Page 85 of One More Day
‘You think so?’
‘Believe me, I know you are.’
‘Thank you for everything, Charlie.’
We stand face to face, a force between us that is so hard to ignore. I yearn for his touch again. I feel colder apart from him.
‘Your turn in the bed upstairs,’ I remind him as I glance upwards, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Enjoy.’
‘Well, you’ve got the fire,’ he says with a smile.
Those dimples …
‘And I’ll keep an ear out for the return of Max, the prodigal son,’ I whisper, as he fixes the fire guard in place after throwing another few logs on for me. ‘Thanks for listening and for being so nice to me. Again.’
He reaches out and touches my shoulders so tenderly with both his hands and my eyes fall in response to his touch.
‘Goodnight, Rose. Sleep well,’ he says, and I feel like my heart is going to burst. I open my eyes. We are both breathing slowly. His eyes look at my mouth and then back to my eyes again.
I think he is going to kiss me.
My God, I want him to – so much.
But I can’t let him do that, no way, so I step back quickly and his hands brush off my shoulders and fall by his sides.
‘Goodnight, Charlie. You too.’
He looks as crestfallen as I feel deep inside, but he doesn’t try to make a move again or say another word to convince me, which I’m grateful for. He knows how vulnerable I am. He just doesn’t know why.
And so I watch him leave the room, then gently he closes the door, and I crawl onto the sofa and hug my pillow tightly, wishing it could be him I was holding for the rest of the night.
I wish that I could allow myself to go with the flow and fall for a kind man like Charlie, a funny, gorgeous soul like him, without harming the memory of Michael. Without hurting the other woman in his life. I wish most of all that one day I’ll allow myself to just be me and learn to love myself again.
Yes, that’s my biggest wish of all.
Three Days to Christmas
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlie
‘You miss my breakfasts? Oh Helena, come on, you’re an excellent cook too!’
This is verging on ridiculous, but I have to give her top marks on her creativity. Her latest reason for missing me is pretty far-fetched.
I have her on speaker phone as I cook this morning and I can’t deny that she’s making me smile as she grasps at straws to convince me to come home again.
‘The breakfast at your place is just as good … ha, ha, no, I don’t do anything differently, darling. I do them exactly like I showed you many times.’
Yesterday it was that she couldn’t remember the password to her Netflix account and when I gave it to her, it still wasn’t enough because the Christmas movies made her sad because I wasn’t there.
Today it’s about my breakfasts, tomorrow it will be about something else.
‘Sausage, egg and bacon,’ I tell her, even though she knows the ingredients off by heart. ‘Mushrooms on the side.Some soda bread to give it that Irish finish. And you know I always love baked beans too …’
‘No baked beans! They make the bread all soggy!’
‘See, you don’t even like how I do them after all. Yours are so much better.’
