Seeing her laugh and chat and eat with abandon made me ache. She is everything I aspire to be; everything I thought I’d become when I walked off the plane in August, determined to take advantage of my fresh start. Everything I set aside when I started hanging out with Rhys.
I sat at that table and stared at her, wondering where the hell I went wrong. I wanted to be her. In that moment I wanted it so bad I couldn’t breathe. How did she do it?
How can I do it?
I need to escape Rhys’s gravitational pull, for starters.
“What?” he says. “Did you think I was just going to let you walk out on me without an explanation? What’s going on, Laura? Why are you running from me?”
He reaches out. Takes my face in his hand, thumbs my bottom lip. Oh, oh, the confident, possessive way he touches me. I’m going to miss it.
“Talk to me, love,” he says
I turn my head away from his touch. I can’t bear it. I look at him from the corner of my eye. “I’m sorry, Rhys.”
“Sorry about what?”
“This isn’t working for me anymore.”
“Why?” he asks. He reaches out again, like he wants to touch me again. But then he thinks better of it and shoves his hands in his pockets instead. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Because. A lot of reasons.” I roll my lips between my teeth to keep a sob from escaping.
“Tell me so I can fix them and we can go back to being us.”
“See, that’s just it. You can’t fix it. You can’t fix you. You are who you are, and I’m—well. I’m different. Or I want to be.”
“Different?” He furrows his brow and leans forward. “But that doesn’t make sense. If you’re so different, then why have we got on so well? You like the travel, and the shopping, and—and everything else I do. We like the same things, Laura. I like being with you. I like treating you. We go well together, you and I.”
I let out a sigh. How to explain this to him? “Look,” I say. “You remember the night I met you, at the bar—”
“Of course I remember. How could I forget?”
“Rhys, please. Let me finish. That night I sat at the bar and started writing down everything I wanted to do during my semester in Spain—the bucket list I’ve been telling you about. I wrote it all down on a napkin.”
“The napkin.” He catches my gaze. “The one with the marker on it that you said meant ‘nothing’. That was your bucket list.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It was. I had big plans for this semester.”
“Big plans? Like flying on a private jet all over Europe? Watching every Madrid home game from the players’ box?”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, the list wasn’t about that stuff at all. The flashy stuff. The list was about reinventing myself, Rhys. I wasn’t exactly a very happy person back at Meryton. I definitely wasn’t healthy. I was wasting my college experience trying to be this—I don’t know. This perfect Barbie doll, I guess. And it was making me pretty miserable. I hated who I was becoming. So when I had the chance to start over in Madrid—new city, new university, new classmates—I took it. Or I wanted take it, anyway. That’s what my bucket list was about. It was about enjoying my time here. Forgetting perfect and seeking out the real instead.”
I look down at my feet and rock back on my heels. I hate this. “But then I met you, and you’re distracting to say the least. I can’t count the number of times you talked me out of doing stuff on the list. We always end up doing what you want to do—I’ve wrapped my life around your schedule and your sponsors and your social media stuff. Now the semester is almost over, and I have barely done a damn thing on my bucket list. I’ve given it up so I can be with you, even though we’re not really together together.”
A couple passes us. Rhys catches them staring. He moves closer to me, shielding me from their intrusive interest.
My heart feels like it’s going to burst.
“I get it,” he says. “I get wanting to enjoy your time in Spain. Believe me, I understand wanting to reinvent yourself, too. What I don’t understand is why you can’t tackle this bucket list while you’re with me. I’ve told you we’ll rent those mopeds—”
“But you won’t. You’ve been saying for months now that you’ll do the tour with me, and it still hasn’t happened. And you know what? It never will. I’ll never do it as long as I’m with you because you’ll talk me out of it—you’ll convince me to go to London instead, to some party, or to your favorite restaurant. Or you you’ll have back to back practice days, and the tour will be a distraction you can’t handle. It’s clear I can’t be with you and do the things I want to, Rhys. I can’t be with you and be who I want.”
