Page 50 of After Felix
He says matter-of-factly, “Well, yes, if he was in your way.”
“This is totally his fault.”
“Of course,” he replies loyally and patently untruthfully.
“Anyway, I’m going to have to stay the night to check if he’s got a concussion. God knows how I’m supposed to do that. His behaviour is erratic at the best of times. Can you cover me at the office tomorrow? I’ll ring Bev, and she’ll take over from you.”
“No problem.” There’s a long pause and his voice is soft when he speaks again. “Maybe this is good. You need to have a talk. It’s long overdue. Only, be kind to each other,” he adds quickly. “You both need it.”
“I’ll try,” I say. “But I’m not committing to that because Max has a way of winding me up that nobody else in this world possesses.”
“Maybe you should think about why that is,” he advises me.
He smartly rings off before I can reply, leaving me standing on the hospital forecourt with more questions than answers. I sigh. Fucking Max. It’s a normal state of affairs around him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAX
I’m hovering at my bedroom door, trying to work out where Felix has gone, when I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I immediately throw myself onto the bed and try to look pitiful. To tell the truth, I feel a bit pitiful. I don’t remember a broken bone hurting this much before. Maybe I’m getting old.
Felix walks into the room, and instantly my heartbeat picks up, beating fast and heavy the way it always does around him.
I remember as clear as day meeting him that morning in the bookshop. My walk into the biography section of Waterstones had changed everything about my life’s trajectory. There, leaning against a pile of my books like a present for me, was the man I now know is the love of my life.
It was his voice that had drawn me first. Warm and posh and, as I learnt later, the product of a scholarship to a private secondary school. Then his laughter had lured me closer, and I’d observed a small, thin young man with a mop of dark, wavy hair and a sharp, fine-boned face with a retroussé nose and the fullest, reddest lips. He’d been talking on the phone, and what sealed my attraction was his expressionof sardonic amusement and the quick, biting wit of his side of the phone conversation.
I’d wanted him instantly—the effect sudden and powerful—like a punch in the stomach and balls. It’s a shame I never cottoned on sooner that my immediate need to know him meant he was different from anyone who came before or after.Hewas different, because there has never been anyone like Felix for me.
Everyone else is boring compared to him.
“Hello, anyone in there?” he asks in his clear, posh voice.
“What the fuck are you dressed in?” I ask, completely forgetting what I’d been about to say. “Is it fancy dress and no one told me? I feel so left out when I’ve got a perfectly respectable pirate outfit in the wardrobe.”
“I can well believe it,” he says tartly. “And respectable is almost certainly the wrong word. Use your dictionary, Max. It’s a journalist’s friend.” He looks down at his outfit of blue-and-white striped pyjama pants, a Russian hat with the flaps down (which I’m sure was last seen in my coat cupboard downstairs), and a navy fisherman’s jumper that’s absolutely huge on him. He grins. “It’s fucking cold in this house, Max. I’d forgotten how hot-blooded you are. Scott of the Antarctic would have been happy living here.”
I shift on the bed and then wince at the shaft of pain. “Shit,” I mutter.
Felix is instantly there, propping my arm gently on a pillow. “Don’t move so fast,” he scolds. “You’re hurt, and you need to rest.”
He carries on scolding me, but his voice is warm and almost fond, and the ache in my chest is worse than the one in my arm. This is the way he used to talk to me. Back in the days when he’d looked at me like I’d hung the moon. Back in the days before I ruined everything.
I look at the play of his eyelashes on his cheekbones and catch the scent of his Miller Harris aftershave that smells of oranges. His body against mine is warm and so familiar that it makes tears prick at my eyelids.
“Are you okay?” he asks, concern clouding his face.
I try not to react to his gentle expression. He’s spent the last twoand a half years reminding me forcibly that he can’t stand me, so he’d hate to know he’s letting down his guard at this moment.
“Just painful,” I mumble.
He reaches for the paper bag of pills he set on my bed and then checks his watch. “You can have your painkillers now,” he says judiciously.
He picks up the glass of water on my bedside table and then pauses. “Wait. Is this water or vodka? Because one leads to a Russell Crowe sort of existence, which isn’t for you.”
“It’s water. I don’t know where you get the idea that I drink a lot.”
“Probably from the fact that you actually drink a lot,” he says tartly.
