Page 10 of Only Ever You

The suggestion that built on Faye’s tongue would be either the best or worst idea she’d ever had.

“And if worst comes to worst,” she said with a mildly tamed grin, “I’ll marry you.”

Bash slipped straight off of the curb and hissed.

A horn blared.

Faye grabbed his arm and pulled him back from the road. “Are you okay?”

Her laser-focus homed in on his ankle. He’d startled her when he’d slipped and she’d let him go, but now her heart raced in her throat and her nails dug into his sleeve.

“Yeah … ” Lashes fanned against his cheeks, Bash shook the rainwater off of his apparently uninjured foot, one white-ish shoe definitely more beige looking from the curb-side puddle. Faye grimaced – his washing machine would be in for a rough night.

Bash coughed to clear his throat and looked up at her, brow puckered and eyes wide. “You’ll what? What did you say?”

There was no way he couldn’t have heard her correctly the first time. Had he nearly broken an ankle because of what she’d proposed? That didn’t bode well. Just another reminder of how much he only ever thought of her as a friend.

Annoyed pedestrians manoeuvred around them, and Faye aborted her stupid thoughts and laughed it off.

“I meant as a ‘friends saving each other from a life of loneliness’ kind of thing.” That’s not what she’d meant at all. “And it’snever going to happen anyway, you’ll find someone. I was just trying to help you feel better.”

Bash stared at her for a long four seconds and fed Faye’s anxieties that she’d made the wrong choice. She pursed her lips in a thin line and shrugged. Playing it cool had never been high on her list of talents – faux indifference was the best she could do.

“Right. Okay. Thanks,” he eventually said, blinking. “I think.”

Faye wasn’t sure what was happening – her stomach spooling up in knots. She’d just proposed to herbest friendin a non-romantic roundabout sort of way, but Bash only looked marginally disturbed and severely confused. Hopefully by tomorrow he would’ve forgotten she’d ever said anything.

A marriage for love came with far too many risks for Faye to want it for herself. No, she would rather marry Bash for companionship – if their lives ever came to it – than suffer the turmoil of being married to someone who would just break her heart in the end.

Clearing her throat, they walked on, and just as Faye began to shiver they reached a taxi rank where black cabs and Ubers came and went in a well synchronised dance. She could take the Underground, but she’d rather not when it was this late.

She hailed a taxi and told the driver where she needed to go whilst Bash, for some reason, studied the driver’s face and his licence plate. He’d taken his keys from his pocket and was fiddling with them when she turned to say goodbye.

Though goodbyes were never just with words. Not for them.

Faye lifted her arms around his shoulders and Bash circled her waist, wishing there would never be a time when she would have to let go.

“Goodnight, Peanut.” Bash hugged her closer, tighter. His gentle warmth radiating the lingering scent of his cologne where she turned her cheek into his neck. The scratch of roughness in his voice was probably just tiredness from the long day. “Text mewhen you get home.” Six words that turned her heart into a marshmallow, hushed beside her ear.

“I will.”

Aware the cab was waiting and the clock had likely started already, they let each other go, but not before Bash’s hands smoothed up and down her waist.

“Bye,” Faye said one last time as she ducked into the back seat of her ride, taking in one final map of Bash’s face.

She waved through the window as he got smaller and smaller, until he disappeared completely and the familiar longing which counted down to the next time she would see him drew in like clouds before a storm.

As promised, she texted him as soon as she was home, then sent a similar text to the group chat. Other messages saying the same thing – that everyone had arrived home – had already filtered in.

Ten minutes later, Bash's text came with another goodnight wish. Faye knew that she would have to get used to it being this way, because pretty soon, texts like these were all that she would have.

4

BASH

The only liehe’d ever told himself was that he didn’t have feelings for Faye.

Okay, it wasn’t the only lie. But it was the most important one. The one Bash thought of every day. Just a tiny little insignificant omission that snowballed since not long after they’d met.

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