Not The One (London Lovers #4)

by Amy Daws

  “You can sleep in here. That couch is actually quite comfortable.”

  I frown briefly and then turn around and sit at the foot of the bed. “This is amazing, Liam.”

  He sighs and sits down beside me. “I’m glad you think so. It didn’t look like this when I bought it, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, you’ve done a great job with it.”

  “So you’re okay with staying here?”

  I nod taking note of the long, horizontal mirror on the far wall. I gaze at our reflection for a moment. Watching Liam watch me is an odd feeling. It feels like I’m witnessing something he wouldn’t want me to see. Nerves take flight in my belly and I break eye contact with our reflection. “So what are your plans for the day then?”

  His eyes flash down to my lips and then return to mine before answering, “Well, Stourbridge Common is just across the river. I thought we might head over there for a bit. Walk around maybe? I had the fridge stocked and planned on a barbeque tonight, if you’re alright with that.”

  “I’m a vegetarian now, Liam,” I say flatly.

  His face falls. “Oh, Christ. I didn’t even…shit…um—”

  I silence him with my laughs. “I’m joking, you prat.”

  He grins and nudges me with his shoulder. “Come on. Put on some comfortable shoes. We’ve got to row over.”

  After a quick lesson on rowing, we make it across the river with ease. I actually ask if we could row around a bit longer before heading to the commons and Liam is more than happy to oblige. It isn’t the type of rowboat where the girl just sits there while the man does all the work. It’s a two-seater, racing rowboat. A mini version of what you see in competitive rowing. It’s fun!

  Once we reach the Stourbridge, I’m warm from our efforts so I shed my plaid shirt and tie it around my black shorts. I’m now in a simple white tank top that reveals the straps of my purple bra beneath. I notice Liam’s eyes on my ink, but he surprises me and never asks about them.

  We hike and muddle around the grounds, taking in the beautiful English landscaping. We make small talk about Frank and our jobs. It feels relaxed. Liam speaks kindly of his work but it’s obvious it’s nothing he’s passionate about. I can’t say much considering I’m working as a bartender.

  For the most part, it’s easy with Liam. We avoid the heavy subjects and that helps. After first running into him at Club Taint, the only thoughts that pummeled my mind were the physical acts of our betrayal. That and how utterly awful I was to him after Marisa died. I expected this weekend to be heavily laced with thoughts of her. But right now, my mind is wondering what it would have been like if the two of us would have opened that bridal shop up after Marisa died. If we wouldn’t have slept together, maybe we could have proceeded with our plan?

  He seems happy and in his element here but Frank’s words about Liam just letting life happen around him keeps echoing in my mind. Perhaps on paper, Liam is doing well, but with relationships he’s just as messed up as me.

  After the sun begins to set, Liam indicates that we better head back to the houseboat before it turns dark. “There are no lights on the row boat.” He winks at me.

  Once we cross the river and enter the moor, I have to stop rowing just to take in the grand sight of it all. The moor is a small, private cutout from the river so no waves or wake even touch it. The glass-like water is glittering in the golden twilight as Liam continues to slowly slice the oars into the smooth surface.

  “It’s magical here,” I say, turning in my seat to show him my face of wonder. “It feels ethereal.”

  He pauses, staring at me curiously. Slivers of warm sunlight shine through his messy blond locks as his gaze falls to my arms. “They suit you.”

  “What suits me?”

  “Your tattoos. The sleeve.” I cover my arms self-consciously. “Don’t cover them. I mean it, Rey. You had the roses back in Oxford, but not all this.” His eyes move down my arm and pause on the pocket watch. “They’re gorgeous on you. Like they should have always been there.”

  My posture straightens at his sincere words. “Thanks. You have any?”

  “Nope…Not yet.” He begins rowing again.

  I turn and start rowing again. “So you want one?”

  “I’ve had an idea for one for a while.”

  I glance over my shoulder. “You should get it. What’s stopped you?”

  “Life, I suppose.”

