Page 47 of The Spark

‘I thought you got those theatre tickets and booked the restaurant for us.’

‘Baby, it was all for us.’

Baby? He’d never called me that the entire time I’d known him. The logo of his shirt caught my eye, and I felt something detach in my chest.

‘Neve. Sorry.’ He shook his head, rubbed his face. ‘It’s... I’m tired.’

He’d seemed wide awake until about thirty seconds ago.

‘Your parents did it all,’ I realised, out loud. ‘Bought the theatre tickets. Booked the restaurant. You only invited me here because they cancelled.’

He didn’t say anything to that, though he did thrust his hands into his pockets with the faintest hint of defiance.

I stared at him, the truth excruciating. ‘You let me think...’ But I couldn’t carry on talking. I was gutted in a way there simply wasn’t words for. I thought Jamie had planned the whole night we’d just enjoyed. Put time and effort into thinking about what I might like.

‘Neve,’ he whispered, sitting down next to me.

I felt two opposing forces at work in my gut – to push him away, and pull him closer. I knew we were short-circuiting, and the sensation scared me.

He put an arm around me, rubbing a slow figure-of-eight between my shoulder blades with one hand in that way he knew I loved. ‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘What’s this really about?’

I wanted to tell him I was scared of losing him. That deep down, I was worried he would end up loving it here so much he wouldn’t want to come home. But in that moment, I felt wrong-footed for some reason.

‘You have no idea how much I love you, do you?’ Jamie said, before leaning forward and kissing me, my face between his palms.

That night, for the first time ever, the sex felt awkward. Jamie’s bedroom was so tiny, the king-sized bed practically jammed into it, we kept banging our limbs on the walls. The space was cold as a fridge because of the air-con, so cold it gave me goose pimples. I remember feeling conscious of how I looked in a way I never had with Jamie before, thinking I should have waited before taking off my make-up, worrying that my hair had been worked up into a little beehive by his hands.

But despite all that, I wanted him in a way that felt raw and deep.

And he wanted me too. I kept the dress on.

Chapter 22.

Now

Ash and I start seeing more of each other. He doesn’t revisit the question he’d been going to ask me that day at the beach, and I am relieved.

We have to work to make the time. But when we do, it’s always for something that fills my heart, like a long, lazy brunch or a late film, a candlelit bistro supper.

Dating Ash feels romantic. Dating Leo was more like dodging enemy fire.

If Ash has trust issues, after what went on with Tabitha, I never detect them. He is unfailingly open-hearted and thoughtful – messaging if I have a big presentation at work, suggesting a late drink to help me wind down, offering to call his guy when my boiler packs up. There are no obvious clues that he’s nervous about getting into something with me, or that he’s holding anything back. If he is, he’s very good at hiding it.

‘Gabi would laugh if she could see me now,’ he says to me one Sunday morning, over coffee and pastries at Bread Source.

I smile. ‘Would she? Why?’

‘All this being up with the lark and eating breakfast like a functional human... I used to spend a lot of time just lazing around in bed, waiting till it was time to go out again.’ He sips his coffee, meets my eye across the rim of the cup. ‘I’m so glad you never knew me back then.’

‘But your sister still misses that version of you?’

‘So she says.’

‘Why, though? If you were basically a jail sentence waiting to happen.’

He laughs. ‘That actually sums it up pretty well. I don’t know – maybe because she’s still kind of... back in that place, waiting for me.’ He looks wistful for a moment before his eyes return to mine. ‘It’s nice that I can talk to you about this stuff.’

‘I like that you do.’

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