by Jo Watson
His proximity. The warmth I could feel radiating off his body. The smell of him, too—familiar and exhilarating, but unnerving. I felt both comfortable and uncomfortable, all at the same time. Excited and terrified. Warm and cold. A contradictory mix of every feeling and emotion thrown in and stirred about. I was grateful when Ash finally came back to the room.
“Move up—popcorn coming through.” She sat on the couch and pushed me further into Mike, until our shoulders were pressed into each other.
I tried to lean away, so as to relieve the pressure, but there was no space. His shoulders tensed against mine and I tried not to move too much.
“This is fun,” Ash said. “When did we last do movie night?” She leaned forward and looked at Mike.
“Not in a while.” He sounded rather flat.
“Okay, what should we watch?” Ash picked the remote up and flicked on the TV.
“Uh . . . whatever,” I answered.
“Not ‘whatever.’ You are the guest of honor—you choose.” She passed the remote over to me and I started flicking through the channels, and then Ash jumped up excitedly. “Let’s watch that!” She pointed at the screen.
“No—please, no,” Mike mumbled, next to me.
“I luurve The Bachelor !” she gushed.
I turned and smiled at her. “I love The Bachelor, too!” Because I effing did. Give me any cheesy, over-the-top reality TV show—whether it was a bunch of hot estate agents in tight dresses and super-high heels, or pregnant housewives in tight dresses and super-high heels—and I was game. To me, reality TV was like watching a slow-motion train crash; you just knew something bad was about to happen, but you couldn’t look away.
“Done,” Ash said, taking the remote away from me and turning the program on.
“Tonight on The Bachelor—” that familiar voice filled the room—“will Jay finally see Eliza for the back-stabber she really is? And will Jessica find the courage to tell him the secret she has been keeping? Stay tuned for unbelievable scenes like you’ve never seen before in Bachelor history!”
“I don’t know how you can watch this stuff.” Mike shuffled next to me. “It’s not real!”
“Of course it’s real.” Ash sat forward and looked at him. “You can see it in their eyes, when they like each other. I mean, it’s obvious that Jay is totally into Jess.”
“Oh, please. The whole thing is so manufactured. There’s no way you can fall in love, real love, under such ridiculously strange and staged circumstances. And so quickly—no one falls in love that quickly!”
“What?!” Ash sat forward even more, and so did Mike. These two looked like they did this often—sibling arguments. I sat back and watched them; it was almost more amusing than the TV show. “Love blossoms instantly,” Ash shot back, “and in the least likely places, when you meet the right person. Trust me!”
“Really?” He sounded unmoved. “Okay, name one person we know who found love like that.” He turned on the couch and faced her, his knee bumping into mine, and a strange feeling zipped up my leg.
“What about Brendan and Sue? She hated him at school, and then they met by accident, five years later, in a restaurant, because they’d both been stood up by their blind dates, and then they got engaged a month later, and now they’re married with children.” She folded her arms and looked pleased with herself, as if she knew she’d won the argument. I had to give it to her, it was a good argument.
“Okay, that is the exception, though,” Mike said.
She shook her head. “Nope! I’m telling you, bro, love comes when you least expect it and in the strangest of ways, and it can be totally instant, too. Sometimes, you can fall in love with someone without even knowing you love them.”
“Impossible,” Mike said.
“Possible,” Ash fired back. “People who are soulmates always seem to meet in strange, fateful ways. Like being stood up by blind dates, or being stuck in an elevator together, or finding the other person’s dog when it ran away, or accidentally sending an email to the wrong address but realizing that that person is your soulmate when you start communicating.”
Mike laughed. “That stuff only happens in romcoms. For the most part, people meet normally—or abnormally, like on Tinder and all that crap.”
“Nope. People meet in strange, mysterious, fortuitous ways all the time. What about you and that girl on the fence?”
“Huh?” I choked on the popcorn I was busy shoving into my mouth. Did she mean me?
