“Right, right.” Lydia said. “I know. You like to build the dramatic tension.”
“Well, I can just get to the end if you want…”
“No!” Lydia pushes my beer mat back towards me. “I need to hear how this progressed, but, as I said, the underwear talk is giving me a good idea of how things went down!”
“Stop sleazing up my weekend! It wasn’t like that.”
It wasn’t. But the memories of touching him send shivers through me then lead to an ache I’ve carried in the pit of my stomach since the day we got home. We have plans to see each other soon, but until then, the whole thing still feels a little like a dream. I’m frozen in time, waiting. From the second I stepped into my house after our trip, I missed him. Lying on my bed the night we got home, I genuinely reached out for him to tell him something, my hand stretching over before I remembered he wasn’t there. I felt that after one full day with him. I still feel it.
“I miss him.” I didn’t mean for the words to slip out because I don’t want Lydia to think I’m still not happy after such a brilliant trip. I’ll just be happier when I see him.
Lydia’s head tilts to the side. “You haven’t seen him since?”
I shake my head. “He’s away with work this week and it’s killing me.” I laugh, feeling my cheeks warm. “I know I’m ridiculous. We’ll see each other at the weekend but this week is dragging.”
“It’s understandable. You’ve waited a long time for this. I mean… I’m still assuming there’s a happy ending here.”
“What kind of person gives away the ending this soon?” I chuckle, though we both know I wouldn’t be this detailed if the trip had been a disaster. Also, I would have called her, crying, and spent the last few days eating ice cream straight out of the tub.
“Good point. But I do need to know if you ended up buying your undies in Primark. So… keep talking.”
The Serious Stage aka Thinking Out Loud
It would be an understatement to say that storms are not my thing. However, in an extremely dorky realisation, it occurred to me that with Logan, I could probably fight a dragon or wrestle a tiger, and all manner of other things I didn’t think I could do alone. What is that? I’d had that feeling around him before more than once. Perhaps it was partially that I didn’t want him to think I was pathetic, so I tried harder with him around. But that wasn’t all of it. Something about him was encouraging, motivating. Had I been with Lydia, I probably would have huffed over the weather, and then chosen to go home. That way, at least we’d be warm and dry. With Logan I could take a little discomfort so as not to let an opportunity slip away. If it even was an opportunity. What I was effectively doing, was taking the opportunity for another potential opportunity to occur.
We waited for thirty minutes in the warmth of Logan’s car for the rain to slow. It didn’t. If anything, it got heavier, and the thunder grew louder, interspersed with flashes of lightning that made me jump every time. We didn’t have many options available. Stay where we were, or make a dash for… somewhere. After consulting Google Maps, we realised we were two streets away from a B&B, and in the interests of making sure we had a place to stay, we braved the rain and made the fastest run ever, hoping there would be a vacancy.
“Oh my God!” I tried to catch my breath as Logan and I reached the undercover porch of the B&B. There was not an inch of my skin that wasn’t saturated, and the hair I’d meticulously straightened that morning now hung in dark, frizzy curls around my shoulders. As I looked at Logan, water dripped from his hair onto his cheeks, his clothes clinging to his body.
Sweet Jesus.
If we’d been in a movie, we’d probably have laughe
d at how ridiculous we looked then kissed as our rain soaked bodies clung to each other, his hands in my hair, and mine…
“Marnie?”
“Huh?”
I blinked a few times as my thoughts flicked back to reality, and silently thanked God that I hadn’t actually reached out to him during my mini daydream. I could only have been a second from pulling him into me… my fingers digging into his back…
Stop it!
His brown eyes flickered with amusement, almost as if he knew what I was thinking. My face was already wet so I had no idea if I’d drooled while I’d been lost in my fantasy. All I could do was take a deep breath and say, “Do you think they’ll let us in in this state?”
“I’m hoping they’ll take pity on us and make us a bed anywhere. In the attic if necessary.”
“Ha, because that’s not creepy at all! A dark attic in a storm. What else do you want to add? Is the attic haunted with the ghosts of former guests?”
Laughing, Logan rested his hand on my shoulders and turned me towards the door. “Come on. Let’s get in there.”
I opened the heavy front door, and Logan and I stepped inside. I’d been kidding when I’d mentioned ghosts, but the reception area was dimly lit and the décor looked like it hadn’t been updated since the seventies. The wallpaper was faded and the carpets lacked their former colour. Even the framed artwork on the walls was lacklustre and dated.
I shifted my eyes towards and Logan and found him giving me a similar look of apprehension.
“It’s just one night,” he said. “Or we could look for somewhere else?”
The raise of his eyebrow made me roll my eyes. As if I was going back outside without a clear idea of where we were going unless I absolutely had to. Also, I couldn’t imagine going anywhere until we’d dried off a little. Assuming the owners of this establishment didn’t turn us away for ruining their already downtrodden carpets.