Page 48 of Saving Mr. Bell

“Take anything you need.” I cut a meatball in half and ate it. “And then what?”

“I’m supposed to fly to France.”

“And what, just pick up where you left off?” There was no keeping the disdain out of my voice. “Will your father be there?”

Another sidelined meatball joined the first as Rudolf shrugged again. “I doubt it. He’s probably back in Hertfordshire.”

Hertfordshire was where the family home was. It was the same place where the documentary crew and I had filmed, the mansion big enough to house all of us until Jeremiah had given us our marching orders and virtually had us escorted off thepremises. “Won’t he want to see you? He’ll have been worried, surely?”

“I don’t know.” Rudolf gave up on any pretense of eating after only a few mouthfuls and pushed his plate away. “Sorry. I’m not hungry.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine because it had me concerned what would happen when Rudolf left here. Would he slide straight back into the hedonistic lifestyle that stopped him from having to think? “You don’t have to go tomorrow.” And there they were, the words I’d been doing my best not to say in case they sounded too desperate. “You can stay here. I’ve rented this place right through to the week after New Year.Wecan stay here. It’s been fun, right?”

A longer smile this time, genuine warmth in this one. “It has been fun. I won’t say I’ve enjoyed every minute because the first day was decidedly rocky. You know, what with my brush with hypothermia… But after that.”

“So… stay. When the car comes tomorrow, tell it to drive away. Tell them you’ll come back under your own steam, that you’re taking Christmas and New Year off.”

Rudolf reached up to massage his neck while he contemplated my words. He’d say yes and everything would be alright. We’d continue the way we’d been. Lost in our own little bubble of happiness. “I can’t,” he finally said. “Life doesn’t work like that.”

I leaned forward, any interest in my meal long gone. “Who says? We’re in charge of our own destiny.”

“It’s a lovely fantasy.”

“It’s not a fantasy. You can be anything you want to be, whether that’s Rudolf Bell, world-renowned concert pianist, or Rudolf Bell, gardener.”

“Gardener!” He raised an eyebrow. “Where did that come from?”

I shrugged. “You’re good with an axe. I guess I went from axe to spade. But, my point is that what you do doesn’t define you. It’s just one part of you. You’re so much more than that.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

He smiled. “You’re sweet.”

“But?”

“But nothing. I was just making an observation that Arlo Thomas, the man who asks the hard-hitting questions in his documentaries, is actually quite sweet.”

“Yeah well,” I grumbled. “What I do doesn’t define me either.”

“I have to go tomorrow. I’m just putting off the inevitable if I don’t.”

The annoying thing was he was right. Out of the two of us, he was the one being objective about the situation. “I could come with you.” I hadn’t known I was going to make the offer until the words were already out there. It made sense, though, the idea gaining substance in my mind. I could look out for him. Do what no one else in his life seemed willing to do. Put the man first rather than his career.

“No.” The immediate rebuttal might have been delivered softly, but it didn’t stop it from stinging like a bitch, and I had to work hard to keep my expression neutral. “I have to face up to things on my own. There’s going to be a lot of questions asked about where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing.”

“Tell them to fuck off. Tell them it’s none of their business. Tell them you’ve had enough of dancing to their tune.”

Rudolf took my plate and his over to the sink and started filling it with water. “You telling me what to do is no better than them telling me what to do.”

Ouch!That shut me up. Because I was guilty of that. I hadn’t turned up at his hotel and asked him if he wanted to come away with me. I’d just taken it upon myself to decide for him.Therefore, no matter how difficult it was, I had to let him do what he thought was right. This wasn’t about me. It was about him.

We didn’t have sex that night, and I was glad. It would have felt like a melancholy act, a goodbye that I didn’t want to say. Instead, we lay wrapped in each other’s embrace, the darkness enshrouding us. I wanted to tell him how I felt, but doing that would put pressure on him.

“Are you still awake?” I finally asked when the silence had gone on for too long.

“Yeah. Just thinking.”

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