Page 75 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
Instead he’s leaning over to take her hand again, as if he’s comforting her.
‘I guessed,’ he says, holding her hand firmly. ‘It’s all right.’
All right.All right.
Now she really wants to cry. Who says that being loved is justall right?
‘It’s not,’ she says, and it almost hiccups out of her. ‘Because you don’t love me back.’ Might as well get it out there.
He takes her other hand across the table and Evie worries that the soy sauce will go everywhere.
‘I do love you,’ he says.
And she is both intensely in this moment and outside of it. Aware of the dry warmth of his hands and wishing she weren’t, because he’s saying what she wants to hear but not in the way she dreamt of – not with passion, not with urgency. Not in anI can’t live without youway, which is not the way she’d ever thought of being told anything until she met him and wished for nothing else.
‘And I wish …’ He sighs and lets go of her hands and sits back in his chair.
The soy sauce remains undisturbed. She stares at it. It helps, to have something to stare at when you feel you’re at a major point in your life and it’s completely out of your control, yet you are strangely sure of what’s about to happen. Which is to say, she knows he’s going to confirm that he’s breaking her heart.
‘I wish I could love you the way you deserve to be loved.’
He sounds so sad, and that makes her look up. Look at him.
A waitress comes over just then and Evie wants to scream at her to get away, but instead she smiles as the woman asks if they want more drinks. They both refuse.
Once she leaves, Sam sighs again. ‘I can’t love any woman like that,’ he says, and his eyes are round and serious. ‘I think you know what I mean.’
So there is her confirmation: there is absolutely no chance for her. For them. For her dreams to come true.
Her feet feel heavy. It’s so odd. She really wants to get up and run out of here but instead she feels stuck, as though she couldn’t even move one foot away from this table.
She hears a noise, as if someone is crying but not quite making it. As if the cry is half coming out of them.
The noise is coming from her.
Should she be embarrassed? Perhaps. But she doesn’t even feel as if she’s in her body. So maybe she’s not the one crying. Her body is doing it all on its own.
‘Oh, Evie.’ Sam reaches across the table again and this time he cups her face in his hand.
You’re making it worse!She wants to scream it at him, but also not. Because she would never want to scream at him. He’s precious to her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he’s saying, gazing into her eyes, then he drops his hand. ‘I didn’t realise you felt quite like that about me.’
She sniffs back the tears that are not quite making it out of her.
‘I knew you feltsomething,’ he continues. ‘I could tell by the way you looked at me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly.
‘For what?’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Evie.’ He says it softly but forcefully. ‘Evie, please look at me.’
She does, and she sees the face she loves and will have to stop loving.
‘It’s the most amazing thing, to be loved by you,’ Sam says. ‘The greatest compliment. Honestly. And I’m not going to insult you by saying that if I were straight I’d want to be with you, because that’s not how it works. Is it?’
