Page 17 of Best Man (Close Proximity #1)

SEVEN

JESSE

Patrick’s temper tantrum over his car rather puts the mockers on the shooting party, and people start to drift off back to the hotel, declaring their intentions of having a drink. Finally, there’s just Zeb, Max, Xavier, and me left standing by the field.

“Well, you know how to help a party along,” Zeb says wryly, and Max smiles happily.

“I think I might need my eyes tested.”

“Why? You hit his windscreen head on.”

Max shrugs. “I was aiming at the bonnet.”

The two men laugh before Max cracks the gun and wanders over to the man in charge, who looks like he’s preparing to give him a lecture. Zeb trails after him.

I turn to Xavier and smile. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

He scrunches his face up in concentration. “We’ve had some good times in bed, but this party is fucking shit.”

I burst out laughing. Zeb shoots me an intense glance before he turns back to answer something Max is saying. When I look back at Xavier, he’s smirking at me .

“So, you and Max?” I say quickly.

He looks blank. “What?”

“Will you keep seeing him?”

He scoffs. “ No .”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not about that,” he says simply. He shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s an amazing shag, but he’s entirely wrapped up in someone else.”

“Who?” I shoot an uneasy look at Zeb, and Xavier laughs.

“Not him. Even I can see that. No, I think he fucked up something good and blah blah blah according to the semi-coherent conversation I had last night with him. And now he just fucks around.” He smiles affectionately. “That’s my gain because he’s very talented in the bedroom.”

I blink. “Well, that’s good, I suppose.”

He smiles sunnily. “All good.” He whistles and waves at Max. He and Zeb amble back over. I blink at the sight of them, all dark hair and long legs. But Xavier just continues to smile. “I’m going tonight,” he says to Max. “So if you want a last go at my arse you’d best get moving.”

Zeb blinks. “It’s like pure poetry. Someone contact Goodreads and get them to write it down.”

Max laughs and slaps him on the back. “Got to go and burn the sheets up.”

“Do that afterwards,” I advise. “He looks strenuous.”

Zeb laughs and then Max and Xavier walk away, leaving us standing alone. The sun beats down on my head, and all I can hear is the sound of a wood pigeon cooing from the shade of a tree. I love that sound. It reminds me of summer.

I stir and look at Zeb. “What next?”

He smiles almost cautiously at me. “I think we now have a few hours free. Want to go explore the villages?”

I grin at him. “I’d love that.” It’s a little more enthusiastic than I’d like, but it’s too late to call it back now, so I settle for smiling innocently.

For now, though, he doesn’t get that worry frown he always gets when I’m being flirty. Instead, to my surprise, he grins happily. “I’ll get the car.”

I look down at my outfit. “I’ll get changed.”

He stares at me. “Why? You look fine.”

“Won’t you be embarrassed? I don’t exactly dress like–” My words trail off before I can mention Patrick, but I know he knows who I’m talking about.

He draws me to a halt, holding my arm loosely, but I can feel his skin against mine and the slight roughness of his fingertips.

His isn’t the hand of someone who sits in an office full time, which makes me curious.

“Do you want to dress like Patrick?” he asks baldly.

I consider him. “No, but you obviously liked the way he looked.”

He looks suddenly awkward. “Jesse, I chose to be with Patrick and lived with him, so that was a very different–”

“Oh no,” I break in quickly, feeling my heart flop and sink. He couldn’t have made it clearer if he’d written it in the sky that he doesn’t consider me a viable proposition to date. “I just don’t want to embarrass you,” I finish lamely, feeling my face burn.

He stares at me and a kind look crosses his face. “You couldn’t,” he says staunchly. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he smiles. “Come as you are.”

“Well, thank you, Kurt Cobain,” I say tartly.

He laughs. “I like the way you dress.”

“Really?” I say doubtfully. I pull myself together, still thinking of that almost pitying look in his eyes a few seconds ago. “Well, that’s good, I suppose,” I finish coolly. “But I think I’ll still get changed.”

The outfit that had seemed okay a few hours ago now feels like a red flag.

As if I’ve embarrassed him in front of his peers by dressing like a kid.

