboot a quarter of the white sauce. Do that until you’ve got three layers of pasta.
Use the rest of the white sauce te cover the top up. Scatter the mozzarella and mebbe some cheddar as well. Then stick it back in the oven and let it cook for aboot 45 minutes or till it’s proper golden and bubbly.
Note: ye can add extra vegetables to the aubergines. Courgettes are alreet and mushrooms. But it’d be better all-round if ye just used meat like.
Dear Reader
Thank you so much for reading Pansies. If you enj
oyed it, please do think about recommending it to someone else. Or maybe to someone you don’t like very much if you didn’t.
If you’re particularly interested in contemporary romances you might also like the rest of the Spires series—Glitterland, Waiting for the Flood, and For Real.
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About the Author
Alexis Hall is neither hardy nor perennial. His hobbies include casting nasturtiums, gilding lilies and gathering moss.
For more information:
www.quicunquevult.com
[email protected]
Also by Alexis Hall
Arden St Ives
How to Bang a Billionaire
How to Blow it with a Billionaire
* * *
Spires Series
Glitterland
Waiting for the Flood
For Real
In Vino (free)
Pansies
* * *
Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator Series
Iron & Velvet
Shadows & Dreams
* * *
Prosperity Series
Prosperity
There Will Be Phlogiston
Liberty & Other Stories
* * *
Standalones
Looking for Group
