Page 74 of Elijah
“Okay,” I said, sitting up straight and placing my palms on the table. “Let’s play twenty questions and get to know each other.”
Leon raised his brow and put his drink down. “You’re on. You first.”
* * *
“I’m surprised you didn’t get arrested.” I held my side from laughing at Leon’s tale of having to run home naked after his friends had pinched his clothes when they’d gone skinny dipping in the park lake.
We’d finished our twenty questions and had been enjoying chatting for over an hour. Leon was funny and interesting and I was enjoying myself.
“I did see a police car,” Leon answered, “so I hid behind a bush. I did think the old lady, whose garden the bush was in, would probably call them, but I didn’t hang around to find out.”
“Well, I’ve never done anything that scandalous,” I replied, running a finger around the rim of my wine glass. “I’ve always been a good girl.”
“Oh come on, you must have some skeletons in your cupboard.”
I shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t.”
Not unless you counted me and Elijah having sex in the school sick bay, or me and Elijah having sex in my auntie June’s downstairs loo while everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her on the other side of the door, or me and Elijah-.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Leon replied, breaking through my memories. “So, you said you were divorced five years ago, has there been no one serious since?”
“No,” I sighed, wondering at myself for actually telling Leon that I’d been married – it had been one of his twenty questions though, so I couldn’t lie. “I dated someone for a couple of months when I lived in London, but that’s all it was – dating.”
I thought back to Seb, who’d evidently wanted more, and realised now that I probably led him on a little bit. I ended things so quickly after he’d mentioned a holiday together, the poor guy must have wondered what on earth he’d done wrong. The point was, he hadn’t; I hadn’t been ready to lay my heart open to the possibility of more heartache.
“And you’ve never married,” I stated, wanting to move the subject away from my love life.
Leon shook his head. “No. Never found the right person. I thought I had, but when we had an argument one time, she smashed up all my Laurel & Hardy DVDs.”
I looked at Leon’s face and burst out laughing. He looked devastated.
“I’m sorry,” I replied around my laughter. “You look heartbroken and I think it’s more about the DVDs than finding out she wasn’t the one.”
“Yeah, of course,” he cried, both his brows arching. “They were my pride and joy.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, trying to stem my laughter. “Sorry, it must have been awful for you.”
“It was. I almost cried.”
My eyes widened as I looked at him, all of a sudden wondering whether we actually had enough in common for another date. I coughed nervously and shifted on my stool, but as I did, Leon started to laugh, deep from within his chest.
“Your face,” he chuckled. “I know exactly what you were thinking, ‘what the hell have I let myself in for?’ You were, weren’t you?”
“No,” I retorted a little too quickly.
“You little liar.” Leon grinned at me and his eyes creased at the corners. “I didn’t really cry. I was bloody fuming with her and realised that someone who could do that, probably wasn’t a very nice person.”
I had to agree with him there. “It is a pretty nasty thing to do. How many were there?”
“About thirty.”
“Did you manage to replace them?” I asked, feeling bad for laughing.
“Yes, they do a boxset now with all of them in, so it wasn’t much of hardship to replace them. It wasn’t the DVDs as such, like I said it was the fact that she would do it, knowing how long it had taken me to collect them all.”
“Well, at least you found out before you asked her to marry you.”
“Yeah, I guess. That’s what’s really sad, I had been thinking about it, looking at rings, you know.”