“Jesus Christ, Laura,” he says. “We’ll do the moped tour tomorrow, all right? Problem solved.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to hurt Rhys, but I have to be honest. He deserves an explanation.
“No,” I say. “No. This—us—it’s too far gone. A moped tour isn’t going to change the fact that I don’t like myself when I’m with you. I’m obsessed with all the wrong things—being skinny, looking good, wearing the right things, saying the right things. You inhabit this…this perfect world filled with perfect people. It’s impossible for me to let perfect go when I see how much you like it. How you practically worship it. I can’t be around it—you—and be who I want. I’m done, Rhys. We’re done.”
***
Rhys
Panic flutters inside my chest. This is more than just a misunderstanding. This is about Laura and what she wants and how she can’t get it if she’s with me.
I love treating Laura, I adore having her with me even more. But now she’s telling me she wants something else, something I can’t give her. I hate—hate—feeling so powerless. I felt this way for the first eighteen years of my life, and I swore I’d never feel that way again.
But here I am, hands balled into fists inside my pockets, wondering how the hell I can make this girl stay. Why don’t the cars and trips and clothes I buy her make her happy? They’ve made me decently happy, I guess. I hope one day they’ll make me rich, too, so I can finally get my family out of Splott and into a decent house in a decent neighborhood.
“I’ve only ever wanted you to be yourself, love,” I try. “I never asked you to be perfect. I just want you to be happy.”
Laura meets my eyes. Swallows. “I know, Rhys. But I just don’t think I can be happy with you. Not right now, anyway.”
My heart works double as I scramble to think of something to say. The rain is really coming down, a thunderous roar on the awning above our heads. Somewhere behind me cars slosh through the mess. The smell of wet pavement fills my head.
Maybe I’m being a superstitious tit, maybe I’m not. But the season is going so well and I’m finally feeling like I’m back on my feet, like I’m getting my life back together after the clusterfuck that was last year. I was so close to losing everything, but I’m still convinced meeting Laura brought me back from the brink. She’s the one who knocked my stars into alignment.
“So let’s try it,” I blurt. “Your list—let’s check off everything you want to do. The moped tour and whatever else is on there. Tell me where and when, and I’ll be there. I’ll help you. Let me help you, Laura. Let’s try and make you happy.”
Laura rolls her eyes, glancing toward the cars passing the line of taxis waiting beyond the bell stand. “There aren’t very many Instagram-worthy things on the list. And it’s not just about the list itself. It’s about…” Her words trail off, and her mouth pinches shut.
I don’t know this Laura. This Laura actually looks like she’s angry with me.
She’s never been angry with me. Ever. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.
“Give me another chance,” I stammer. “Please. I didn’t know how big this list was for you before. Now I do.”
She’s shaking her head, eyes still on the taxis. “No.”
“Look at me.” Before I know what I’m doin
g I’m taking her chin in my palm, tilting her face up. “Laura, love, look at me. This girl you want to be—the authentic one—I can’t help but think she’d give a helpless chap another chance to prove himself.”
She scoffs, running her tongue along her bottom lip. It’s a struggle not to duck my head, take that tongue between my teeth. “You’re hardly a helpless chap, Rhys.”
I look her in the eye. My heart is pounding, pounding so loudly it drowns out the rain. “When it comes to you, I am.”
For a beat she searches my gaze. She’s breathing hard, her breath warm on my hand. The look in her eyes—she doesn’t appear lost anymore. She looks determined.
“We’ll see,” she says at last.
“I can work with that.” I meet her eyes. “I meant it when I said I want to see you happy.”
“You know what would make me happy right now?”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
She nods at the taxis. “I want to take a cab to a pub—not a fancy one—a real pub where real people hang out. I want to drink a lot—like, a lot a lot—of good beer. And after that I want to eat so much street meat I pass out in a blissful meaty haze and wake up tomorrow at noon. That’s my plan tonight with Emily, anyway.”