  As we pull back up along the backside of the houseboat, I see a blank space for a boat name. “I see there’s no name on your boat. Don’t guys like to name their boats? You referred to it as a ‘her’ though, so do you have a name in mind?”

  Liam looks introspective for a moment. “I keep waiting for something to come to me…but so far, nothing quite fits. It’s always felt like a ‘she’ though.” He smiles fondly and helps me scramble off the rowboat.

  I excuse myself to take a shower and Liam says he’s going to get dinner started. A short while later, I’m in a pair of skinny jeans, a black, loose vintage tank, and flip-flops. My hair is wet down my back and my face is bare. I step onto the deck of the boat and the night sky is twinkling with stars. I smile, taking in the view. You never see stars in London.

  Light music drifts down from land and I look up to find Liam standing at the grill by the garden house. He’s changed into a comfortable pair of jeans and a white fitted t-shirt. His hair is mussed and glowing in the Edison bulbs hanging from the wooden lattice overhang. The entire deck is illuminated in a soft, magical glow.

  As I approach, Liam looks up and smiles softly. His eyes graze down from my face to my body and the intensity in his gaze makes me stop just before the deck. I feel suddenly sick with nerves. Stepping onto this deck right now feels terrifying. It feels like an important decision. One that I’m not sure I can trust myself to make.

  Liam continues to look at me expectantly so I close my eyes to search my mind for the answer. When I open them, he’s standing above me with his hand stretched out. I look at it and then back into his warm, brown gaze.

  Reaching out, I place my hand in his and a comforting warmth casts down over me as I step up onto the same level as him. He guides me over to the entry of the garden house. Inside is a small, rustic end table where he has most of our dinner prepped and ready.

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” he asks.

  I nod and accept the pre-poured glass of red sitting beside the grill. I sip it slowly while walking around and taking in the various produce throughout. “You’ve been busy. Who maintains all this when you’re in London?”

  “A neighbor,” Liam answers, pulling the chicken off the grill and striding into the building. “They live just around the bend.”

  “How often do you come out here?” I glance out the etched glass at the twinkling water and feel star struck at the splendor of it all.

  He shrugs and sets the chicken down next to the bowl of grilled veggies and a loaf of crusty bread. “Once a month. Maybe more?”

  “Have you ever brought anyone out here?” Curiosity is taking over and I’m unable to stop my forward questioning.

  He pauses as he plates our food, pursing his lips in the way he does when he’s trying to be careful with his words. “No,” he finally answers.

  God, I must be glutton for punishment. “Why not?” I hear my voice ask honestly.

  My question looms silently in the air around us as he pulls the chairs up close to the table and gestures for me to sit. He begins eating so I tuck into mine to be polite.

  After a few moments Liam stops eating and takes a sip of his wine, eyeing me over the rim of his glass. “I can’t seem to get close enough to anyone since…since—”

  “Marisa?” I ask, finishing his sentence. Speaking her name out loud adds a heaviness to the air. But it’s a heaviness I’ve been feeling already. Marisa is a huge elephant in the room whether we want to admit it or not. May as well just lay it all out there.

  Liam’s eyes squint briefly. “Yes. Something like
that.” I pause mid chew and swallow as he continues, “I don’t know…this place just seems sacred somehow. I bought the boat on a whim just after graduation and poured all my efforts into making it livable.”

  Our eyes connect as the memories of our words exchanged at graduation loom between us. This. This is one of those moments where Liam and I seem to share an entire conversation without even speaking. My eyes are saying I’m sorry and his eyes are saying he knows.

  “So yeah, it was quite a mess when I got it. Theo came out and helped me refinish all the woodwork. That’s how we became so close.”

  I nod and take another sip of my wine. “It’s funny how we both became close with someone related to Marisa. It’s like we couldn’t fully give her up.”

  He cocks his head and watches me for a moment. “Did Hayden help you…cope?”

  His question should have been expected but the confusion I feel over my answer is unexpected. Did Hayden help me cope? Did anything Hayden and I give each other have any positive effect on us?

