Page 64 of The Fall-Out

‘Shall I open this?’ I took the champagne from him.

‘I think we could both do with a drink.’

I poured two glasses and we sat on the sofa, a polite few inches of fabric between us. We clinked our glasses and drank. He asked me about work and I did the same. We talked about the weather – how boiling it was in London but Aberdeen was still cool during the day and chilly at night.

I began to panic. I was shy and awkward around him in a way I’d never been, with none of the easy companionability I’d felt before. It felt like there wasn’t just one elephant in the room but a whole herd of them, waving their trunks and stomping all over my carefully curated romantic evening.

‘Have you heard from Zara?’ I asked carefully.

Patch shook his head. Then he said, ‘Look, is that lasagne almost ready?’

I thought, Shit. Now he can’t wait to eat and get the hell out of here, and I don’t blame him. ‘Just a couple of minutes.’

‘My mum reckons it’s best if you leave it to rest for a bit. Like, half an hour or so.’

‘Really?’ Now we were exchanging cooking tips. There’s no coming back from this, I thought.

But when I looked at him, he met my eyes with a smile that suggested food was the last thing on his mind. The butterflies sprang back to life inside me.

‘I’ll take it out of the oven,’ I said.

My legs suddenly seemed to have been replaced by strands of wet spaghetti. I got up and opened the oven door, leaning my face into the blast of hot air to hide the fact that I was blushing. I lifted the dish out and put it on the worktop, then turned off the gas.

Patch poured more champagne into our glasses.

‘This is all kinds of weird,’ he said gently. ‘It is for me, anyway, and I reckon for you too.’

I nodded, taking a gulp of my drink, the bubbles tingling my nose.

‘I care about you, Naomi,’ he went on. ‘I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t feel right for you.’

‘Same,’ I muttered.

‘Come here,’ he said.

I put the oven gloves down and stepped towards him, into the warm circle of his arms. He held me tenderly, stroking my hair. And then I felt what I’d felt before, by the canal in Camden – a steady flame of desire like the pilot light on a boiler that burns unnoticed in the background until you turn up the heating.

I turned my face up to his and kissed him on the lips, hesitantly at first and then more passionately, remembering what it had been like that night, the feel of his back and shoulders under my hands both familiar and exciting.

His hands moved from my hair to my face, down to my arms, round my waist, touching me like I was made of glass. But I didn’t feel fragile – I felt suddenly powerful, ready, sexy.

‘Come on.’ I broke off our kiss and smiled up at him. ‘Bedroom. Let’s do this.’

He laughed. ‘Wow. No messing about, then.’

‘Lots of messing about,’ I promised, reaching up to undo the buttons of his shirt. ‘All the messing about you could possibly want.’

By the time we reached my bed we were both naked, a trail of garments following us from the kitchen, up the stairs and to my door. There was no need to close it because no one would see us.

The light from the landing illuminated his perfect body – the kind of physique I’d thought didn’t exist other than on Greek marble statues and the cover of Men’s Health magazine. But now I could see that – although breathtakingly desirable – he wasn’t flawless after all. There was a mole on his right shoulder, a tiny egg shape of darker skin. He’d missed a bit on his jaw when he was shaving, and I could feel the roughness of it when he kissed me. On his left thigh, right up near his hip, there was a scar – an irregular bit of white skin where no hair grew.

I ran my thumb over it. ‘What happened there?’

‘Gunshot wound,’ he murmured, his voice muffled by my hair. ‘You should see the other guy.’

‘Really?’ I was almost sure he was joking, but not quite.

‘Nah.’ He raised his head and grinned at me. ‘Wiped out off my BMX when I was eight.’

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