Page 15 of Begin Again Again

Beth swallowed, summoning her courage. “So, this might seem bizarre, but can I have a cup of tea?”

He gave her a sideways glance, eyes twinkling.

“I’m old,” she reminded him. “It’s a Thursday night and it’s nippy.”

“Nuppy?”

Beth glared at him. “Mocking my accent will get you touched in all the wrong places.”

Byron lowered the whiskey glass he’d lifted to his lips. “Sure, you can have tea. Normal? English breakfast?”

Beth got the same dizzy feeling that surfaced when he’d said ‘auburn.’ When was she going to stop being surprised he knew things? Byron flicked on the kettle and pulled a box of teabags from a shelf Beth would have needed a chair to access. As he stretched, she noticed the corner of a tattoo on his back. “You have a tatt?”

“A hammerhead.” He looked oddly wary.

“Nice!” Beth enthused. What the fuck was a hammerhead? “I love them, but I’m too chicken to get the standard Kiwi girl ‘fern on the foot’ tattoo.”

Byron looked reassured. He poured boiling water into a blue mug, then added the teabag. “Milk?”

“Yeah. Does yours have a special meaning or is it for show?”

“A bit of both.” He jiggled the teabag before pulling it out and whipping it toward the sink without looking. Of course, it went in. Beth snuck a look at the huge double fridge as he opened the door. It was full of chicken breast, kale, and plastic wrapped steak. The door was crammed with almond milk and cartons of egg whites. “Wow. Someone’s into clean living.”

Byron poured Shultz milk into her tea from a glass bottle. “That’d be Derek. My roommate.”

So, his namewasDerek. Poor Derek.

“Are you ultra-healthy too?”

“No reason to be.” Byron was watching her closely, wary again for some reason. “What about you?”

“I don’t have five sugars in my tea anymore. I consider that healthy.”

The corner of Byron’s mouth kicked up. He handed her the mug handle first, the way her mum used to do it.

“Thanks.”

“Head out back?”

“Sure.”

She followed him to a porch big enough to host dinner parties on. It looked out on a pretty landscaped garden dotted with pale LED lights. If she squinted, Beth was pretty sure she could see a fountain. She held back another compliment—Byron didn’t seem house-proud and she didn’t want to sound like a gold-digger.

“Over here,” he said, gesturing to a padded park bench. “Give me a sec.”

Beth sat down, sipping her tea; it was hot and clean, but she could barely taste it. Nerves were drying her mouth and turning her stomach into a bag of snakes. Crickets chirruped joyfully around her, oblivious to the nuance of human mating. Byron returned with a portable music player and a refilled whiskey tumbler. “Okay with music?”

“Please.”

He fiddled around and a familiar voice filled the air.

“Angus Stone?”

“Yeah, Dope Lemon.”

He sat beside her and, to her surprise, slung an arm around her shoulder as though they did this all the time. Beth’s heart fluttered like a trapped bird. He felt hot and hard and insanely large. Her ex, Stephen, was taller than her, but at five-foot-eight, there was a sameness to their sizes. Byron Thomas was a Clydesdale to her Shetland pony. If he pressed his hand to her face she was sure it would cover her from chin to hairline.

“This going how you wanted it to?”

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