  “That’s a hard question to answer,” I reply, honestly.

  “How did you two start hanging out?”

  “About a year after Marisa’s funeral I ran into him at a pub in London. He was wasted and picking a fight with the bartender. I wasn’t much better. We just both seemed to be in the same shitty place at the same shitty time feeling the same shitty way. I don’t know.” I shrug.

  A steely expression fleets over Liam’s face. His jaw muscle ticks and I have to look away from him. The pain I see behind his eyes is too much. I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking he wanted to be there for me. He wanted to help me. But I did what I do best. I pushed him away with all my might.

  He stands up and grabs our empty plates and sets them alongside the grill. Without a word, he walks out to the end of the deck and sits down on the edge, staring out into the darkness. His shoulders are slumped and I could kick myself for the sight of him.

  I stride over to him and sit down beside him, letting my legs hang down into the grass. “What is it Liam?” My voice is shaky as my bare arm grazes his. I can feel a change in him and I hate it. I know what’s coming.

  He turns to face me with a determined look in his eyes. “Can I ask you a personal question, Rey?”

  I arch one brow. “I thought we already were.” The Edison bulbs cast a glow across his eyes as he chuckles sadly.

  “I want to know about your sleeve. Every part of it.”

  That surprises me. And relieves me in some ways. I glance down and rub my hand over the colorful skull located right over my tricep. “It’s a sugar skull. Have you ever heard of Dia de los Meurtos?” He shakes his head and turns so he’s facing me. He grabs my arm and traces his fingertip lightly over the design. The sensation is thrilling but morose at the same time. The design feels so personal and intimate.

  “It’s the Day of the Dead. Mostly it just means death, spirituality…remembrance. It’s on November first. It’s like the Mexican Halloween sort of. The Mexican culture makes these clay molded sugar skulls on that date. They paint and decorate them really beautifully and then on the forehead they would write the name of the departed. You put the skull on the gravestone and it encourages the departed to appear on that day.”

  “Does it work?” Liam asks.

  I shrug my shoulders. “I’ve never actually made one. Just the tattoo.”

  “And the sunflowers?” he asks moving his finger around the bouquet over my arm.

  Swallowing against the butterflies that his touch causes, I reply. “Marisa has an uncanny way of appearing to me in my dreams…like a lot. And every time she shows up…it’s always sunny.” I laugh self-deprecatingly.

  “Really?” His brown eyes are swimming with wonder.

  “Yeah, in fact, I had a dream of her and this entire tattoo design before she even died. Crazy, right? Do you ever dream of her?”

  His lips purse, deep in thought, as he touches the pocket watch on my wrist. I’m sure he doesn’t need to ask the meaning behind that one. He knows Marisa’s time of death just like I do.

  “I’ve only dreamt of her once.” He looks away suddenly, dropping his head down to his chest.

  “What’s wrong, Liam?”

  He clears his throat. “Nothing. I’m just suddenly feeling very tired.”

  “We can go to bed if you want.”

  He nods and gets up to turn off all the lights. Once he’s closed everything up, he comes back over to me and watches me from the deck. His whole body is tense with something major.

  “What is it, Liam? Just tell me!”

  He shakes his head. I can barely see his eyes in the dark. “Do you ever just feel like you’ve lost so much time, Rey? Time that we can never get back?”

  “I don’t know, I guess. I’ve never really been good at managing much in my life…Definitely not time.”

  He shakes his head, a flicker of disappointment marring his handsome face. “Let’s just go to bed.”

  We head back to the boat and it’s a charged silence as we both quietly get ready for bed. Whatever thought Liam is battling isn’t something he’s interested in discussing and that’s probably for the best. This weekend is about rekindling a friendship…not raking each other over the coals for our poor life choices.

  “Are you dressed?” Liam’s voice asks from the doorway.

  I pull down my long white T-shirt that hits mid thigh. “Yes.”

  He emerges in the doorway in a pair of shorts and nothing else. My mouth feels dry as my eyes flick over every corded ripple of muscle on his abs, chest, and arms. Looking away nervously I begin pulling down the covers on the bed to distract myself.

