Page 44 of You Belong With Me

‘Not unless you take that hat off,’ Elliot said. ‘Why are you dressed like you’re in a novelty skiffle band?’

‘I’m taking no fashion lessons from disco tits Morrissey here.’

‘There’s a pool?’ Edie said. ‘Amazing.’

‘I’ll show you …’ Fraser said, bowing, extending his hand.

‘Give Edie a chance to drop her coat and we’ll join you,’ Elliot said, gently lowering Fraser’s arm and ushering Edie towards the lift.

‘Literally drop the coat, Edie, not anything else. Don’t be taking her hostage for your dark purposes. No evil cradling!’ Fraser said, as Elliot grimaced.

‘Fraser please take it down by at least seventy-eight per cent, if not a hundred.’

His brother ignored him, checking his watch and pointing two fingers at his own eyes, then two fingers back at Elliot’s, with a meaningful boggling stare, before departing.

Inside the lift, which had other occupants, Elliot said quietly to Edie with a heavy sigh:‘Every so often, I remember my parents saying: thank God Fraser doesn’t do my job, because it would be like a coked-up raccoon hijacking a 747.’

‘He’d get “Sex on Fire” on the sound system and fly it straight to Tahiti.’

‘And it’d crash into a mountain range while he was chatting up one of the bound and gagged air hostesses,’ Elliot said. ‘Heeeeyyyy, so do you want to grab a drink when we land?’

Edie glimpsed her starstruck, happy little face in the elevator mirror.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ Elliot mouthed, and Edie wilted at the thought of being alone together.

23

‘Right, cursed object phone is on silent until tomorrow,’ Elliot said, putting it in his pocket.

He locked the door, revealing his intentions, taking his sunglasses off and throwing them on the bed, in such a way that Edie suspected she’d be the next thing thrown on the bed.

‘My case is here already!’ she said, thinking she sounded like an easily impressed provincial. The room was standard Elliot Owen: modish frame-only four poster, multiple zones to the living quarters, and vast marble bathroom stretching onwards towards the north of England in the distance.

‘More importantly, you are here,’ Elliot said, focusing on her. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘How much?’ Edie said.

‘I’ll show you,’ Elliot said, and Edie felt all willpower dissolve as he moved in to kiss her.

‘Elliot… we don’t want to arrive an hour late, looking pointedly dishevelled?’ she said, as they gathered a particular momentum.

‘Don’t you? I do,’ Elliot said, untying the belt on her coatand starting to unbutton it. ‘I want to turn up looking like we were rescued from the Outback in a heatwave, after a fortnight of drinking our piss.’

‘Dammit, you know how to get a woman in the mood.’

They paused getting off to laugh foolishly, and Edie thought it was their real superpower. The one that might outlast thescrabbling to get each other’s clothes offera. That said, ever feeling indifferent about that seemed impossible. Elliot was a lavish gift unwrapped on Christmas Day, and she could barely believe she got to keep him.

They were interrupted by an artificial sound, which Edie realised was Elliot’s phone making the iPhone tin can rattle ring tone.

‘Not on silent?’ she said disapprovingly.

‘Fucking Fraser on fucking bypass …’ Elliot said, digging it back out of his jeans pocket. ‘You, my parents, and him are all on a setting sosilentdoesn’t apply.’

‘Oh.’

Edie could hardly still disapprove.

Elliot scanned, hung his head, and read aloud in a psychopath monotone, as if the text was a letter from the Zodiac Killer: ‘Seriously, I can SENSE IT IS UNDERWAY. GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER. I know your room number. I will come and play “Galway Girl” outside your door until you lose wood. FIVE MINUTES to the tin whistle if your tin whistle is outside your Levi’s.’

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