Page 62 of An Unexpected Kind of Love

“Well…” Indirectly, I suppose. The filming led me to Blake. Unavoidable Blake, who I kept crashing into, like some sort of gravitational osmosis that I couldn’t escape. I’m far from one to believe in fate. More like forced proximity due to the small patch of turf between my shop and their filming setup.

And part of me bristles at the fact Eli thinks I just sit around in some sort of void, waiting for his call. Like I don’t have anything else in my life. Or anyone. Like that afternoon in the shop when he stopped by and saw the bouquet.

“I’m out of town,” I confess, emotion caught in my throat this time.

“Fuck, and I’m going on. Sorry. But—” I can hear Eli’s frown over the line. “Why are you out of town?”

“Mini-break,” I say simply. “You might’ve heard of them?”

Eli had delighted in out-of-town trips. Usually, I had to work Saturdays, which is how Gemma came to be hired as the weekend help, so we could occasionally get away. Then, maddeningly, by the time we broke up, I had come to rely on her to let me make the odd weekday errands and have the occasional weekend off, back when the shop was doing a little better.

Back when I was with Eli, and I had places to go.

And again I feel a wave of irritation that he thinks I wouldn’t want to go anywhere on my own. “You don’t think I like taking a break now and again?”

“I’m sure you do, but”—there’s a long pause—“you don’t really have the spare money, do you?”

“Fuck you, Eli,” I snap at last, irritation reaching a flashpoint. God, he knows how to provoke me, and clearly he wants to fight with everyone tonight. “I’m out of town because I have a life that exists beyond you. Hard to imagine I’m not sat alone in my bedsit forever, I know. I’m not in some vacuum, waiting for your call. I need to go now and get back to bed. I suggest you go home and do the same.”

“Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have rung; it was a mistake.”

“Obviously.”

More awkward silence. We exchange some agonizingly awkward goodbyes and hang up.

I wipe my eyes on the cuff of my oversize hoodie. Stupid arsehole. Focusing on my tea instead, it’s grounding, some familiar comfort, though I’m hundreds of miles from home, with a man that I’m only starting to know. A man who doesn’t have the weight of history like Eli does, for better or for worse. Eli, who knows what buttons to push, how to play me till I’m wound like a top careening wildly.

Fuck, I really hope Blake didn’t hear any of that. Once the tea’s finished, I slink back to bed. If he’s awake, he shows no sign of stirring, and so I curl up around him.

Sleep doesn’t come for ages and I’m left far too alone with the agony of my Eli-related thoughts.

Chapter Fifteen

The next morning is cool and rainy. Dark clouds hang low, practically scraping their bellies on the woods that surround us. In our waterproofs after breakfast, we head out early to take advantage of the beauty outside of our door before we have to return to the reality of London later tonight. We walk a track along a small, meandering creek.

“Are you going to tell me about that 3:00 a.m. call?” Blake asks after we’ve been walking for about twenty minutes. We’ve already gone through a lightning round of bean trivia:a bean named after an organ—kidney bean.Bean with an identity crisis—fava, faba, or broad bean, the Janus of beans.

I cringe and give Blake a sidelong glance. He’s in a black waterproof, hood up, wearing a wry expression. My heart’s in my throat or quite possibly caught in my mouth at this point.

“I was hoping you’d missed that,” I confess. “There’s not much to say. It’s not important. It was a round of stupidity, to be honest.”

“It sounded…heated.”

“I guess, by the end.” I pause and sigh, shifting my pack on my shoulder. I’m in everything blue: blue waterproof, blue bag, even blue thermals underneath it all. And, to be honest, I feel lost this morning in a bit of a blue place. Trust Eli to provoke me, to stir things up that I thought had been put to rest last year. “It was just my ex. Being stupid.”

“Oh?” Blake’s expression is hard to read. Remote.

“He had a fight with his boyfriend. Eli apparently decided calling me was the appropriate response.” I roll my eyes. “The man made his own bed and he should go lie in it. I told him to go deal.”

“Makes sense.” We resume walking, side by side. He glances at me again. “This is the same ex you told me about?”

My only ex.

“Um. Yeah.”

“The one you got the heart tattoo for?”

Double cringe. I give him a sharp look back. “Well…yes. To be honest. I was young and dumb. Dumber than I am now. I’d like to think I’ve wised up with age.”

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