Connor turns from his phone to look at me from his place sitting on the bed, but my verbal diarrhoea doesn’t give him chance to respond.
“Because if I have, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything, but I understand if you’re upset, anyway. I can go if you want me to? I’ll get the train home. I can probably catch one if I leave now. I would still like to know what I did, though, so I know for next time. Not that there’s going to be a next time…”
Connor’s expression is a cross between confused and amused. “What are you talking about?”
I feel my eyebrows knit together, and my chest tightens uncomfortably. “You got all serious and said you wanted to talk. I’ve been trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong,” I say. “I don’t think I can wait until tonight. Can you please just tell me what I’ve done so I can apologise and get out of your way?”
“Oh, you haven’t done anything wrong!” Connor instantly stands and walks over to me in two long strides, pulling me into his chest. “I can’t believe you assumed I was upset with you. I’m so sorry.”
“You’re not annoyed?” Relief washes over me like a wave in the sea, and I relax in his hold.
“Not at all. I promise.” Connor strokes my hair as he speaks in soothing tones. I realise that the same strategies he uses to calm me down could also be used on highly strung dogs, but I don’t dwell on it for too long.
“You don’t want me to leave?”
“I would be devastated if you did.”
My heart swells at his whispered confession, and my fists cling tighter to the back of his shirt.
“How about we take a walk, and we can talk now rather than wait until later? I don’t want you worrying for hours. That way we can just enjoy our meal tonight?”
I take a discrete sniff of Connor’s chest, taking full advantageof being close enough to him to inhale his scent. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything.
“I’d like that,” I say. “And you’re sure it’s nothing bad?”
“God, I hope not.”
We leave the hotel soon after – thankfully Bambi isn’t at the reception desk – and cross the road so we can walk along the pebble beach. As we walk, we stop to admire pretty stones or seashells, and Connor even persuades me to take a selfie with him against the beautiful landscape. I rarely agree to having my photo taken, but after my little meltdown in the hotel room, I didn’t want to seem like a diva. He puts his arm around my shoulders and holds up his phone to snap the picture, and I try to smile, but my stomach is a nest of snakes, wriggling around and making me feel sick. I take a few minutes to breathe the nausea away as he taps on his phone.
“There.” He smiles, turning his phone to show me the screen. “That’s better than the pre-set background, isn’t it?”
Yes, he’s set our selfie as his background, and honestly, I don’t know what to make of that. So I smile and nod awkwardly.
I can’t wait much longer for Connor to say what he has to say, but at the same time, I’m avoiding having to hear it. I’m convinced that if I ignore it for long enough, it will go away. Probably. So I continue to point out boats on the sea, pick up pebbles with interesting shapes and tell Connor every interesting factoid I have about beaches and sea life. Unfortunately, it’s only now that I realise I don’t actually know that much about the sea, so my attempts at a diversion are short-lived.
Connor nods towards a bench facing the sea. “Shall we stop here for a bit?” Before I have chance to answer, Connor threadshis fingers through mine and leads me so we’re sitting next to each other.
I bounce my knees, out of nervousness, and Connor puts his free hand on my leg to calm me down. All the contact does, however, is make my heart flutter.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” I sound much more confident than I feel.
“I want to talk about us.”
I knew it. He wants to stop being friends, he was just too nice to say so earlier.
“I really like you, Tilly,” he says, looking me square in the eyes. His face is soft, in what I can only assume is a sympathetic, pitying expression.
Here it comes. The ‘but’.
But he doesn’t say it. He just stares at me like that’s the whole sentence.
“But?” I prompt.
“But what?” he asks, confused.
“I really like you, Tilly… but I want you to move out? But I don’t want to be around you? But it was a mistake to come here? What’s the ‘but’?”
“There isn’t one.”
