Page 85 of Fundamentals in Flirting

Should have kept your mouth shut, the tiny, mean gremlin sneered in my head.

“And then you think I abandoned you the next day? That I didn’t want to see you again?”

“Yes! Yes, all of this, Teddy, but it’s fine. We should just leave it, because we’re good as friendly acquaintances, aren’t we? That’s best?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Hannah.” He was bristling.

“It’s not bullshit if it’s true, Teddy, and you haven’t given me any reason to think otherwise.”

“Hold on, didn’t you read my note? I left it for you the other morning, by the bed?”

My mind flitted back to Aphrodite and the orange juice fiasco, the sodden notepad on the bedside table.

“No.”

He blew out a long sigh. “Well, this explains a lot.”

“It does?” I wasn’t sure what could possibly be in the note that would explain his ghost-like avoidance behaviour. But, whatever.

“Why do you think so little of me?” Teddy demanded, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair.

“What?”

“Why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that I’m some complete arsehole of a human intent on dumping you at any given moment?”

“Because we’re in different leagues. Men like you aren’t seriously interested in women like me. I’m not stupid.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Hey!”

“Do you want to know what was in the note?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me. Maybe it will matter to you, if you just hear me out.”

“All right.” I folded my arms protectively over my chest. “I cannot wait to hear this ground-breaking and poignant prose. Go for it.”

Teddy shot me an irritated glance. “If you’d bothered to read it, you would have known that I had an early flight to Edinburgh from Bristol that morning, to work on the designs for a new visitor centre near Loch Leven, and that the phone reception was really patchy on-site.”

He raised an eyebrow, challenging me to disbelieve him.

“Ok, fine, that’s plausible.”

It was, I suppose.

“And, if you’d not jumped to conclusions that I was such a fucking bastard, and read my words, you would know that I decided not to wake you at 4am because you looked so peaceful and beautiful asleep in my bed. So much so, that I wanted you to stay there forever. That I nearly missed my flight because I didn’t want to leave you.”

He scrubbed his hand up his neck and through his hair again, mussing it so much that my fingers were biting into my arms in an effort not to run my hands through it.

“If you’d actually looked at the carefully written prose, you’d know that turning you down was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, when all I wanted was to tear your clothes off and devour every inch of you.” He paused and swallowed. “If you’d only taken a moment not to run away from me at every opportunity since we first met, you’d know that I fell in love with you when I was eighteen years old, and not a single other person has held a candle to you since.”

I was aware I was staring.

“Your mouth is hanging open, Hannah.”

With deliberate slowness, I pursed my lips together.

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