‘A common response, I think,’ she says, making herself look straight at Sam.
He gives her a smile, sad and barely noticeable. ‘Yeah.’
Lexi unwraps the bandage and gently wraps it around Sam’s arm. She has this weird, unexpected thought: she wants to take him home and mend other broken parts of him. But it’s too late for that. They’ve moved from enemies to lovers and back to enemies. This is just a temporary reprieve.
‘There,’ she says, when it’s done. ‘You’re all set. But before you go, I need you to drink the tea.’ It has sat, cooling, on the table while she’s been cleaning and bandaging. Five minutes or five hours, who can say? It’s like time has stopped in there.
Sam looks at Lexi sceptically.
‘Tea cures all ills,’ she tells him. ‘If you were British, you would know that.’
‘Good thing you’re here to teach me, in that case.’ He takes a sip from her Book Nerd mug. ‘Huh. It actually tastes better when you put milk in it.’
‘Well, yes. Obviously. We do know what we’re doing across the pond.’
Lexi is getting tea envy. She was so focused on Sam that she didn’t think to make herself one. Which, now that she thinks about it, is a metaphor for all kinds of things. Sam is both a great distraction, and the bane of her existence.
The silence between them stretches. There’s nowhere to go from that comment except for dangerous discussions about monarchy and colonialism, and neither of them are in the mood to debate the relative merits of their countries of origin. They both know what they could do to break the silence, and they both know it’s a bad idea, what with the fact that they hate each other and also his ex-girlfriend is both back in town now and possibly not his ex anymore.
‘It’s getting late,’ Sam says in the end, saving them both. ‘I should go.’
‘Yep. I think we’ve both had quite enough excitement for one night.’
Pippin opens an eye, as if to ask:You’re still here? Let me sleep already.
Sam watches her as she flips the light switches in turn, then sets the alarm and locks up.
‘Am I going to have to change my alarm code now?’
He laughs. ‘Breaking in isn’t really my thing.’
‘Which, of course, is exactly what a habitual breaker-innerwouldsay.’
‘Touché.’
On the corner, they pause awkwardly. This still feels very unfinished, but short of snogging him right there in the street, Lexi isn’t really sure what she can do to address that.
‘Well, thank you for rescuing my cat,’ she says.
‘Thank you for taking care of my war wound,’ he says.
And then they just keep standing there. The tension is intolerable. In the end, Lexi opens her arms for a hug, and Sam gratefully moves in for one. They stand there, on the corner of 7th and Penn, hugging for what seems like far too long, so long that it feels like the sun might come up and they’d still be standing there. Is he smelling her hair? Does she even want him to? She doubts her strawberry shampoo is perceptible beneath the day’s panic-fuelled sweat.Always wear perfume, Lexi mentally chastises herself.You never know when you’ll want to be smelling nice.
‘Any time,’ she says eventually, into his chest. ‘You know where to come if you need a cup of tea and some antibacterial cream.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ he says. He pulls away, and she immediately starts to miss him, like part of her skin has come unpeeled and stayed attached to him. She watches Sam walk away, and she reminds herself that she hates him. But somehow, it doesn’t quite feel true.
Chapter Forty-Six
On her way to work the next day, Lexi picks up an extra latte. It’s the least she can do for a person who’s been mauled by her feral cat, particularly when they’ve been mauled while doing her the favour of rescuing said cat.
Although, Pippin would no doubt object to this characterisation. And fair enough: he’s far from feral. He’s usually no trouble at all. If Lexi didn’t know better, in fact, she might think that Pippin chose the tree outside Sam’s bookshop on purpose, that getting her speaking to him again was his plan along. If he’s readThe Hundred and One Dalmatians– and he is, after all, a bookshop cat, so maybe he has!– then he’ll know this is a feasible plan. Maybe the scratch was a test: would Sam give up? Or would he see past the fear, overlook his own pain, and keep going? Is all of this a metaphor? Is Lexi losing her mind? She’s not slept much lately; it’s not impossible that she’s delirious.
Anyway, it’s Wednesday, and getting an extra latte is what she does on Wednesdays. She misses her piano lessons, though– and not just for the tantalising sofa bed in the corner of the room or the hot teacher who eventually flung her there. She enjoyed learning something from scratch, creating a melody from seemingly nothing in response to what were, only a few weeks ago, just meaningless blobs of ink impaled on indecipherable lines. She can see how music could be addictive. As can Sam.
But Lexi isn’t addicted.
She can stop whenever she wants.
