Page 104 of You Belong With Me

‘There is a need, because I have a choice now. I either let you go on thinking I’m another one of the arseholes, or I tell you the truth. I said what I said because my sisters had me sussed. The amount I talk about you, the way I talk about you. They were right on the brink of finding out, and the only way I could stop them was raising an objection.’

He drew breath, and Edie quaked.

‘… I had to invent one. Apologies to your fella, but I went with him. He’s a nice guy, self-effacing, not a brat at all. Sharp and annoyingly witty. It’s not his fault I wish he didn’t exist. It’s not his fault I was praying for him to be a boring brat, someone you might need saving from.’

Declan shrugged, and Edie’s skin was hot under her coat.

‘What I didn’t want my sisters to know is: I fucking adore you, Edie Thompson.Gives me stomach paintype of adore you. I know there’s no hope, no chance – I’m never going tomention it again. I know you’re madly in love with someone else. I’m settling for colleagues and friends. I’m grateful for that, and I don’t want to ruin it. But I didn’t want you to think I’m a two-faced shit. I’m only two-faced in so far as I don’t want anyone to know this. Including you, but – I forgot to turn off lock screen previews, and here we are.’

‘Understood,’ Edie said.

She did understand. Not only that, but somehow, she discovered she had understood this all along. Elliot was right. She’d chosen not to know, which wasn’t the same thing as not knowing.

‘You and I haven’t done “drama free” from the word go, have we?’ she said, after a pause, surprised not to find this at all awkward. Somehow, there was no awkward left. ‘We’ve packed in about ten years of getting to know each other into a few weeks.’

‘Hahaha, right enough,’ Declan said, with a look that blended love and humour and sadness and gratitude, all at once.

They needed a reset.

‘Thank you for being honest, and I’m glad I’ve got to know you, Declan,’ she said.

‘Thank you. So am I. We’re good?’

‘Good,’ Edie said, extending her hand for him to shake. ‘You know, I’m starting to think smartphones are like keeping a pet rattlesnake.’

54

Much as Fraser and Molly’s wedding being precipitous had been a talking point from the start, Edie still couldn’t quite believe how fast it arrived. There was getting on with it – then there was this.

‘Nice day for it,’ said Edie’s driver, as he punched the postcode into the satnav. Edie had gamely resisted the Elliot Owen trappings, but she’d started to get used to the chauffeuring.

Inevitably, the hotel was the variety to have wrought-iron gates and an ‘approach’. Inside, everything was soft carpets, thickly lined curtains, and framed prints of noteworthy historic animals. It was sufficiently large that Edie encountered no others from the wedding party as she checked in – or not ones she recognised.

She made at herself at home in the room, getting ready in leisurely fashion, and wondered at the practicality of roll-top baths in front of uncovered windows – especially if strangers were keen to take photographs of you.

‘Fuuuuuck, the traffic was a bastard,’ Elliot said, crashing in at midday, pulling headphones from his neck. ‘Hi, you OK?I can’t stop, I need to get in that shower …’ He stopped. ‘Wow. You look amazing.’

‘I don’t look like I’m going to a funeral?’ Edie said. She had teamed the Vampire’s Wife with a birdcage mesh veil, attached to a thin band, which covered her eyes.

‘If so, even if it was my wife in the coffin, I’d be all over you at the wake,’ Elliot said. ‘My clothes arrived?’

Edie pointed at the suit bag on the wardrobe. ‘Magic. Right, sorry for neglecting you, but – hygiene …’

He disappeared into the bathroom to the sounds of running water and emerged shortly afterwards, clad only in boxers, looking like he should be filmed in sepia and scored by a retro torch song. Edie was a girlfriend and not a common or garden voyeur fan, yet sometimes she felt like both.

She’d never divulged that when she was particularly missing Elliot, she looked up a famous, PG-13 scene on YouTube inBlood & Gold. His weeping servant wench love, Malleflead, tenderly sponged his battle-brutalised body by candlelight, then matters developed. It was Prince Wulfroarer’s heavy burden to still inflame ladies’ loins when requiring first aid.

(Meg walked in once and said: ‘Eww, and why’s she clambering on top of him if he’s that fucked up?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘If I was Elliot I’d shout, “get off me you mad bitch.” Maybe he saves that for you, hahaha.’

Edie turned it off and said: ‘Wank ruined,’ to screaming from her sister.)

‘Oh God, I feel like I’ve been kicked from the back of a Bedford van at sixty miles an hour. I’ll wait for the adrenalineproper to gush through my veins and put me back in the room. Probably better that than alcohol,’ Elliot said.

His suit was narrow black pinstripe, with pale pink tie, white shirt, brown and white dress shoes.

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