I draw back, curling my lip. “Street meat doesn’t sound appetizing.”
“When you’re drunk, it’s the best stuff on the planet. Maybe we could even find a falafel stand. I freaking love falafel.”
I don’t. What would my champagne sponsor think if I was caught blowing off their million-pound party to eat street meat outside of a pub? I need to maintain solid relationships with all the companies I endorse if I ever want to stop living on the knife edge of not having enough money to pay my bills and my family’s. It’s incredibly stressful, having to choose which ones to pay every month. Stressful, and sad.
Then again, I have been busier than usual lately. Maybe Laura just wants some attention; maybe she just wants to see me make a fool of myself for her. Olivier’s girl pulls this sort of thing all the time. She’ll have a fit, but it always blows over by the next morning.
I suppose I just need to indulge Laura’s fancies until then.
“That’s really what you want?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies. “Right now I want to eat falafel and drink beer with Emily.”
“I’ve never seen you drink beer. Ever. I didn’t know you liked it.”
“I love it. I just never drank it because I worried it would make me fat.”
“Fat?” I wrinkle my brow. “But you’re not—”
“I’m done worrying about it. Thinking I’m fat, I mean. Being a size two.”
I look at her. I have no idea what to say. I’ve never heard her talk like this before. I know she’s conscious about her weight, but I didn’t know she worried so much about it.
“Look,” she says. “I have, like, four weeks left in Europe, and I’m not going to waste another minute trying to fit into these ridiculous dresses you buy me. I want to drink beer and eat some carbs, goddamnit.”
I glance over her head at the hotel. Five hundred people wait for me inside. So does that delicious lobster and all the thousand-dollar-a-bottle champagne I can drink. I really shouldn’t leave; I am the face of the company, and while the paparazzi are better behaved here in the UK than they are in Spain, there’s still a chance they could catch me sneaking out early. If that happens, I can kiss this endorsement deal, my biggest yet, goodbye.
But this girl—this maddening, determined girl—wants to go out in the rain and drink beer and eat street meat.
Everything depends on this girl.
The pictures I took on the red carpet will be all over the gossip magazines and websites next week. The people who follow me will see (and hopefully purchase) the bowtie and shoes I’m wearing—I made sure to post a picture of me and Laura to my Facebook and Twitter pages. My work here can probably be done.
I just hope we don’t get caught.
“All right,” I say. “Let me ring my driver. The Phantom’s waiting—with the tinted windows no one will know—”
She raises her hand, flagging the taxi driver at the head of the line. Her heels clack against the sidewalk as the cab drives up to meet her. She opens the door and slides inside. She begins pulling the door shut behind her.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. I step forward, kicking aside a stray cigarette butt, and grab the door before she can close it all the way.
Laura looks at me as I slide in next to her. “I didn’t think you had it in you, fancy pants.”
“Neither did I.”
Chapter 14
Rhys
The driver drops us at a little pub tucked away in a corner of Soho. Beside me on the sidewalk, Laura titters as she reads the clean, gold script marching across the faux-Tudor façade: THE SPREAD EAGLE.
“Really?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder. So far, so good—no sign that we were followed.
“Sorry,” she says, hopping through the front door I hold open. “I’m just tickled. You’d never get away with this shit in the states.”
I’m pleasantly surprised at how nice it is inside—much nicer than the pubs I used to frequent when I lived in London. It’s clean, for one thing, and doesn’t reek of stale cigarettes for another. Good looking twenty-somethings crowd the bar, and decent music pumps through the speakers hanging from high ceilings. The lighting is warm, low. My mood begins to thaw, just the tiniest bit, but I make sure to keep my head down. I would kill for a hat.
We’ve sidled up to a little side counter by a window that looks out onto the street. Laura is busy typing away on her phone.
