Chapter Twenty-Four
For a moment, I wonder if perhaps I dreamt staying up with Tyler and I’m still there, about to witness my sister finally get the girl.
But a perfunctory glance at my phone makes it clear that isn’t the case. There’s no bookmarked video for the weird bra thing. No reminder about dinner in my calendar. The last time I video-called with someone was my assistant Alesha over a week ago.
The alarm blares again and I switch it off, throwing the phone onto the pillow next to me.
What’s the point in getting up?
I may as well just stay here in bed until I skip again. Hide from the world and the reality of what is happening to me. Wait until I wake up in another room, then another, then another.
I ignore the barrage of calls from Alesha. Don’t bother to listen to the ten voicemails she leaves. Refuse to read the five emails she sends me. I burrow further under the duvet to avoid the recriminations of the constant dinging.
But an hour later I find myself absolutely unable to ignore the person ringing my doorbell as if they’re a toddler with a brand-new toy. I drag myself out of bed and wrap a dressing gown around me. It’s soft and fluffy, and for a moment I stop,suspended in time, the memory alive and so close I can smell the pine and cinnamon aroma of the shopping centre.
Cesca and I were wandering around the shops, drinking mulled wine from paper cups, marvelling at the thousands of twinkling lights like we were little kids again, ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ blaring from the speakers. Going late-night shopping in early December was a Raven tradition stretching back to when we were tiny kids.
We were in the White Company – you know, the shop where basically everything is white or shades of subtle grey and it’s all posh and lovely and expensive – looking for something for Rachel who is notoriously difficult to buy Christmas gifts for, on top of her always saying there isn’t anything she actually wants. I remember reaching out to touch one of their robes. It felt like a cloud beneath my fingertips and I groaned under my breath. ‘Imagine having one of these,’ I said to Cesca. She reached out to stroke it too, almost reverently, like it was a nervous kitten, and made a similar noise to the one I had.
‘One day I will buy that for you,’ she promised, her voice imbued with a level of gravity that made the promise a pact.
‘And I will wear it every day.’ I sounded just as serious and then we made a pinkie swear before buying a candle set for Rachel and getting more mulled wine.
But it seems that in this world, I haven’t waited for Cesca to buy me the robe, I’ve just bought it for myself. And yes, it’s gorgeous and fluffy and feels almost like silk against my skin, but knowing that here it has no sentimental meaning, it loses something. Like it isn’t as special as it should be.
The bell screeching again breaks me from the thought and I hurry to the front door, muttering under my breath and then all-out cursing as I catch my little toe on a side table that has no right to be taking up so much space in the narrow hallway. What kind of fucking idiot puts that there, right where people can trip over it?
I swing the door open and come face to face with Tyler Adams.
‘What the fu—’ I start but the expletive dies on my lips. He has slightly longer hair here, curling over his ears in an unkempt fashion, like he also just rolled out of bed. I reach up to touch my own hair and remember it’s twisted into that heatless curler thingy. Shit.
‘Your assistant couldn’t get hold of you,’ he says, like that is an adequate explanation for why he’s standing on my doorstep.
For a moment I start to twist my body to let him into the flat and then I realize that this is another universe and another Tyler and this one has no idea who I am or what we’ve been doing in all those other worlds. ‘Sorry? But why are you here?’ The words are clipped, my mind suddenly on high alert. Something isn’t right here.
He looks coy, shy almost, and runs his hand through his curls, making them even more dishevelled, even more like he’s just rolled out of bed. I pull my gown more tightly around me in self-admonishment for having those kinds of thoughts in this wholly inappropriate moment. ‘Right. Yes. Well, sorry about that. We had a meeting? And then you didn’t show up at your office and no one could get hold of you. And my next meeting isn’t far from here. So I promised Alesha I would drop by and check nothing awful had happened.’ He talks too quickly, shifting his weight from foot to foot in the way I know he does when he’s nervous.
‘Alesha gave you my address?’
‘We were worried about you. Alesha said you haven’t missed a day in the whole time you’ve worked together.’
That isn’t true. I’m notoriously unreliable. I’m often late to the office – normally because Cesca has persuaded me to go out the night before and I’m too tired to bother getting into work at the crack of dawn – or decide at the last minute to work from home because that way I don’t need to bother changing out of my pyjamas. But that’smyworld. Where Cesca is always there to lead me astray. Notthisworld. Where evidently I’m serious and stuck-up and for whatever reason actually make an effort to physically go to the office every day like a good little worker bee. Weird.
I could argue with Tyler. Tell him to leave me alone. And then I could crawl back into bed and wait to skip again. And again. And again.
Instead I burst into tears.
Half an hour later, Tyler has made me sugary tea and forced me to eat a few of the fancy biscuits he’d bought in case I was sick and needed a pick-me-up. He also bought grapes like I’m an actual hospital inpatient, but to be fair I do love grapes and I’ll one hundred per cent eat them later.
‘So,’ he says, putting down his own mug, ‘do you want to talk? I’m a good listener.’ He flashes me a self-deprecating grin. ‘I mean, or so I’ve been told.’
‘Nessie told me you’re the unofficial agony aunt of the family,’ I reply and reach for another biscuit. The sugar is definitely helping to make me feel more human and less like I’m standing on the precipice of time and space about to fall into the abyss.
‘Yep.’ He nods, but then the motion slows and his eyes narrow in confusion. ‘How do you know Nessie?’
Ah, yes. That small issue that I’ve met his whole family and know intimate details of his life. Including the way the skin on his neck smells and how he tastes slightly of custard creams. I blush deeply at the thought of kissing him.
‘Is something going on?’ His confusion has morphed into suspicion.
