Page 13 of The First Time I Saw You
I roll my eyes and sit back on my haunches. ‘Just open it.’
I watch his hands, the knuckles dotted with pale freckles that are so faint I can’t quite see them, but I know they’re there. I know that he has a small scar on the inside of his left palm from trying to slice an apple when he was making apple pie with his gran but that he tells everyone it happened in a bar fight. I know that he has a slight callous on the inside of his thumb because he scrapes his index fingernail against it when he’s thinking; I know how his hands feel when he holds the back of my neck.
‘I’d forgotten how you do that,’ he says, looking into my eyes.
‘Do what?’
‘Pull at your ear when you’re thinking.’
‘Do I?’ I smile at him, pleased that he doesn’t hate everything about me after all. My hair is caught in my hoop earring and I pull the tendrils free as he unwraps the red ribbon and opens the box. Carefully he pulls away the tissue paper and stares at its contents.
‘Is that the same one?’ I nod, feeling embarrassed and draining the remains of my glass of wine. Tentatively, he lifts the leaf up and stares at it.
‘I never stopped thinking about how I must have hurt you. I wanted you to know that.’
Samuel replaces the leaf into its box and closes the lid. ‘Thank you.’ He leans forward and reaches for the side of my face, stroking it with his thumb. Everything inside me wants him. I rest my forehead against his.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Thank you. I’m sorry for calling you a bitch.’
And then I kiss him.
Week Two
Samuel
For feck’s sake! For the fourth time this week, I have had to turn around and walk the other way in this building. I mean, would you look at me? I’m actually trying to camouflage myself behind a potted tree while she swings from side to side on one of the wheeled chairs, blond hair swishing neatly with her as she taps those manicured fingers on the desk.
‘Samuel?’ I flap the large green leaf out of my way, and pretend to look for something at the base of the plant.
‘Kat, hi, just looking for my, erm, my cufflink.’
‘You’re not wearing cufflinks, though.’
‘Well no, but, I lost one last week and I thought I might have lost it here.’
‘In the pot plant?’ she asks, smirking.
‘Stop busting my balls, OK?’
‘So, you and the Brit-bitch, eh?’ she asks as I step out of the foliage and rearrange my hair.
‘Brit-bitch?’
‘Are you offended? I hear you and her were—’
‘No. I mean I met her briefly, way before all this stuff went on.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is,’ I say with some conviction. ‘Brit-bitch is a bit . . .’
‘What? Harsh?’
‘No, I was going to say lame. I would have thought of something a bit catchier, like “Britch”, you know, has a better ring to it.’
‘Britch? I like it.’ She looks over to where Sophie is punching numbers into a calculator. ‘She really is a piece of work, isn’t she?’
