Page 57 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
There’s something in his voice that still doesn’t sound as confident as it should, and it intensifies the niggling doubt in the back of my mind. Things might have improved for Colours of the Wind, but we arenotbringing in more money than a cinema complex would, and we never will be. I try to let his words reassure me.Heis the property expert, after all. He’s going to know what his company wants, and if he says we’ve done what we needed to then I should take his words at face value. I trust him so much more now I know what he’s been hiding was nothing to do with his job or the museum.
He never actually said he wasn’t busy, but he seems happy to get involved, and I can’t help watching as he pulls his brown-and-cream-striped jumper off, revealing a black long-sleeved top underneath, and he pulls the sleeves up to his elbows, oblivious to the fact I’m ogling him, but those forearms really do deserve to be showcasedfarmore often.
My mouth has gone dry and I only realise I’m staring when he claps his hands together and asks what I want him to do.
‘Right, I’ve just got a wholesale order of jumbo pipe cleaners, so we’re going to wind them together for vines to build the framework for a beanstalk from the floor to the ceiling. Then we’re going to add giant paper leaves, paper tendrils, crepe paper flowers, glittery oversized beans painted in bright colours, and I’ve got some cotton wool for clouds at the top, and a big planter for the bottom so it looks like it’s actually growing out of a pot.’
‘If anyone had asked me, two months ago, if I’d ever build a beanstalk, I would have cackled at the thought, but you make beanstalk-building seem normal.’
I laugh out loud, giggling until he meets my eyes again and it suddenly feels like the room has shrunk until I’m forced to take a step closer to him, and it would be so easy to reach out, tangle my fingers in the thermal material of that black top and haul him down until I could kiss him… We blink at each other for a few moments, his eyes are on my lips and this time, it’snotbecause he’s reading them, and my fingers twitch with the urge to reach out, but I force myself to take a breath and look away.
Rather than confronting what that was, I grab an armful of green pipe cleaners and shove them at him, and he grunts at the unexpected weight of the humungous things. ‘Start twisting the dark green and light green ones together for structural integrity and colour variegation,’ I tell him, and then pick up my electric screwdriver and metal hook and run upstairs.
On the second-floor landing, I unscrew the floorboard and lift it so I can fit the hook into the cavity that will give us something to attach the top of the beanstalk to, and then because everything is better with tea, I go up to the third floor and make us a cuppa each in the kitchen.
‘I’ve never seen pipe cleaners like these,’ Warren says when I get back to the hall carrying two mugs and holding a packet of biscuits between my teeth. ‘I didn’t think anyone used them outside of nursery school crafts.’
They’re hefty, sturdy, and furry, and the second I saw them, I knew they’d make perfect vines for a giant beanstalk with some creative twisting, which he’s got down to a fine art in the five minutes I’ve been gone.
His double-thickness vines will form the base of the beanstalk, which will get narrower as it goes up, so I put the mug and biscuits down, and start using singular pipe cleaners, twisted lengthwise, and start creating the top section so we can, somehow, meet in the middle.
‘So I know I missed a lot of the discussion the other night, but one thing I heard loud and clear was the wedding stuff…’ he says after we’ve both got into the swing of twisting beanstalk vines around themselves.
‘Conveniently, that was the one part I hoped you’d missed.’ I groan, having also hoped that if hehadheard it, he’d have the courtesy to never mention it again.
He laughs. ‘You have my utmost sympathy. There’s nothing worse than a wedding as a single person. They should rename them “pity-fests” and be done with it.’
It’s a welcome giggle and I appreciate the solidarity, even if I’d have appreciated him pretending he hadn’t heard itmore.
‘This is the quiet guy from the castle who brought the glass slippers back and the girl who makes dresses in The Cinderella Shop?’
‘Witt and Sadie, yes.’ I appreciate him making an effort to get to know my friends, especially when it’s obvious that most of the Ever After Street shopkeepers are still hostile towards him, and I wouldn’t blame him for not even trying.
‘They’re not really doing mandatory plus ones, are they?’
‘I think it’s mostly for my benefit.’ I put down one section of beanstalk when it’s reached two foot long and start twisting pipe cleaners together for the next part. ‘Everyone else around here has found their perfect match, been set up, or paired off in some other way in the past few years, apart from me. I’m the last single one left on Ever After Street, and I suspect they conspired to think this would be the perfect excuse to search their phone books, friends, siblings, colleagues, and long-lost acquaintances far and wide to find me a pity date.’
‘Trust me, anyone lucky enough to be on a date with you, it wouldnotbe out of pity.’
My hands freeze on my beanstalk section and I look over at him, trying to work out if he’s pulling my leg or not, but he doesn’t sound jokey. ‘Thank you. That’s a lovely thing to say.’
‘I could come. If you want a way to get them off your back, I mean. Not out of pity. Just because it would make me feel like the luckiest man in the world, and—’ He hesitates like he didn’t intend to say that, and then tries to backpedal. ‘I meant, like I said, I sympathise with anyone forced to attend a wedding alone, I’ve been there too many times, and we could do it together, poke fun at all the daft traditions… er, if the others would let me in, I know I’m persona non grata around here, but… Sorry, I’ve become really bad at thinking before I speak. I didn’t mean you should go with me, you’re probably sick of the sight of me, I just meant…’ He trails off like even he doesn’t know what he really meant.
‘I’d like that.’ I meet his eyes and then amend my choice of words. ‘I’dlovethat.’
He smiles that wide, unguarded smile again, the one that blazes across his face like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud on a dull day, and I can already imagine the pitch of Mickey’s squeal when I tell her I’ve got a wedding date, and the others can stop desperately searching the passing acquaintances of their partner’s brother’s colleague’s neighbour’s ice-sculpting classmate’s barber, and even though it’s not adatedate, it should still work for getting everyone to leave me content in my singleton status.
‘It’s not until December. You won’t still be here, will you?’
‘I can come back. It’sonlya hundred-mile round trip. Worth every penny of the petrol costs.’
I grin at the curious throwback. Last time he said that, it was sarcastic, but this time it’s genuine.
‘Besides, I think I might miss you when I’m not here any more.’
‘I might miss you too.’
His smile gets impossibly wider, and we hold each other’s gaze across the room and that urge to march over there and haul him into a kiss tingles in my toes like they’re trying to propel me across the room, and my fingertips twitch like they’re encouraging me to grab him and snog the living daylights out of him, but at the same time, my feet are – thankfully – glued to the floor and stop me doing anything I would almost definitely regret.
