The lock turned with a distinctive click but the door didn’t open. I waited, counting to ten, before turning the handle to let myself in.
‘Hello?’ I called, squinting into the unlit hallway. I knew he was angry, but couldn’t he have turned at least one light on? ‘Ren?’
‘Say what you want to say then leave.’
His voice came from upstairs, carrying through the darkness.
‘Can you come down?’ I asked from the foot of the stairs. ‘I don’t really want to have to shout all of this.’
‘No.’
‘Right you are,’ I mumbled, feeling my way up the old, creaking staircase.
When I reached the top, I saw a sliver of orange light seeping out from underneath one of the doors and with my heart in my mouth, I knocked gently then pushed it open.
Ren stood in the shadows on the far side of the room, one small lamp lighting the space.
We were in his bedroom.
If the way I felt before was painful, this was agony. He was still in his tux, only with the bow tie hanging loose, three buttons unfastened at his neck, exposing just enough of his throat to make me wonder whether Bel was right, maybe I was a vampire. I definitely had an undeniable urge to press my mouth to his flesh and taste it.
‘Well?’ Ren said. ‘What is it?’
His bedroom was small, the walls wood-panelled and the ceilings low. I stayed where I was, on the other side of the enormous wooden bedframe that separated us. His bed, Ren’s bed. Right there, just three steps away from me.
‘I offered to write love letters for Bel because she was too nervous to start a conversation with you and I know that sounds absurd when you get to know her, but please try to remember the first word she ever said to you was “snigh”.’ He pulled at the end of his bow tie, letting it snake around his neck, then tossed it over the back of a chair but didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter. I was determined to get it all out this time. Even if nothing else came of it, I owed him the truth.
‘But I wrote them,’ I confessed. ‘And I meant every word of them.’
Ren slid his arms out of his jacket, dangling it over a high-backed leather armchair in the low lamplight.
‘If that’s true, why would you say they were from Bel?’ he asked. ‘Why would you want me to date her if you had feelings for me?’
‘Believe me, I had a lot of different reasons, but they all seem stupid now,’ I replied, winding my fingers around one another.
‘Such as?’
‘Bel liked you first, I’m only here on holiday, you’re not my type.’ I pressed down on an angry red rose-thorn scratch near my wrist and started at the sting. ‘Someone like you would never want someone like me.’
Ren laid his jacket over the back of the chair, smoothing it down carefully, lovingly. I remembered him telling Myrna he would wear his grandfather’s tuxedo and I felt a tug in my chest, an irresistible force pulling me to him. Fighting the laws of physics, I stayed right where I was.
‘Someone like me,’ he echoed as he turned his attention to his cuffs. ‘A lame, lonely guy who’s stuck in the past, can’t make a relationship work, constantly disappoints his family and has been hiding in his grandparents’ house for the last year to avoid having to figure out what to do with his life? You mean someone like that?’
‘You can’t mean that,’ I said, watching as he unfastened one cufflink and then the other. ‘Do you really not know how amazing you are?’
He met my words with an under-the-breath laugh,slipping the silver cufflinks into a black velvet box and snapping it shut.
‘OK, Phoebe.’
‘No, not “OK, Phoebe”,’ I replied, suddenly furious with him. How dare he not see himself the way I did? Clearing my throat and my mind, I opened my mouth and hoped the right words would come. ‘You’re considerate. You’re kind and genuine. You’re so passionate about the things you love.’
He placed one hand on top of his bedpost, first running his fingers over the old wood then pulling on it, testing the sturdiness of the structure.
‘Stubborn is the word my family would use.’
‘That’s just what people say when they know they can’t change your mind about something you believe in,’ I replied, very much wishing I was that bedpost. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you, Ren. The way you value the past just as much as the future. The way you see the beauty in simple things, in birds, in old houses, in tradition and how you want to share it with everyone.’
The words were coming thick and fast now, I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried.