“Emily says she’ll be here in twenty minutes,” she says. “This is her favorite pub in London. Probably because the name is so ridiculous.”
“Emily,” I say. “Your best friend back at Meryton, correct? The one with the serious boyfriend. Liam? Lionel?”
“Luke. Yup, that’s Em.” She sets her mobile on the counter and looks at me. “You remembered.”
“She’s the one who has a crush on the TA she keeps butting heads with in her section but won’t admit it. Isn’t he an Earl or something? A Duke?”
“A Prince, as a matter of fact. But close enough.”
“I think it’s safe to say I know Emily quite well by now, even though I’ve never met her.”
Laura glances at the bar. Awkward silence stretches between us.
“So.” I dig my wallet out of my pocket and nod at the bar. “You said you wanted to drink some beer. How about I get us a couple pints?”
“Sure,” she says, not meeting my eyes.
I order us each a pint of bitter—by some stroke of luck, the bartender only asks for a quick autograph on a pint glass (no selfie requests yet, thank God; people seem to notice me but I haven’t been approached)—and set them on the counter beside Laura.
“That looks delicious,” she says. “You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve never seen you drink beer, either.”
“Well,” I say, “getting pissed off beer isn’t exactly conducive to winning a league title. Or worming my way back into Madrid’s good graces. I could get away with drinking during the season when I was younger, but now that I’m staring down twenty-three, I’ve really started to feel it—my age. I only drink when I don’t have training or a match the next day.”
I don’t mention that I keep my drinking in check for other reasons, too. Reasons having to do with my father.
“I know. You’re crazy about your routine.” From the way she says it, I can’t help but feel that’s a dig. But why? She knows I have to be strict about my regimen to play well.
She touches her glass to mine and smiles, a bright, clear thing I’ve never seen before. “Cheers.”
I watch her take a long, slow pull from her glass. My cock twitches at the sight of her sinewy throat working as she swallows, hard. I’ve been inside that mouth more times than I can count, and holy hell do I want to be inside it now. I
t’s been fucking fantastic, the oral. The only thing that would make it better is if Laura ever let me return the favor, and go down on her. But she keeps saying “she doesn’t like it”; sometimes she’ll say she “hasn’t shaved down there anyway” so could we please just get on with the sex?
Like I’d care whether or not Laura shaved. Her cunt is perfect because it belongs to her. I want her to enjoy sex as much as I do. I’ve made attempts to eat her out after that first time, but she keeps saying no. After a while, I just stopped trying.
“Is it good?” I ask.
“Really good,” she says, still smiling. “Thank you.”
“Looks like pissed off Laura left the building,” I say. “Your smile is brilliant, love.”
She shrugs, nodding at the pub around us. “Yeah, I’d definitely say I’m a bit happier here than I was at that fancy hotel. I don’t know, I feel like I can finally breathe or something here.”
I sip from my own glass. The smooth, malty flavor of the bitter has me closing my eyes for a moment. It’s clean, the taste, a bit earthy, just a smattering of carbonation. I don’t want to like it, but I do. I still wish I was back at the hotel drinking champagne, but this stuff—it’s refreshing.
Weirdly enough, it’s relaxing, too, drinking this bitter, being at this pub. I know what Laura’s talking about when she says she can finally breathe. I don’t feel the need to be “on” the way I did at the champagne party. There are no cameras to pose for, no CEOs to impress. I don’t have to be Rhys Maddox the footballer; here I can just be me, a bloke having a pint with his girl on a Friday night. There’s something very freeing about that.
I’m bringing my pint to my lips when a girl with long, bright orange hair dashes past me and launches herself into Laura’s arms.
“Oooohhh myyyyyy gaaaaahhhd!” the red head cries. She’s hugging Laura so hard they sway in time to their cries of joy. “You’re here!”
“I know!”
“I can’t believe you’re here! With me! In London!”
“I know!”
Lessons in Letting Go (Study Abroad Book 3) Page 12
