Max looked between us in frustration. “The bugger said he wants to go through the new designs for the lobby. He doesownthe bloody thing, V. I can hardly tell him to shove off without showing him owt.”
Verity blew out a frustrated breath. She looked amazing today – the heels, the elegant low bun, the white silk shirt with wide-leg white trousers – every inch the client-facing, ice-queen side of the business. By contrast, Max’s jumper had a small hole in the sleeve.
“You’ve seen the designs. We sent them to you last week,” she said through her teeth. I shrugged.
“I prefer a more in-person approach.” She shot me a look that would have a lesser man pissing his pants, but I held my ground. This was my new tactic with Verity. Over the last month I’d been sending flowers, cards, messages. I’d had lunch delivered to their office twice – steak sandwich and prawn salad – both of which I knew were her favourites (or at least they were sixteen-year-old Verity’s favourites when we played the game of:what room service would we order if we weren’t stuck in a freezing cold school with the equivalent of prison food for every meal) but none of this was cracking her determination to ignore me. The only emails or texts she responded to were those related to the business project. All the others went unanswered and ignored.
Okay, so maybe Verity hadn’t agreed to give me another chance, but at least we were communicating aboutsomething,and she wasn’t openly hostile (with the exception of the brick incident).
“Fine, well you can catch up with the delightful Max in person, Mr York. Some of us have actual work to be getting on with.”
An hour later and armed with an oat milk latte (some more inside information I’d extracted from Heath, who was still feeling guilty enough to be on my team in the winning-Verity-over stakes) I knocked on Verity’s office door and let myself in before she could tell me to bugger off.
“Harry, honestly,” she said, standing up and coming round her desk to halt my progress further into her space. I held out the coffee to her and she snatched it out of my hand. Even at sixteen Verity had been a little caffeine fiend. “I’m sure you’re frightfully busy. How have you got time to come to Dorset and annoy me? There are hundreds of women in London who’d be only too happy to accept coffees and flowers and food and…” she trailed off as she saw what I was holding in my other hand. “Where did you–?”
“I don’t know if you remember this or not but…” I trailed off, feeling a little self-conscious now that I’d followed through on my crazy plan. She put her coffee down on the desk behind her and did a slow blink at the book I was holding.
“It can’t be?” she whispered, and I held it out to her. Slowly and very carefully she took the book from me and inspected the front cover before opening it at the first page. It was a drawing of me. I was standing on a huge wall wearing a leather coat with furs over my shoulder and heavy boots on my feet. There was a dragon flying in the background.
I remembered the day Verity had drawn it. I’d been totally scandalised that she was graffitiing a book, and not just any book but myfavouritebook. But I forgot about all of that when she showed me this sketch. Jon Snow is one of the coolest characters in the history of literature in my opinion, and for Verity to draw me in his likeness, to have spent hours over it, was impossibly meaningful to a bullied, geeky schoolboy. There was no telly version ofA Game of Thronesin those days, so Jon Snow existed only in the imagination of epic fantasy readers like me and Verity. She knew he was my favourite character.
“I thought you never drew people?” I’d said at the time when I managed to speak past my dry throat.
Verity shrugged. “Most people suck. I normally stick to buildings. But you’re not so bad, and I couldn’t draw The Wall without you looking superior on top of it.”
I felt my cheeks heat up as I studied the sketch again then I cleared my throat.
“Listen, if you don’t want it then–” Verity tried to take the book and I snatched it away, holding it up to my chest.
“No, I’ll keep it,” I said, my tone was a little fierce. Verity’s hands went up and her eyes widened for a moment.
“Ookaay,” she said slowly. I shifted on the sofa and moved to stow the book in my bag.
God, why was I such an awkward bastard? Couldn’t I try to say thank you like a normal person? I squared my shoulders and turned back to her. Her expression was a mixture of unsure and hopeful. There was a look in her eyes again today. It had been there for the last few weeks – determined and hyper-focused… on me, which I was finding so confusing.
“Harry, listen you’re leaving school soon,” she said, leaning towards me on the sofa. “I… Look, I’m sorry if you think the picture’s silly. It’s just that I–”
“If I could draw, I would only ever draw you.” The words just fell out of my mouth before I could claw them back. But that picture of me wasnotsilly. I couldn’t let her think that, even for a moment. But that sounded a little stalkery – I’d probably scared the crap out of her. I felt heat hit my cheeks. “I mean, I–”
I did not get to finish that sentence. In fact, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever regain the power of speech again. Because Verity Markham was kissing me. Her mouth landed on mine mid-word, and now all I could feel were her soft lips, all I could smell was the floral shampoo she used. And I was frozen in place. She pulled back and looked at me. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes the brightest blue I’d ever seen them. At my hesitation the colour left her cheeks, leaving a stricken expression in its wake. Oh my God, I needed to grow a spine and pull myself together!
“Shit, sorry, Harry, I guess I read you wrong. But after that comment about you drawing me, I thought that–”
It was my turn to cut her off now. I closed the gap between us, my hands going up to her jaw then sliding into her hair and my mouth closing over hers. There was way more enthusiasm than technique, but that didn’t matter to either of us. Footsteps behind the shelves caused us to break the connection but we stayed with our foreheads pressed against each other, our breath mingling between us along with the dense fog of teenage hormones.
“You are so, so beautiful,” I found myself whispering. Her hand came up to my jaw and she stroked my face down to my neck and then into my hair at the back, letting out a low almost purr of contentment.
“You are everything, Harry,” she said simply.
In the intervening years, I’d gone over those words in my head and the way she’d said them thousands of times. Her tone had not suggested that she was having a laugh with me or taking the piss as Heath had said later. But I’d pushed the truth of who I knew Verity to be out of my mind in the weeks following our kiss. In the narrative I constructed after Heath said what he did, it was just another example of a spoiled little rich girl playing with the bullied loser who dared to have a crush on her, right before she destroyed my father’s career. I could acknowledge now what a coward I was.
You are everything, Harry.
I’d let her down, but it wouldn’t happen again. She just had to believe it.
“You kept it,” she whispered, still staring down at the book. There was a long silence during which neither of us moved.
“Verity, I–” I was cut off as she moved in one fluid motion towards me, up onto her toes and her mouth closed over mine. Just like before, it was as though a circuit tripped in my brain. I didn’t care that we were in her office with glass walls, that I was trying to win her trust slowly, that I wanted to really talk to her first before things got physical again – none of those thoughts or good intentions mattered because finally, finally she was in my arms again with her scent surrounding me and her soft body against mine. One of my hands went up to her jaw, the other slid up her back and the kiss went out of both of our control. I was so lost in the acute relief and overwhelming feeling of rightness that it took me a couple of minutes to register the sudden and absolute silence. I managed to break the kiss and Verity blinked up at me once, twice, then she froze as reality flooded in. We both turned our heads at the same time.
