Page 39 of You Belong With Me

‘Did you say this to your ex? Heather?’ Edie said. She wasn’t trying to set up a competition, more seeking illumination of his nature.

‘Ehm … I’m not trying to crawl for popularity, but it’s never come up because it’s never mattered to me like it would matter now. And I selfishly see you as safely outside of the nonsense I dwell in, so I’d not asked myself anything about equivalence. This is quite a learning curve for me.’

‘You haven’t dated a Normal before?’ Edie said, smiling.

‘Not since I was one, too, though I reject yourNormal/Abnormal binaries,’ Elliot said, smiling back. He paused. ‘I didn’t manage good speech writing on the flight, but I did try proper thinking.’

‘Apology accepted,’ Edie said.

‘Can I hug you now?’

‘If you must,’ Edie said, with a small smile.

Once he was holding her, Edie was faintly horrified to find she involuntarily started sobbing into his navy wool shoulder.Relief, that’s why,she thought.You saw their handholding, and for a split second, you really thought that newspaper might be giving you news.

‘Ah fuck, I’m so incredibly sorry, sweetheart,’ Elliot said. He’d never used that endearment before, and the tenderness briefly made Edie worse.

‘S’OK, I’m exhausted more than upset, really,’ she said blearily, trying to pull herself together and absorb the moisture by wiping at her face with her sleeve. ‘Nick mixes strong margaritas, and they helped until they didn’t. Plus, you actually being here is pretty trippy. How the fuck are you here?!’

Now that they were repaired, Edie was free to be a heady mixture of incredulous and elated.

‘I honestly thought you might be finishing with me,’ Elliot said. ‘Fastest decision I ever made. Apologies to the planet.’

‘It’s very movie star.’

‘Yeah, well, I wanted to make the size of effort that showed I understood the size of the offence.’

Edie leaned up and kissed him, and Elliot responded like someone who’d been waiting for the chance and wasn’t goingto waste the opportunity. He was very good at kissing that was gentle and romantic at the outset and built to something more carnally intentional.

‘Have you really got to go straight back?’

Edie was abruptly and specifically wishing it was at least a three-hour layover.

‘Yup. I had to plead family emergency to get away this long.’ He brushed her hair over her ear. ‘But then again, it was an emergency, and you are my family.’

Edie put her face in his coat and breathed him in, and he stroked her hair, and they spent a brief comfortable silence together, simply appreciating proximity.

Elliot glanced around. ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’

‘When you’re not howl-sobbing in the garden after reading scurrilous stories.’

‘You’re not serious? Are you?’

He looked so afflicted that Edie quickly added: ‘If I liked diamonds, I could make you buy me a guilt gift, couldn’t I? Is that a terrible gendered thing? Like a “push present”. Rat tax. A bastardy sparkler.’

‘A diamond ring?’

Edie hadn’t thought of that implication, and her scalp was suddenly hot with the force of cringe. She pulled away. ‘Oh God, no! Like … a necklace, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about diamonds. I was kidding.’

Elliot gave her an unreadable look and said: ‘Where are Nick and Hannah?’

‘Oh, they went on a tactical yomp when they heard you were descending.’

‘They must be properly disgusted with me,’ Elliot said, grimacing.

‘Annoyingly, no. They made your case.’

‘Oh. Now I wish I’d brought them something from duty-free.’

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