I winced at the memory.
‘– you were so … so closed off. So absent, I mean. Not really there.’
I swallowed.
It had been deliberate. The distance. I had still been furious with Derek and the label for the whole fake relationship idea, and I’d wanted nothing more than to push Jessy away. Perhaps if she’d found my behaviour off-putting enough, she would have pulled the plug on the whole thing.
As I sat with her now, I was glad she hadn’t.
‘But when we went abseiling –’
I grinned. ‘Ahh, the abseiling you hated every second of.’ I let out a chuckle so she knew I was only teasing.
‘I – I did not hate it!’ Jessy protested, though there was a twinkle in her eyes that told a different story.
My smile widened. ‘You absolutely hated it – but you did it. Twice!’
‘You were a great encouragement.’
That should not have made me feel as warm and fuzzy as it did.
‘So, what’s the deal?’
I blinked. Jessy was looking at me expectantly, twisted on the bench now so she could look at me straight on.
I let my eyes trace her face. Her eyes, her cute button nose – and I couldn’t help but glance at those rosy lips of hers. ‘Deal?’ I questioned, voice softer than I could imagine.
‘Yeah. With you.’
With just us out here, alone on the Forty Six’s balcony, the balmy evening had a magical feel to it. Like we were cocooned in our own little world.
Jessy’s smile was that knowing one again. ‘Patrick Tetlow, reformed player and bad boy of music, the dark and mysterious singer of These Exiles –’
I laughed at that. ‘Fuck off.’
‘Well, you know what I mean!’ Jessy nudged me with her shoulder, and I tried not to notice how good it felt, to be in contact with her again, even for a brief moment. ‘What gives, Patrick?’
My laughter faded as I looked up at her open and unguarded querying expression.
What gives.
So much. Not enough.
Any other situation, any other person, I would have shut down this line of conversation and merely laughed it off.
But the alcohol was still gently buzzing in my skull, and there was something even more intoxicating about this woman.
Jessy. Jessy Donovan.
I knew almost nothing about her, I realized with a twist in my gut. She worked in finance. She had a twin whose dating app she was trying to promote. She hated heights.
How could I be dating this woman –fake dating, I reminded myself sternly – and know so little about her?
Probably because she knew fuck all about me.
I knew then that if this was going to stay tolerable – hell, stay enjoyable, something I had not allowed myself to even think until now – Jessy needed to know something about me.
Not everything.