“ASH! Stop!” Mike sounded very firm.
“No, no, it’s a good example of what I mean.” She tried to continue talking, but Mike became very agitated and cut her off.
“No, it’s not. It’s NOT!” he said loudly.
“Yes, it is. You said it yourself: you met her totally by chance, and then you had this strange moment with her when you felt something you couldn’t explain. As if you knew her on some level, or you’d met, but you didn’t know where. And then you met her again, in a graveyard, of all things strange and peculiar, and then AGAIN at the bar, same day, and then—well, the other stuff is not for now.” She looked over at me and winked. “Not in front of guests.”
“Ash, stop!” Mike sounded downright panicked now.
“And then, the next night, again! There is something to that, little brother,” she said.
“It’s a small town,” Mike quickly added.
“Not that small. Besides, what did you say?” Ash started.
“Stop it!” Mike held his hand up.
“The saddest goodbye to a person you didn’t even know,” Ash said thoughtfully. “I thought that was really beautiful! You can be so sentimental, you know.”
“WHAT?” I heard myself screech.
Ash did a double take and looked at me strangely. Suddenly, the air around us was thick with uncomfortableness (is that a word?). I could almost feel it buzzing around me. I tried not to look at Mike, but something compelled me to glance over into his eyes . . . green eyes. Emerald pools. Lush, tropical jungles. There was no way to describe how green they really were. I looked and then I slipped and then I fell into them. I could hear a sound in my head that accompanied the fall. It sounded like two great things colliding together. Thumping. My eyes locked with his and I couldn’t pull them away.
“Waaaaiiiiit.” Ash jumped up and looked down at the two of us. “Why are you looking at each other like that? Why are you giving each other that look?”
“What look?” I asked innocently.
“There’s no look,” Mike mumbled, next to me.
“Oh, yes, there is. I saw a look!” Ash folded her arms and looked from me to Mike and back again.
I shook my head at her quickly and then looked away as I felt my cheeks get warm.
“Hang on . . . Have you guys met? Do you know each other?” she asked.
I shook my head even more. “No.”
“Never met her in my life,” Mike grumbled.
“NO!” Ash exclaimed, so loudly that I flinched in fright. “NOOO!” she said again.
I looked up at her. “No, what?”
She pointed her finger at me and started wagging it up and down. “I see. I see.” She sounded terribly excited.
“Ash, please.” Mike jumped out of his seat.
“You’re her! I don’t believe it.” Her eyes were as wide as saucers, and then she burst out laughing. “Is this her?” she asked, looking straight at her brother.
“Me? What? Who?” I stood up now, too, totally confused. I was at least three sentences behind in this conversation. I’d zoned out somewhere around Ash saying something about Mike feeling something for me, or something . . . “What?” I asked again.
“You’re the girl that Mike caught climbing over the fence,” she said to me. It was a statement, not a question. “Did you know Mike stayed here?” Ash asked. “Is that why you booked in?”
I shook my head. “No. I had no idea he lived here.”
“Oh, wow!” She threw her arms in the air now. �
��I need a minute to process this all.” Ash paced the room a few times, looking highly amused. “You’re the ‘hot out-of-towner’ that he found climbing over the fence and then met at the bar the other night when he came home late. The one that . . .” She burst out laughing again and raised her hands to her mouth. “You’re kidding! No wonder he looked so shocked when he saw you in the library! This is perfect.”
“The one that what?” I asked.
“Ash, please. No!” Mike was begging now, and Ash was shaking her head from side to side.
“This is priceless. This is like the best thing that has ever happened. I mean, the girl you dubbed ‘best kisser in the world’ checked into our B and B, by accident. The poor woman who you ran out on, mid make-out sesh, to help Mrs. Van der Merwe!” Then she turned to me. “This is all making so much sense now. You didn’t have a stomach bug last night, did you? I was soo sure I’d heard you in the passage, and then, when I opened the door, I was sure I saw you running away. You saw Mike! That’s why you didn’t come to dinner, right?” She looked at me and was nodding happily to herself.
