Page 53 of Love, Academically
“You’re not expecting anything. You’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said, softening his face so his words weren’t as abrasive as they sounded.
“Abundantly clear?”
Apparently, his ‘face softening’ didn’t work.
“Look, Rhys—” she started, but he held his hand up to stop her.
“If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t for you. This is for me.” He pulled a hand through his hair. This was a transaction. “You’re right. If I want this to work, my ‘girlfriend’ can’t be dressed in something that looks just ‘fine’.”
Lila’s soft smile faltered a little and her clear eyes clouded. Had he said the wrong thing? It was essentially what she had been saying for the entire time they’d been in those horrible shops with their tiny changing areas and nowhere for him to sit.
“Okay,” she said, giving him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “But we can take it back afterwards.”
Take it back? Would they even accept it back once it had been worn? He’d think about that another time.
Rhys led her through the packed bottom floor and up two escalators to a much more sedate, much quieter top floor. She kept lagging behind him, and eventually, he stopped.
“What’s wrong? Why are you all slumped?” That was the right word. Her shoulders were drooped, she was dragging her feet and clutching her back like it was a life jacket.
“Rhys, I…” she started, eyes darting around the store. “I don’t belong here,” she whispered.
For fuck’s sake.
“Lila Cartwright,” he said, snippily. “Idon’t belong here either. I have an online shop who have my measurements and they send me clothes. They’ll send me a tux.” Lila went to say something, but he wasn’t finished yet. “I don’t belong teaching students. I don’t belong in corporate business. I don’t belong in my family.”
Lila’s head tilted and her eyes softened in sympathy, which was precisely not what he was going for. Regardless, he carried on.
“But that doesn’t matter, because I do what I want.” Well, mostly, and at the utter detriment to pretty much everything in his life. Family relationships were stretched thin and his teaching was so awful he had to have supervised sessions in Lila’s office. In his darker moments, he wondered how he wouldsurvive working with his family again, with his father, when he failed. Notif, butwhen.
“I can’t force you to do this, Lila. I don’t want to force you. It would help me, yes, but not at the cost of you not wanting to do it at all.”
“Oh, Rhys.”
Lila started forward as if she was going to wrap her arms around him and smother him in a hug, but he took a quick shuffle backwards and she stopped. Nope, no hugging, thank you very much.
“Come on,” she said, hoisting her purple stegosaurus handbag onto her shoulder and squaring her shoulders. “Let’s go and buy a stupid dress.”
Thank fuck that little pep talk had worked because it would be infinitely worse if he didn’t have a girlfriend to present when he had already told his family he did.
Rhys wielded his name like a rapier and soon they were in a private room, with a cup of herbal tea (for her), sparkling water (for him) and a plethora of finger sandwiches. Miquita had practically asked ‘how high shall I jump’ when he’d said he was Elin’s brother, and he wondered how much his sister actually spent in this shop. How many handbags and dresses could one woman need that made Miquita’s eyes flash with pound signs when she heard his name?
Thinking of money, he’d have to work out how he was going to pay Elin back. Perhaps it was so expensive that he’d have to wait for his dividend payments from the shares he had in Dallimores. His savings were small; ‘Lecturer’ did not pay excellently.
The dresses here were so much better than those fluorescent-lighted shops that Lila had dragged him into, and he had a comfortable chair.
“That one is great, Lila,” he called as the door shut behind her and Miquita after the second dress was demonstrated.
No answer. Rhys rolled his head back. How much longer was this going to take? Waiting, again. Always waiting for Lila.
“Yes, your boyfriend will love you in this one,” Miquita said loudly from behind the closed door. He snapped his head up. If this was the ‘one’, then he would gush and swoon and say whatever he needed to say so they could leave.
The door opened and Miquita came out first, giving him an extremely pointed look. Right, he could get on board with this.
Lila followed and he stood, the serviette on his thigh falling to the ground.
Miquita was telling him about the dress, fluttering around Lila and making sure that the skirt fell properly, but he couldn’t focus on her words. He raked his eyes from Lila’s hair, where she’d pulled it into a low knot at the back of her head, across the one shouldered dress that flowed out from her hips and pooled gently on the floor.
It was perfect.
