I saw it building, felt his body shaking, but I was not prepared for him to burst out laughing. Wowsers, his serious face was handsome, so handsome, but with his features lit up with humour . . . such unbelievable masculine beauty, it almost hurt to look at him. I wished . . . I wished for once in my life I could have some bloody self-control. Because staring up at his beautiful face, I forgot where I was, I forgot who I was, and more importantly, who I was to him, and I reached up with my free hand and touched his jaw – as if to check he was real. With the amount of time my brain spent thinking about the guy, fantasising about him, I wouldn’t have put it past my neurones to start going wonky and making me see things.
Well, hewasreal. Of course he was. And him being real and in the real world meant that I was a real woman touching a real man’s face without invitation – like a completely unhinged freak. I bit my lip, snatched my hand away and cleared my throat.
“Er, thanks,” I said to his shirt collar.
I was a direct-eye-contact kind of girl, but this was one of the few times in my life I had ever felt embarrassed. He lowered me to my feet and once free of him, I took a few steps back. Better to put some distance between us before I smelt anymore of his clean soap, aftershave, andmansmell and started mauling him in earnest. When I did manage to look up at him, he was still smiling.
“Great moves,” he said through his grin, and I felt another wave of embarrassment hit me. Embarrassed? Me? What the fuck was going on? “I think that might have been the funniest goddamn thing I’ve seen in years. If not ever.”
He took a step towards me and I took another away from him, the backs of my legs colliding with the sofa. His smile died a little and frustration flashed through his features. I was confused. Relief that the crazy woman was no longer touching his face would have made more sense.
A throat cleared from across the room and I turned to see Henry looking between his brother and me. His brows were raised in question.
I decided I needed to skate right past this latest ridiculous Kira exploit and move the focus back to the reason I was actually there.
“Right well, I may have misjudged that squat thrust, but there’swaymore where that came from, Henners. I have an extreme amount of patience when it comes to annoying people in order to get my way. I was a breath-holder as a child – worked a charm.”
“I am not contacting any of my friends, you crazy person.” Henry threw himself back into his chair. His curious expression from a moment ago had been replaced by a glare aimed in my direction.
“You need to get out of this rut Henry. Barcos says you were super social before all this crap. You need to get back to what made you,you. Not shut yourself away up here.”
He let out a frustrated groan and tore his hands through his hair.
“I can’t go back to that life,” he shouted.
I flinched and Barclay made a move towards him, but Henry put up a hand to ward him off. When he looked back up at me, his blue eyes, so similar to his brother’s, were filled with tears. “I can’t go back. I can’t tell h– I mean my friends aboutanyof this. They know I got sick. They don’t know why, and I’m not going to tell them. So what is the fucking point of contacting them? I can’t really drink, can’t party like I used to. I certainly don’t want to go around fucking half of London’s totty or being my mates’ wingman so they could fuck the other half. So, what’s the point?”
“Your life’s not over, Henry,” I said slowly. “And don’t underestimate your friends. Yes, okay you’re different now. Maybe you can’t do some of the stuff you could before, although your life is in no way as restricted as you seem to think. But you’re not giving your mates the chance to know younow. That’s unfair. What if it had been one of them that this happened to? Would you think ‘Oh dear, old Fruity Metcalf can’t wingman me anymore so I can get a decent shag in – well, bollocks to him then, may as well jog on without him. Don’t want to be dragged down by some boring loser managing a long-term health condition.’”
“Fruity Metcalf?” Henry asked, his lips were twitching again, which I took as a good sign.
“Oh, I know you posh lads – all your mates are called something like Tubby, Plum, Stiffy, CopperKnob (that was Churchill’s btw), Tibs, Minky, Spunky, Piggers, Stiffy, Flopsy . . .”
Both Barclay and Henry stiffened.
“Ha!” I shouted, pointing at one then the other. “I got one right, didn’t I? You lot have a mate called Flopsy! Wow, I knew I was good, but I’d no idea I wasthatfucking good.”
“Bugger off, shorty,” Henry snapped, but his lips were twitching again.
“Uh uh,” I said, wagging my finger. “Shorty is a shit nickname. Too obvious. No back-story. And, unless you’re a genuine rapper from the projects in America, you cannot use it to refer to a woman without looking like a clueless twat.”
“Barclay,” Henry looked at his brother. “Can you please, pleasefor oncemake use of that expensive security team and ask them to remove this woman. I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
“Unless you phone Flopsy, Binky and co., I’m here for the duration.”
“I can’t,” he shouted at me, losing the lip twitching and going red in the face again. But worse than that – much, much worse – his tears finally spilled over and he choked on a sob. It was one of those manly-type sobs, but so more awful as it sounded like it was wrenched from his very soul, and then squashed back down again. “Just go,” he whispered as one of the tears in his eyes made its way down his cheek.
Chapter 16
Stop running away from me
Kira
“Oh Henry,” I whispered back, moving around the coffee table.
Barclay moved as well, but I was quicker. When I reached Henry, I grabbed his face and pulled it down to mine so our foreheads were touching. To my great surprise he allowed this.
“Youcanbe you again,” I whispered. “Life is ten per cent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it. Don’t waste yours looking back for what you’ve lost. Move on. Life isn’t meant to be lived backwards.”
