‘Well, you know. I went snowboarding in the Alps with my friend Lily last year, and it was harder than I thought it would be, and I spent the whole week on my backside, it felt like. And I came home covered in bruises. But every bruise was a reminder of the fun I’d had. Learning something new. Breathing in air so clean it tingles in your nostrils. The beautiful landscapes with all that bright white snow. The belly laughs and late-night chats I’d had with my friend. If I accidentally poked one of my bruises for a couple of weeks afterwards, it would hurt, but I’d also remember the good times, and it would make me smile.’
‘I see,’ Alex says, nodding. ‘Well, this isn’t like that.’
This is a little disappointing. Jess had hoped Alex would be enjoying himself at least a little bit. Enjoying the flapjacks, at least. But she senses anxiety beneath his words and centres herself, resolving to be patient, to let him articulate his feelings.
‘I recognise we’re doing good work,’ he says. ‘I love your suggestion of breaking up long passages of description with some snappy dialogue. I think you’vemade some great points, and I admit that the book will be stronger for the work we’re doing. But that’s not quite the same as, well … as snowboarding.’
‘Fair enough.’
This is progress, after all. A whole lot of progress when she considers how he clearly felt about writing with her back at the beginning of this whole thing.
He takes a long sip of tea, and she senses there’s more, that he’s formulating a sentence with his face hidden in his mug.
‘This isn’t easy for me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, Jess.’
She loves the way he says her name, the S almost imperceptibly there, gentle, like the softest tickle on the inside of her wrist.
Alex clears his throat. ‘I’m really impressed with what you’re bringing to this discussion. And I …’ He raises his head, makes eye contact. ‘I’m sorry that I was so rude to you during that first meeting. I’m sorry that I doubted you.’
Jess presses her lips together, aware of the blush creeping up her chest.
‘Second meeting, really,’ she says, deflecting.
‘What do you mean?’ The smile passes over his lips so quickly that it would have been possible to miss it. But Jess doesn’t.
‘I thought we had a moment in the bookshop. Then you acted like you’d never seen me before, and I thought maybe I’d imagined it.’
‘You didn’t imagine it,’ he says, his eyes still on hers. Her stomach flips over itself and, jolted, she has to lookaway, bury her own face in her own overly large mug of tea. ‘We did have a moment.’
This feels like another moment – here, now – but Jess is paralysed. Without meaning to, she pictures herself walking over to his side of the table and leaning towards him, kissing his cheek. She pictures him turning his face to her, finding her mouth with his. She yanks her mind away from imagining him deepening the kiss, from thinking about what might happen next. She wriggles in her seat, with pleasure and also to try to drag her mind and the responses of her body away from these things. She takes another sip of the tea, hiding for as long as she can get away with, willing her blush to crawl back down her cheeks and her neck, down onto her chest, under her top.
When she can no longer get away with pretending there’s any tea left in her mug, Jess puts it down. She forces herself to look at Alex. He is watching her, a smile playing at the edge of his lips, and she can’t bear to look at him.
‘Moments like that aren’t very professional, I suppose,’ she says eventually, when she feels like she can trust her voice not to wobble and betray her.
‘No,’ he says. ‘But you know what they say about all work and no play …’
From the bottom of one of their bags, a phone rings. Neither of them makes a move to dig out their phone, to check who’s ringing. But the outside world has intruded, and this moment, like the bookshop moment, is over before it has even begun.
After all, maybe it’s Nathan, checking up on theirprogress. They’ve barely been here a few hours; imagine having to tell him that they’ve got distracted, that maybe they’ll need a bit more time … that, ahem,other thingshave got in the way. Or maybe it’s Lily, who can read Jess like a book, who reads most of Jess’s life like a romance novel. Jess would never hear the end of it if she was forced to admit to what is going on.
Besides, Alex is right. Theyaredoing good work. It would be such a shame to knock that off course for the sake of a little fun. And how awkward would it be to criticise the sentence structure of a man whose bed you have just left – or whose bed you are still in?
They need to leave this cottage with a plan, with their heads held high, professional novelists worthy of the title. Although Jess is beginning to think that maybe they shouldn’t be in a hurry to leave this cottage. That maybe being stuck here with Alex for a few more days than originally planned would not be the worst thing in the world. That maybe, despite the very reasonable points she is currently making to herself, it would be good if there was time for those, ahem, other things.
Chapter Eighteen
Alex
Well. This is very inconvenient.
Alex has never been the best at reading signs, but the electricity between him and Jess is crackling so hard that he thinks the whole of Godalming must be able to see the sparks. A shower of shooting stars raining on the town, perhaps. Not to be dramatic about this, of course. Drama being, after all, not really his style.
To top it all off, she has made him the perfect cup of tea. He always says,Really strong, just a tiny splash of milk,and then everyone ignores him and thinks he can’t possibly meanthatlittle milk, but he did, and now they’ve put too much in, and the tea is ruined. But Jess justknew. She knew how to make it.
Which is fine, because he doesn’t believe in signs.
But if he did, that would be a neon flashing one. Tea, like coffee, is very important in Alex’s life.