  “Do you have everything you need?” I glance up and his eyes are sad and watchful on me. I nod silently. “Alright,” he moves toward me and for a minute my heart takes flight up into my throat. He leans in and kisses me on the cheek, pausing by my ear. “Sleep well, Rey.”

  I clear my throat and nod woodenly. I watch him walk out and nearly drop to the floor at the overwhelming urgency I have to taste that cinnamon smell on him.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  I’m walking down a narrow set of stairs to a dingy and dark basement. There’s old carpet tile squares scattered haphazardly around the floor revealing concrete below. An overweight guy with a long goatee is sitting on a stool in the corner playing with a tattoo gun and smoking a cigarette.

  He looks at me expectantly, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke. “What do you want?”

  “Reyna wants a tat,” Jessica answers for me. Jessica was a girl I knew from school that dropped out two months ago. We were both only fifteen.

  “How old are you?” The man glares at me knowingly.

  “Eighteen,” I answer confidently.

  “Got cash?” I nod and hold out a large wad of twenties that I had stolen from my mother’s purse.

  “Know what you want?” he barks.

  I nod again and hand over a sketch I designed myself.

  “I only do free hand,” he grunts.

  “Works for me.”

  He didn’t wear gloves and he never cleaned the needles. He just propped me on a stool and began carving into my collarbone like I was a damn Halloween pumpkin. I cried the entire time. The pain was so intense, my entire body was shaking. He’d scoff at me and ask if he needed to stop and I said no every time.

  Suddenly, my mother appears right beside me, looking down on the ink being sliced into my skin. My eyes alight with determination.

  “Look, Mother! Look! I got a tattoo,” I cry excitedly.

  Her face splits into a large smile. “What does it say, my Miracle?” she asks, her voice calm.

  Anger explodes in my fiery veins at her less than desired reaction. I glance down to find the man has disappeared and my ink is complete. Three beautiful black roses wrap around the words: We All Die Young. It was stunning.

  This tattoo was meant to be the ultimate fuck you to my mother and here she is smiling at me!
“What does it say? It says we all die young, Mom. It says I’m dead inside.”

  “Reyna Miracle, that’s an interesting choice. I’m glad you’ve found a way to express yourself.”

  “Express myself? That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Yes honey, I’m proud of you…always!” Her smile remains.

  “Fuck you!” I scream. “That’s what you should be saying! You should be screaming at me for being an idiot! For getting a tattoo from a dirty guy in a crack house who didn’t wear gloves and didn’t wash his hands!”

  Suddenly the room around us disappears and it’s just my mother and me in a cloud of smoke. I glare into her blue eyes and yell, “You should be saying that you wished I wasn’t the one that lived! You should be saying that one of the other babies would have been a better daughter than me.”

  “Reyna, no. You are my miracle always.”

  “I’m not, Mom! I’m not a miracle. I’m a fifteen-year-old who just got her first tattoo!”

  “That doesn’t take away your specialness.”

  “I hate you! I hate you for looking at me like I’m a miraculous survivor. I wish I would have died with them!”

  I jolt up, screaming in agony as the sensation of a needle pierces through my collarbone. I swear I can still feel the residual pain of the fresh ink.

  “Rey, are you alright?” Liam says looking groggy and out of breath as he runs up to the bed.

  “Holy shit,” I say breathing heavily, looking around and realizing I’m back in Liam’s houseboat. I’m no longer a fifteen-year-old in a basement. “Holy shit…it was a dream but…but…it hurts.”

  “What hurts?” he asks worriedly.

  “My collarbone.” I touch the three black roses. “I just dreamt that I got the tattoo and I swear it still hurts.” I check for scabs or any signs of freshness and there’s nothing.

  “Just a sec,” Liam says, leaving me and going into the bathroom. I hear him turn the water on and glance at the clock to see it’s one in the morning. He returns with a wash cloth and climbs up on the bed next to me, placing it on my ink.