Page 52 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘If I fall asleep, please take it as a compliment.’ His voice is slurred with relaxation, and I turn so I can rub my chin against his thick hair and hold his hand tighter because there’s something unspoken in how nice this feels, and honestly, if we don’t move for the rest of the day, I’d be okay with that.
‘Do you really not believe in love?’ I ask eventually, hoping he might be relaxed enough to answer me.
He makes a noise as though the question wasn’t unexpected. ‘Sitting here, I believe in anything. Peter Pan’s probably flying about up there somewhere, and a fairy godmother is twizzling about a magic wand. It’s all there, just as long as you never move your hand.’
I wasn’t expecting that and it makes me laugh out loud and feel simultaneously fluttery that he seems to be suggesting thatImake him believe in magic.
‘But no. Love is just a way of furthering one’s own gains. What better way to get what you want from someone than to convince them they’re in love with you? It’s something exploited by people who want to con their way into your wallet or whatever else they can get out of you.’ He sighs and lifts his head, looking out at the river in front of us, but it’s the furthest thing from a happy sigh this time. ‘My father ended up in a loveless marriage with a woman who used all his fears and insecurities against him, and after he died and I was sent to Scotland, my grandma was bitter and angry at my grandfather, who’d died many years before and I was neverquitesure she hadn’t murdered him. The man was dead and she still found a way to blame him for everything that went wrong in her life. You know how they say true love transcends death? Well, in her case, so did bone-deep seething hatred.’
I laugh. ‘A pleasant and cheery thought.’
‘And you wonder why I don’t believe in love.’
‘You must’ve been in relationships.’ I squeeze his knee gently, hoping he doesn’t realise how much I’m trying to pry because I want to know everything about his life.
‘Not real ones. Not meaningful ones. I mean, I’ve dated, I’ve been out with people, but in terms of trusting someone enough to share my life with them… I’ve never been able to do it. I’ve never been able to let my walls down. I’ve been on my own for a very long time – I can’t see that ever changing.’
‘Not even if…’ I was going to ask about the missing Cinderella, but I stop myself. I know Witt felt something that night. I’m sure trying to find her is aboutmorethan he’s letting on, but when he does find her… What have I done except prove him right? When he realises we’ve staged this elaborate search for someone who was never missing, he’s never going to believe there’s anything real here. He’s going to think the only thing I ever wanted was to further my own gains and exploit him – exactly what he thinks love is all about.
I swallow hard. ‘That’s so sad.’
‘Why, because it’s notyourchoice?’
‘No, just… lives are meant to be shared.’
‘Lives are meant to be whatever you want them to be.’
‘Okay, picture this – you’ve had a long day at the office. You had a crappy night’s sleep, just about everything that can possibly go wrong has gone wrong over the course of the day, you’ve spilt your coffee, the photocopier’s jammed, the Wi-Fi’s gone down, you’ve pissed off a client, there was a traffic jam on the way home… And when you get home, don’t you think it would be nice if you could collapse on the sofa, and someone who loves you puts a cup of tea in your hands and rubs your shoulders and listens to you tell her all about your day and you can feel the tension draining away with every touch?’
He’s lost in thought for a moment, and then he blinks himself back to reality. ‘I can do all that myself.’
‘You can’t rub your own shoulders unless you’re some kind of contortionist.’
He laughs. ‘Well, no, but… I can deal with my own bad days. I don’t need anyone else.’
‘Need, no, but want?’
‘Sometimes, I admit, it would be nice, but that level of trust, being able to share that much of yourself with someone else, to be vulnerable in front of someone, to let someone look after you when you’re ill, to fall asleep in someone’s arms and trust them not to stab you in the back… I don’t work when I’m not a hundred per cent.’ He points to his mouth. ‘To let someone see that, see me at my most vulnerable, most embarrassing, and trust them not to make fun of me…’
‘Why would someone who loves you make fun of you, Witt?’
‘That’s what people do.’
It suddenly seems overwhelmingly impossible. I’ve always believed the clichéd ‘love will conquer all’ thing, but I don’t think anything will ever change his feelings on the topic. I want someone wholovesme and I’m not sure Witt will ever let himself go that much. He’s been building those walls for decades. I’ll never get past the fact he doesn’t believe anything good can ever come from loving someone. Maybe the missing Cinderella could have, that night at the ball, if I’d stayed as that person and he’d stayed as the person he was behind his mask, but now it’s all got so tangled. His walls are so high because he’s been hurt in the past. People have laughed at him, and what have I done except make a farce out of a night that meant so much to meandhim? I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get past this. ‘Someone who loved you would love that part of you. They’d love everything about you, every little part that makes youyou.’
‘Even if I left wet towels on the bathroom floor?’
‘And they’d love the way you use humour to change a subject if you don’t want to talk about something that might reveal some carefully concealed part of yourself.’
This time he laughs but doesn’t deny it, and in my head, his comment about falling asleep is buzzing around. He doesn’t let his guard down and I don’t let mine down, and yet, sitting here with him feels like the most open either of us have ever been.
And then I do it. I let my hand leave his knee to pull his head back down onto my shoulder, and then I press a big ‘mwah’ into his hair and let my fingers stroke through his would-be curls, and he relaxes again and stretches his leg out so both feet hang in the water.
‘We’re going to be covered in each other’s face paint, you know that, don’t you?’ His voice has got that relaxed softness to it again that makes me do an internal happy dance.
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’
Long, long minutes pass, tens of minutes, and we sit there, watching tiny fish swimming and an orange and blue kingfisher flitting from one side of the bank to the other, diving for fish.
