It’s time. She misses her sister; she misses her niblings. She misses real bacon and ready salted Hula Hoops. She misses being able to make references to childhood TV and other people understanding them. She misses making plans with friends who end their emails withxxrather thanbest. And she can’t stay when the shop shuts: it will break her heart every time she walks past its shell, every time she bumps into one of her former team, which she’s bound to, because Capitol Hill is a village.
Sure, she’ll miss the pastel houses and the tiny parks; she’ll miss air conditioning in summer and the occasional real, proper knee-deep snow in winter. She’ll miss living in a city where being a nerd makes you cool and she’ll miss being thought of as smart and charming because of her bog-standard British accent. She’ll miss the octopus salad from her favourite Puerto Rican restaurant and the duck fried rice from Chiko and the Mexican food from just about anywhere but especially Santa Rosa, just down the road from the shop, and getting pleasantly sozzled on their happy-hour margaritas. And every time she goes back to London, she really tries to find good coffee, and every time it’s disappointing; she knows she’ll miss Peregrine most of all.
And, of course, irritatingly, she’ll miss stupid Sam and his stupid green eyes.
Without thinking, she grabs her phone and scrolls to their latest text thread. She doesn’t know, exactly, why she wants to tell him what’s happening. To guilt him? Maybe. To give him a chance to tell her not to leave? It’s possible. Or just so that he hears it from her first. Or, most frighteningly of all, maybe it’s the biological need for a consolatory snog, even though all rational thought warns her that won’t be possible, what with the girlfriend, et cetera, and is certainly not wise.
Finding their last chat, she notices something she hadn’t seen before: amid the flurry of activity on her phone after Tipsy Browsing, she’s missed a message from him. It says, simply:Proud of you xo
She taps the heart so that he knows she’s thankful, that his words mean something. And then, through her tears, she adds:Thank you xo
And then:But it isn’t enough.
Lexi stares at her phone, willing Sam to respond. He’s probably busy, serving customers who used to come here but now go to him instead. He’ll probably ignore her message for two days the same way it looks like she’s ignored his.
But no: his response lights up her phone almost straight away.
What do you mean?
Just heard my rent is going up 30%. It’s over. You’ve won.
Then she deletes that last bit, because even though she feels like it’s amply deserved, it seems harsh, and right now what she needs is a friend. And maybe also that consolatory snog.
Oh no. That’s really rough.
Dots, no dots, dots again.
I don’t know what to say.
Lol I can see that.
I’m sorry.
Thanks.
Come over tonight?
Lexi should say no. She should say,I don’t think that’s wise. She should say,Haven’t you got a girlfriend?But tonight is date night for Erin and John. Lexi will be alone with her dark thoughts, too stunned to cook. So what if it’s not the wisest thing? She’ll be gone in a few weeks anyway and she’ll never have to see him again. She won’t have to worry about whether he’ll dump her for Amanda, or dump Amanda for her. He’ll be in the past, all of this will be, and she can forget all about how he destroyed her business and ruined all other men for her. It’ll be like none of this ever happened.
Chapter Fifty-Five
If she’s honest, Lexi would have to say that what she wants is for Sam to rip her clothes off as soon as she walks in the door. She doesn’t want to think. She doesn’t want to talk. She just wants mindless distraction. She’s a little feral with desire.
She’s missed him.
And he’s so hot.
Lexi has all this pent-up rage and frustration energising her, and that energy has to go somewhere. And she knows it’s ugly, but she’s also kind of relieved that she won’t be here to face the consequences when it inevitably goes horribly wrong. She can walk away. And she will.
But Lexi’s animal thoughts are halted when Sam opens the door. He stands there in the checked shirt that she loves because it brings out the colour in his eyes, brow furrowed in worry and empathy. And he doesn’t, as she’d hoped, and as she’d pictured all the way to his apartment, kiss her and immediately find some buttons to undo, a zip to rip downwards, a bra to unclasp in one deft movement.
Instead, he opens his arms wide to her, offering a hug, and the animal in Lexi is gone, replaced by a young woman in need of comfort, in need of being looked after. Embarrassingly, she starts to cry, and not the pretty kind of tears you see in movies, either: snotty, ugly tears that she’s grateful he can’t see with her face smushed into the gorgeous shirt she’s currently ruining.
‘It’s laundry day tomorrow,’ he says softly, into her hair, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Go as hard as you like on this shirt.’
That makes her laugh, for some reason– laugh through her nose so that more snot comes out, which makes her laugh a little more, mostly at herself and how pathetic she is. This is definitely not the animal seduction she’d pictured on the way over. When she pulls away, which she’ll have to eventually, there’ll be snot and tears on his shirt and her eyes will be– already are; she can feel it– red and puffy and swollen. The death knell, surely, to any attraction Sam might feel towards her.
‘I think it should probably be laundry daytoday,’ she says, pulling back and admiring the mess she’s made. It feels like a weird kind of revenge to ruin his best shirt, his most attractive shirt, the shirt that makes him irresistible to women. Unless it’s just her who feels that way; in which case, it’s not so much revenge as an own goal.
