Exchanging a look with Sadie, we both moved at the same time so that we were sitting closer to her.
“Do you like him, babe?” Sadie asked. “Because when I arrived, he kept looking at you, like he thought you were going to disappear.”
“Yeah, I do. Sometimes he’s so gentle and sweet, but other times he can be so abrupt. Did you know my brother Hart’s in the Marines with Remy’s brother?” Sadie shook her head.
“Yeah, when he found out, he closed up and hardly spoke to me for about two weeks. Then I almost got hit by a falling beam in one of the outhouses, and he became so sweet. Now we ricochet between gentle and abrupt.”
Sadie smiled widely at her. “Santana, let me tell you something, and I speak from experience here with Elijah. Men can be arseholes when they want something, but they also can’t help the side that wants the woman from coming out, so we get the nicer version of them then. My husband was like it, and I swear I just wanted to twat him in the face when I first met him.”
Now I would have sworn Elijah and Sadie’s story would be an instalove one. They just seemed so perfectly matched, so this news had my jaw dropping.
“You didn’t like him when you first met him?” I asked in disbelief.
“Nope. He put me on the spot, flirted to the point I thought he was just a man-hoe, then he started calling me the Queen of England, even though his grandad told him to stop it because some Brits don’t like that term.”
Hearing that, I cringed, wondering if I’d ever used it. I mean, come on, when you hear someone doesn’t like a specific term or word, you do worry about whether you’ve ever offended someone else by using it. Well, at least I did.
“Why don’t you like it?” Santana asked softly. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever used it, but now I’m worried.”
Waving her hand through the air, Sadie snorted. “I couldn’t give a toss about it. I just got pissed off because he wouldn’t stop using it. But to answer your question: the queen isn’t just the monarch of England, so that’s why some Brits have an issue with it. I like to compare it to saying the President of Washington, D.C. That may be the case, but he’s also the President of the whole of the United States, right?”
Well, fuck. Mental note to self, don’t say that.
“Do you struggle being here?” I asked Sadie, wondering now how different things were for her.
“No, I spent a lot of time here growing up because of my dad. Some things bug me, but on the whole, I don’t have any issues.”
“I want to go to the U.K. and spend a decent amount of time there at some point,” I admitted. “I want to see Stonehenge, walk around London for a while, and I also want to go to Bath to see the Jane Austen Museum. I’ve been there for a day here and there, like when we were flying back from Italy or Kuala Lumpur, but I’ve never had the chance to roam properly.”
“You should definitely go. Just take a rain mac and an umbrella with you. We get some janky weather.”
“Oh, my God,” Santana shouted, splashing her hand in the water. “Janky! I freaking love that word. I heard it for the first time not long ago, and now I’m obsessed with it.”
Sadie burst out laughing. “I’ve been using it for years, and now that people are starting to pick up on it here like they did with the word twat, I’m delighted. It’s such a great word.”
Leaning in, she added, “I also love the word ‘farther.’ We don’t use that in the U.K., we just stick to ‘further,’ and now that I have it, I want to use it all the time.”
“So, if you want to see the Austen Museum, Addy, do you read?” Sadie asked me, pulling me back from my ‘janky’ plans.
“I do. I’ll read just about anything. Romances I can struggle with unless there’s angst and everything isn’t hearts and flowers, but aside from that, I love reading. I’ve been ordering books while I’ve been working on the song I’m writing, and I plan to take three months off to just read through them all.”
Santana’s face took on a look I wasn’t familiar with. “Uh, have you ever read any romantic thrillers?”
Now that one I had to think about. “I’ve read romance with some slasher-type stuff in it, does that count?”
Taking in a deep breath, Santana glanced around us then waved us closer. “What I’m about to tell you can only stay here, okay?” When we both nodded, she frowned. “Do you swear?”
“I know you hardly know me, but let me just assure you that I’m good at keeping secrets. If it’s your business, then it’s not mine to spread,” Sadie assured her.