Page 105 of You Belong With Me

‘Not sure about it, are you?’ he whispered, holding it up against his chest. ‘Am I trying to run 1920s Chicago with an iron fist?’

‘You look good in anything,’ Edie said, rolling her eyes.

‘Even with my Beetlejuice complexion?’

‘Even as a dead miscreant jester.’

Elliot sat down to pull the trousers on, then shrugged the shirt on and buttoned it. ‘Wait, where’s my flower thingy?’

‘Over there.’ Edie indicated a writing desk in the bay window. ‘With your tie and cufflinks.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

He carried on scurrying around, piecing immaculateBest Mantogether, while Edie investigated the cable channels on a television in a wooden box. It was a pleasant gender reversal to have the man finicking over his appearance and Edie ready and at a loose end.

‘The Pepsi account, by the way,’ Elliot called from the bathroom. ‘Any news?’

‘Oh my God! I meant to tell you! We got it!’

‘Edie, amazing!’

He put his face round the door so he could exchange a smile with her: ‘When you talked me through it, I felt sure you would. Brilliant.’

‘Thank you.’

Edie wiggled her heels in satisfaction on the quilt: satinblack Mary Jane courts with a glitzy buckle. They gave her a pleasing undulation when she walked, an extra inch and a half in height, and despite the gel insoles, would no doubt cripple her later.

Hard not to think of the last time she was dolled-up for an occasion like this. Thank God she was so far away from it, in so many ways.

When Elliot emerged, mid-toothbrushing, Edie was supine, feeling self-congratulatory.

‘By the way, did Declan say anything amorous, on your trip to London?’

‘Er. Sort of,’ Edie said as an empty, embarrassed reflex.

Thinking about how to broach what had gone on there with Elliot – and whether to broach it at all – was an ongoing internal debate. Declan appearing to insult her to deflect others from realising he had feelings for her was something Elliot had done, once. This echo made her even more sympathetic towards Declan’s predicament, yet that similarity was likely to make it worse from Elliot’s point of view.

But she knew she couldn’t lie to Elliot now he’d asked and amend it later. It would break fundamental things between them if she did.

‘Somethingwassaid? What happened to promising to tell me?’

‘I wasn’t sure if it qualified.’

‘Did he say he had feelings?’

‘… Yes.’

‘Then why wouldn’t it qualify?’

‘He didn’t mean to tell me. I saw a message from his sister that I wasn’t meant to.’

Elliot looked quite shellshocked. ‘In other words, you were respecting his confidence instead of keeping your promise to me. There’s that adrenaline I ordered.’

‘No! It wasn’t that at all …’ Edie started.

She berated herself for not foreseeing it could come out like this. She didn’t think in the melee of Fraser and Molly tying the knot, Elliot would spend a second on it. She’d not considered the way this issue uniquely troubled him.

‘He didn’t intend me to see anything …’

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