My eyes drifted back to Mike. “Best kisser in the world?”
Ash burst out laughing. “Oh my God! This is brilliant. This is truly amazing.”
“You told her I was the best kisser in the world?” I looked at Mike. I was harping, I knew that, but it was really all I’d heard.
He looked flushed in the face now. A little embarrassed. He nodded.
“Oh, he tells me everything,” Ash said.
“What?” My eyes widened in shock.
She shrugged. “No, not that much!” she said sarcastically. “But just enough . . . and you are quite the jailbird, aren’t you?” She looked at me with a massive smile. “Wait—your real name isn’t Sam, is it? Don’t you have a strange name, like Pebble or—”
“Pebecca,” I cut her off.
“That’s right!” She snapped her fingers. “So, let me get this straight . . . you broke into that weird eco place, Mike arrested you and ran you out of town, and then you . . . what? Snuck back, chose a fake name and checked into this place . . . by accident ?”
I started nodding my head.
“Wow. You really aren’t a very good criminal, are you?” Ash sat down and crossed her legs. She leaned back on the couch and watched us for a while. “My God, this story is insane. I love it. I can’t wait to tell Emelia.” She burst out laughing again and then stood up and started walking towards the door. She was almost in hysterics now.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I asked, as she started to exit.
“Uh . . . I’m leaving. I think you guys can manage to keep each other awake all night . . . Besides, a little black-crested night budgie told me you might have some unfinished business.” She laughed even harder and then disappeared out the room and closed the door behind her. I heard her laughing all the way to the other end of the house. Suddenly, Mike and I felt very, very alone.
CHAPTER 43
I stared at the closed door in a kind of stuck-in-the-mud horror. The kind where your body feels like it’s sinking into the ground . . . slowly. My body felt like it was getting heavier, and heavier. As if it were being pushed down by something. Well, I’ll tell you what it was being pushed down by: the thick, heavy air of Awkwardness! (capital A, exclamation mark) that was filling the room. I could feel his presence behind me, I could hear his soft breathing, smell his cologne, but I dared not turn around. We froze there together for a few moments, as if we were both trying to disappear, until it became unbearable to no longer talk. I turned around slowly and looked at him.
“Well . . .” I stuttered. Dry, scratchy throat.
“Well,” he echoed.
“This is not awkward. At all,” I said.
“Not at all.” I heard Mike swallow.
“What else did you tell your sister? I mean . . . did you tell her—?”
“No! Not any details!” he jumped in. “Just the bare necessities.”
“Bare? I hope you didn’t tell her about anything that was bare?” I replied. “Not that we were very bare, actually. Just partly bare. Not all the way . . . bare.” How many times could I say the word bare in a sentence? Clearly too many, judging by the small smile that was beginning to play on his face.
“No bare details were shared. I’m a man who doesn’t kiss and tell.” He stepped closer to me and smiled. I smiled back, stupidly. His big, green, smiling eyes were a little like a drug. One hit, and you were addicted. One hit, and you needed more. One hit, and you were always searching for the next one. But then he took a step backward and started walking away from me.
“What?” I said, with a clear hint of desperation in my voice.
He continued to back up, until he reached the wall. He leaned against it and folded his arms.
“We should probably finish that conversation we were having at the hospital,” he said, so abruptly that the mood in the room changed once more.
I nodded. “Sure.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I just . . . I . . . You were . . .” he stuttered. He sounded frustrated with me and like he was searching for the right words to use. “You aren’t supposed to be here—you know that, right?” He said, sounding frustrated.
“I know! I know!” I said. “But aren’t you just a tiny bit glad I am here?” I looked up at him and smiled.
I could see he was fighting it. I could see it in the way his forehead was crinkling and that sexy scar above his eyebrow was quivering. But then, slowly, surely, tentatively . . . a smile.
