Page 55 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘Nothing, as you know,’ he says with a laugh, turning his face into my hand. ‘I’m not drunk, I’mdesperateto kiss you. I can’t think about anything else.’
‘Well, I can. Where is this going, Ren? I’m not kissing you if this is a one-time thing. If you’re going to wake up in the morning and realise you need to dedicate your time to Ava and you haven’t got the room – headspace orheartspace – for a relationship, then no. I’m not doing this. Ican’tdo this. I like you, you know that.Reallylike you, probably more thanlikeyou, and Ava too, but… she’s your priority, as she should be. She and I get on great, but she might not be open to you getting into a relationship again – it could change things.’
‘It won’t change anything. She’s been on at me to ask you out since the first day. She loves you to bits and fully supports anything happening between us. She’s told me 11,762 times and been disappointed when I’ve told her to forget it.’
I laugh, but the last bit of that sentence gives me pause. ‘And what about you? I know how much you’ve been hurt. I know it isn’t easy to open up again. Areyouready for something more?Reallyready?’
‘Honestly? I never thought I would be. Five weeks ago, Iknewthat I’d never get into another relationship ever again. And then I met you. I’ve fallensohard for you, I feel like I’m in freefall and you’re the only thing stopping me from hitting the ground. I regret so much about my marriage, but I already know that the greatest regret of my life would be not seeing where this goes. Ineedyou to be part of our lives, and if we carry on as we are, I’m going to end up kissing you and ruining everything, so please give me permission to kiss you andnotruin everything…’
‘It wouldn’t ruin anyth?—’
He cuts me off with a kiss, and this time, it’s the furthest thing from a peck. His mouth touches mine, gentle at first, but quickly becoming more forceful when my arms slide around his shoulders and drag him closer until my fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, and the noise he makes is probably the hottest noise I’ve ever heard in my life. If I was to lose my hearing tomorrow, I would still die happy that I ever got to hear that noise. It’s like the loosening of a thousand tightly wound screws that burst open all at once, and the kiss is like a mutual sigh of relief.
I can’t imagine what it takes for someone who has been so badly hurt by love to ever open himself up again, and I never thought I would either, but Ren has inadvertently got under my skin from the first moment I saw him.
One leg hooks around his to pull him impossibly closer, and his thigh presses in places that make my hands grasp his hair harder, and my teeth nip his lower lip. His legs stumble for purchase in the wet sand as the waves wash over our feet, and he ends up holding me under the thighs as he fails at keeping us upright and sinks down onto his knees without breaking the kiss, groaning in both pain and pleasure as my legs wrap around him. It feels like the whole ocean breathes a sigh of relief as we land in it, and we just keep kissing.
I’m unable to tear my mouth away from his, even though I can feel seawater seeping through my jeans. His hands are rubbing up and down my back, one is gripping my hip to hold me in place when we finally pull back, gasping for breath, our chests heaving like we mayneverget our breath back again.
‘Wow,’ he breathes the word, and a tingle goes through me because the feeling is absolutely mutual, and I’ve never kissed someone who simply says that afterwards and doesn’t try to hide how deeply affected he is, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so much emotion just from a kiss.
We sit there on the wet sand, breathing hard, my knees on either side of his legs, occasionally he leans forward to brush his lips across mine, and he takes my shaking hand and tangles our fingers together, holding our joined hands down in the lapping water, making me giggle at the tickling sensation, as I rest my forehead against his and tuck his hair back, and just breathe in sync with each other.
It’s a bit like when Ariel saved Eric from drowning, and watched over him on the beach, except Eric didn’t suddenly swear and say, ‘Oh, bugger, my phone!’
Ren scrambles to his feet and manages to pull me up in the same swift movement as he yanks his phone from his back pocket and tries to dry it off with his T-shirt.
He’s breathing hard and I’m breathless, and after that kiss, the water lapping over my feet is not the only thing that makes it feel like the ground is shifting underneath me. ‘One thing Disney mermaid movies didn’t make allowances for was modern technology.’
He laughs, even though the phone he’s holding is dripping with sandy seawater.
I nod to it. ‘We should head back, try to dry that out.’
‘You think my legs are steady enough towalkafter that? Also, time to ourselves is going to be rarer than you think. This is just a short interlude to resuscitate my phone, but I’m not done kissing you yet while I’ve got the chancewithouta thirteen-year-old watching on.’
We share a few more kisses on the darkened beach before I realise that itreallyis getting late, and we need to head back before someone sends out a search party.
‘Can I say something?’ he says as we start walking back the way we came. ‘If I have to pay a few hundred quid to replace my phone, it was worth every penny for a kiss like that.’
‘That might just be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me. You can have as many kisses like that as you want, just make sure they’re on dry land next time.’
‘Ah, where would be the fun in that? And you make life a lot more fun than it was before.’ He glances down at himself, taking in his wet trousers and sandy T-shirt. ‘And much, much wetter.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
He takes my hands and twirls us around, and we run, dance, and skip back along the beach, and I feel like the luckiest Ariel who’s just found the real-life Prince Eric who filled my young romantic dreams, and that’s better than finding all the dinglehoppers and snarfblatts in the world.
18
The following morning, we go on the boat trip around the coastal islands, but the journey reveals nothing but squawking seabirds, the sea-battered remains of a defunct lighthouse in the distance, and rocky islands that no one with a mermaid’s tailora sailor with a broken leg could ever plausibly reach, and by the time we get back to the shore, I’ve got to admit that evenIhave started to wonder if Ren’s right – if our mystery diarist is someone who has heard a rumour and made up a story behind it. A basis in reality, but mostly, complete fiction. If anyone has an understanding of making up stories in place of reality, it’s me.
We have one last holiday ice cream each, and Ava makes us sit on the seafront in the midday sun and read the final diary entry.
10 July 1899
He is gone.
When I awoke, the island was empty, and he was gone. Only the words ‘I will leave my heart with you until I find you again’ remain, scrawled in my notebook in writing that is not my own.
