Bess laughed quietly, enjoying the proximity, trying to imagine how it might feel to go out with this man for dinner, whether it would be better than the other disastrous dates she’d had over the years. Would he turn out to be the guy she’d always assumed him to be? Or would he be this more laid-back, genuine soul who might just be hiding a bit of himself away from the rest of the world?
‘Mum wasn’t exactly one to be in the kitchen over the years,’ Gio confided, ‘so I think her repertoire is limited.’
‘My mum is the opposite; she loves being in the kitchen.’ He was still sitting so close to her that her pulse was racing. They’d been this close plenty of times over the years but never had it felt the way it did now.
‘Home baking growing up?’ he asked to the sound of clanging pots and pans coming from the kitchen. ‘Lucky you.’
‘She sounds like she’s finding her way around the kitchen now.’
‘Hmm…’ His breath fell across her cheek when he called out, ‘Need some help in there?’
Marianne came through with a head of broccoli in one hand. ‘All under control. Just couldn’t find your chopping board.’
‘It’s beside the microwave.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I had every cupboard out looking for it.’
‘You should’ve?—’
‘Asked, I know.’ She smiled in Bess’s direction before heading back to the kitchen.
‘Looks like you’re having broccoli,’ Bess told him. ‘It’s green, but it’s not peas.’
‘That’s one of the things I love about you, Bess: your positivity.’ His lips parted as if he might want to say more.
But Bess looked away quickly. ‘I really should go.’ When Marianne had asked whether she was staying for dinner, she had been kind of tempted and she knew Gio would’ve gone for it. But she’d been here longer than she’d intended already.
‘Thanks for bringing me home,’ he said as he manoeuvred the crutches under his arms to walk her to the door. ‘And thanks for the company.’ He stayed in the doorway after Bess got her coat on and stepped outside. ‘I’ll see you soon. We’ll go for that dinner.’
She answered him with a smile. She couldn’t manage much else.
Her phone beeped again with a message from her mum as she got into the car and then again when she got back home, so she plucked up the courage and called her, promising she’d be over to visit soon.
‘You’re out again this evening?’ her mum asked.
‘It’s almost Christmas; Noah and Maya have organised drinks.’
‘I was going to stop round; I haven’t seen you in a while.’
‘Another time, Mum. We’ll do it soon.’
When she hung up, she fired off a text to Noah to say that she would join them this evening in the pub. It hadn’t been a formal invite; it wasn’t drinks for the entire team, just a casual suggestion if she had nothing else to do. And right now, she could do with the company. Otherwise, she wasn’t too sure she wouldn’t go back to see Gio. And whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.
Right now, she wanted easy friendship, banter, distraction, and the platonic side to Bess and Gio seemed to be long forgotten, especially for her.
And so she drove to the pub. She should be at home, saving the money, but she needed sanity, an escape. What was another tenner in the grand scheme of things?
It was a drop in the ocean.
13
Gio could see the attraction of being a physiotherapist, putting patients through their paces, clocking their progress, encouraging them when they needed it, backing off when that was required.
In her late twenties, his physio Aysha was enthusiastic, he’d give her that, and she wasn’t stuck in her ways; she didn’t treat him like someone she had to fix but rather a person who was working alongside her to improve. It was an approach that kept her on his good side.
It might be December but he was wearing shorts, necessary for the session and for close inspection of his injury. They were in his small dining room, which had never had a table in and instead housed gym equipment including free weights, a rowing machine and a multi gym with its enormous stack of weights to take him through gruelling workouts to keep his fitness levels as they should be. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d looked over at it since he was injured, especially when he’d set up a camp bed in here when he was first discharged from hospital and unable to take the stairs. He’d looked at theapparatus from his horizontal position and longed to pound out a load of reps, work every inch of his body. He’d sat on the seat a couple of times as he began to improve, done what he could with his arms, the temptation to do the same with his legs almost getting the better of him, but he’d backed off at the thought of making his knee even worse and having a setback that would do him in.
‘Are you still taking the painkillers as required?’ Aysha felt his knee when he made a sound that went beyond an effort-filled groan after the last exercise.
