“You think so?” Dair dodges around me to lift each leaf. “There. Alice called this her tea table, so I thought you could use it for...” There’s a drawer beneath the tabletop. He slides it open, comes out with a coaster, then scoops my teacup on its fancy saucer from the mantelpiece and sets it down. “Your tea!”
He isn’t done with digging in that drawer. This time he comes out with a familiar tube of aloe vera, and I think he’s about to suggest a repeat of what went down in his bathroom.
That could happen—Blake isn’t here to cockblock me today. We’re all alone, and I almost say yes to us picking up from where we left off the last time we were alone together.
Dair speaks up first.
“I wanted to talk to you about something. And to give you this.” He thrusts the tube at me. “To say sorry.”
“For what?”
“For when I…”
His gaze drops to my chest, then lower, and I think he’s about to apologise for shooting spunk all over my belly.
I don’t need an apology for something I’ve replayed plenty. Dair lifting a finger to his eyes and rubbing underneath one clues me into what he thinks he needs to apologise for.
“I got a bit over…”
“Emotional?”
“I’m a soft sod.”
The tube of aloe vera is warm from his hands. So is whatever has sent out springtime shoots in my chest. “You’re allowed to feel sad.” Sad doesn’t seem a strong enough descriptor. “To feel a lot more than sad. Believe me, I’ve felt the same way.”
He’s instantly sympathetic, gaze casting around a room that is still almost empty. “About your ex leaving.”
“Really, Flynn wasn’t my ex. I meant losing someone you were close to. I get it. You’re feeling a lot about losing your…” Like before, I struggle. Client doesn’t seem the right word for someone I’ve seen smiling out of photos beside Dair. “About losing Alice. We talked about this. About you being surrounded by reminders.”
“Like whenever you hear an ice cream van?” Again, he’s sympathetic, and I don’t only hear it. His eyes are so full of understanding I have to fix my own gaze on something—anything—other than this evidence that he’s as soft as butter. It lands on the tube of salve in my hands. “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “But I had my cousin.”
“Kev?”
“Yeah, and his missus. You got anyone like that in your corner?”
His lips pressing together feels like an untold story. Or like a room full of a past he isn’t ready to yank dust sheets from in front of a virtual stranger. And that’s what I am, I guess, even if I’ve had his cock in my hand and his face on my phone screenall week long. I’m someone he barely knows, and yet it’s me who Dair keeps gifting his possessions.
He wages a silent war for the right words like I’ve done twice already. For once, it’s as easy as pie to find the right ones for him.
“You don’t have to tell me nothing. I’m just saying I know what it’s like to lose with fuck all warning.” Twice, if I’m honest, although in hindsight, what Flynn did was nothing compared to losing Stacey. But it had set off the same reaction. “So I know what it’s like to need a bit of human contact.” I’ll never forget waking up wedged between two muppets. “Which is all that happened in your bathroom, mate. A little bit of human contact.” I finally get to say what’s been on my mind since it happened. “If anyone should be sorry, it’s me.”
Admitting this feels messy. And needed.
“I told you I don’t want to be another taker, but that’s kinda what I did, yeah?” I eye his latest gifts and regret the promise I made my cousin about taking everything I could from my next client.
I’m gonna have to break it.
“That means you gotta let me give you something for this table.”
Dair is quick to disagree with part of my statement. “You aren’t a taker.”
I’m just as quick to set him straight. “You can’t know that for sure. Not about me or about anybody else you just met.” I say a mental goodbye to something pretty.
Not to Dair.
I’d like to keep him around until he has to hand over his keys, which means I have to do this. I slide open that drawer and set the tube of salveinside it. “You keep itandyour table. I’ll bring everything else back to your place later. Your chairs and cups and towels as well.” It’s way too late for the Hobnobs, plusI’m not an actual angel, even if he looks at me like I’ve sprouted wings and wear a shiny halo.
“Why?”
