Page 45 of Elijah
Amy
aged 21
Elijah had been acting strange all week and I was feeling worried about it. He’d been quiet, kept taking phone calls in the bedroom and had taken a day off sick from work, something he never did, especially as his boss at the garden centre was hateful and docked his pay even if he was a minute late, never mind that Elijah stayed late most nights. Feeling a sickly trepidation in my stomach, I tried to ask him if anything was wrong, but he’d told me I was imagining things.
“Do you think he’s seeing someone else?” I asked Rachel, my best friend.
She huffed down the line. “Get a grip, Amy. Elijah wouldn’t do that to you. He bloody worships the ground you walk on.”
“I know it seems that way, but what if-.”
“No!” she snapped. “There is no what if. He’s probably pissed off with work, that’s all. Didn’t you say his boss is a twat?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Well that will be it,” she sighed. “Now, tell me how your assignment went.”
We continued talking for another few minutes, and by the end of it I was feeling better about things. Until I got a text from Elijah saying that he wasn’t going to be able to make dinner with his parents and I should go along without him. He didn’t even answer me when I called him back to bemoan the fact that I didn’t want to go alone.
I liked his parents, but we didn’t have much of a relationship. I barely saw his mum as she was always away fighting some cause, and while his dad was lovely, we had very little in common. He loved gardening, which was where Elijah had gained his interest from, and rarely talked about much else.
Hence, it was with a sulky pout that I made my way over to the Coopers’ house, moaning and groaning to myself because even Sam had bailed on me, apparently he had work to do.
When I got there, the house appeared to be in darkness, except for the table lamp that they kept on in the porch and propped up against it was a note.
Amy – we’re in the garden, come around the back, Yvetta x
It was bloody dark, so what the hell were they doing in the garden? Still grumbling under my breath, I went around to the side of the house and opened up the gate and walked through. I couldn’t hear anyone in the darkness, but the lights that lit the path down to the bottom of their garden were all on.
Figuring that was probably where they were, I walked down quietly calling out.
“Yvetta, James, are you down here?”
Nobody answered, so I continued walking. As I reached the midpoint of the large garden, I heard a noise. It sounded like someone coughing and it was coming from the direction of the old shed. Wondering what on earth they were doing there, I strayed from the path and padded across the grass until I reached the hawthorn hedge. I stopped abruptly, as I saw a large glass jar with a candle flickering away inside it. I grinned, remembering a night a few years before when Elijah had turned the shed into a love nest for us for the night. Then a thought panicked me – what if his mum and dad were having sex in there too? Surely they wouldn’t have told me to meet them down here if they were. The thought was too gross to contemplate, so I was almost about to turn back when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text from Elijah.
Elijah: Keep walking x
Frowning, I looked up from the screen, looked at the path, at the jar, and then back to my phone. It buzzed again.
Elijah: I’m waiting at the best five star hotel you’ve ever stayed in x
It took a moment, but then it dawned on me. I needed to carry on to the shed. A huge grin enveloped my face as I took another couple of steps forward and saw another lantern and candle, in fact there were a few of them, creating a pathway to the shed which had seen one of the best nights of my life. I walked a few more steps and then as I approached the shed, the door opened to cast light over Elijah standing in the doorway.
He was wearing a pair of grey trousers, black shoes, and a black shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled back. His hair was combed and he was wearing the hugest smile I’d ever seen on his handsome face.
“Hey,” he whispered, as I got close enough to hear him. “You made it then.”
I nodded and put my hand in his which he was holding out to me. “I thought I was going to catch your mum and dad doing something that might scar me for life,” I said with a giggle.
“Why on earth would you think that?” he laughed, pulling me closer.
I shrugged. “Because she left me a note to meet them in the garden and when I saw the candles, I thought maybe I’d stumbled on a romantic tryst.”
“Well you kind of have, but it’s for me and you.”
Elijah’s voice broke a little and he suddenly looked wary, wiping a hand across his chest.
“Is this why you’ve seemed odd for the last few weeks?” I asked, cupping his cheek.