I felt myself go weak inside. Like something bendable and malleable. “You felt something for me?” I heard myself ask in a very breathy voice.
His smile grew. “Don’t push it,” he said. “Technically, I should be arresting you, right here and now.”
“So why don’t you?” I asked.
“Well, you’re injured.” He pointed at my head. I’d almost forgotten about that. “Maybe when you’ve recovered in the morning, I’ll arrest you.” I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not.
“And lock me in what jail cell?” I asked, with a smile.
“You know, if those cat people see you again, I might not be able to stop them from pressing charges,” he said, in a very serious tone.
“It’s a good thing the cat parade is over, then, and that Greta thinks she saw Liza Minnelli instead.”
At that, Mike laughed. “It really didn’t look anything like you.”
I shook my head. “No.” I smiled at him and he smiled back.
“You know, I’m really trying to be angry with you, right now, but you’re making it very hard. Because I should be angry with you!” He pointed at me, now. “I really, really should be furious with you.”
“But you’re not?” I asked.
“Unfortunately.” He pushed himself off the wall and walked into the middle of the room and looked around.
“So, what do you want to do?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Watch The Bachelor ?”
“I’ll watch anything else but that.” He moved back towards the couch and sat down. I sat down, too.
“Mike?” I asked.
“Becca?”
“What’s going to happen in the morning? Are you going to run me out of town again?”
I felt his shoulders shrug next to me. “I don’t know. I really don’t know what to do with you. You’re like a boomerang that keeps coming back. If I ran you out of town again, I’d probably find you up another ladder or fence somewhere tomorrow.”
“I think my climbing-up-things days are over.”
“Well, they should be. You suck at climbing,” he replied.
I laughed a little. “I do.”
There was a little lull in the conversation. A pause. I waited for him to speak again.
“Did you really, really not know I lived here?” he asked, looking over at me.
I locked eyes with him. “Honestly, honestly, I had no idea you lived here. Not until I saw you when I w
as coming for dinner.”
He smiled at this and then shook his head. “That’s crazy,” he said, half under his breath, “that, out of all the places in town, you landed up here.”
“There weren’t many free rooms to choose from,” I said.
He nodded. “We’ve only just finished that room, Ash put it up on the booking site a couple of days ago.”
“I must have seen it moments after it was listed, then.” I smiled at him.
Another silence fell over us and this time I could see something, an emotion, playing in his eyes.
I cleared my throat. “I broke a promise to you when I came back to town. And I feel really bad for that. I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded. “What are you really researching in this town?” he asked.
A bolt of guilt-tinged anxiety shot through me. I didn’t want to lie to him. But this story had just taken on a whole other meaning, because he was now involved in it personally. Shit! It suddenly hit me how terrible this was. Secretly researching his family. Staying in their home. Enjoying their hospitality when I was really just . . . using them? I was such a bad person.
“The book is set in a small town . . . I was just trying to get a feel for one, that’s all,” I stuttered.
“Why this town, specifically?” he asked.
“I googled ‘Best small towns in South Africa’ and this came up. It looked quaint and perfect.”
He looked at me for a while, his eyes peeling back my layers, trying to look inside. “I’ve asked this before, but, seriously, is researching your book really worth all this trouble? You got injured today, for heaven’s sake!”
“That was an accident. I just wanted to see the library. I couldn’t sleep and I needed a distraction.”
“And yesterday you were the most wanted person in town.”
I got up and walked around in a small circle. And then I stopped. “I’ve had two years to write this book. TWO! And do you know how many words I’ve written? Zero—that’s how many.” I shook my head. “I’ve had this writer’s block . . . No, it’s more than that. I’ve been plagued by this fear, this terror that maybe I only ever had one book in me. And how the hell am I supposed to write another one that can compete with the last one’s success? How is that even possible? What if it fails? What if it’s not as good? What if no one buys it? What if it gets bad reviews? What if . . . ? What if . . . ?” My anxiety was rising by the second.