I think of the story Max told me, and all of a sudden I feel small.

This kind, gentle man asked me here to help him.

He trusted me to do that, and all I’ve done so far is muck about and make passes at him that obviously make him uncomfortable.

He hesitates like he wants to say something and then settles for looking worried. The silence stretches, and I watch him. “Okay then,” he finally says. “I’ll be in the car.”

I nod and walk away and give myself a talking to in the lift.

By the time I get to the room, I’ve settled my mood.

Just because I fancy him doesn’t mean he has to fancy me back.

This isn’t a rom-com. It’s real life, and in real life he’s a wealthy older man who probably has far too many well-groomed men throwing themselves at him to be interested in a walking disaster of a twenty-four-year-old undergraduate who still dresses in Sesame Street T-shirts and doesn’t keep enough control of his mouth in social situations.

I change into smart grey chino shorts, a pale pink shirt, and leather deck shoes. I look in the mirror and decide I definitely look more suitable now.

“At the end of the day, I’ll be gone from his agency soon,” I say out loud. “And I’ll become that funny story he tells about his old member of staff at dinner parties he throws with his very perfect boyfriend.”

The thought is peculiarly painful, so I do what I always do. I push it to one side and focus on being friendly. I’m going to make him happy this week.

“I’m going to behave and not let him down so I’ll be more of a pleasant memory to him,” I say solemnly and my face looks back at me carefully. I let that settle, and by the time I reach the car and hop in, I’m smiling more or less naturally.

ZEB

I watch him worriedly as he gets into the car.

I don’t know what happened earlier. One minute he was full of life, fairly glowing with fun and a simple sort of joy that seems to hang around him like glitter.

Then he visibly shut it down, and I can’t work out why.

Catching hold of him is like trying to cup water as it runs through my fingers.

The only thing I can think of is his peculiar insistence on getting changed.

I’m slightly disappointed in this buttoned-up version of Jesse in perfectly ironed shorts and shirt.

I preferred the earlier Jesse with that shiny hair held back by a bandanna and that ridiculous T-shirt.

It was so him. So vibrant. Now, he seems almost colourless.

I can’t say anything, though. I’m his boss, I think desperately. It seems like I’m clinging onto that lately like it’s a raft that’s slowly disintegrating underneath me .

“Where are we going?” he asks, thankfully interrupting my thoughts.

“Bourton-on-the-Water.” I steer the car down the drive. “It’s pretty, especially in the summer,” I say somewhat desperately.

“Sounds lovely,” he says politely.

I shoot him another quick glance and open my mouth to speak but he reaches over and quickly switches on the radio.

I fall back into silence broken only by his increasingly cheerful conversational asides.

He brightens up, however, when we get to Bourton-on-the-Water. It’s a pretty, quintessential Cotswolds village with beautiful golden-bricked cottages and little stone bridges that span the River Windrush that runs all the way through the village. And tourists. Hundreds and hundreds of tourists.

“Why is everyone in the world here today?” he marvels as we step around what feels like twenty thousand pushchairs and wandering children to get out of the car park.

“It’s pretty,” I say, grabbing his arm to steer him around an old couple.

“Even so, there are just too many people here,” he grumbles.

Then he pauses. “Oh, it is pretty,” he says in a delighted voice.

Ahead of us the river moves past old houses with mullioned windows looking down on it.

Paths branch off, leading to shops and more houses.

“It’s like the Lego village,” he says delightedly.

He pauses, shooting me a sideways look, and I see the flush on his cheeks.

What the fuck is going on here? I open my mouth to ask, but he diverts me by pulling me along. I realise he’s deliberately avoiding talking about whatever problem he currently has about the same time that I realise we’re now holding hands.

He pulls me down the sun-dappled path, pointing out houses he likes, and I nod and smile and I must make sense when I talk because he displays no sign of unease.

That’s good because inside I’m a turbulent mess.

I can’t focus on anything. It’s like I’ve been blinded by the sun and can’t see anything apart from snapshot impressions.

Like the sun on the mink-brown strands of his silky hair, the brightness of his eyes, the long length of his legs and the feel of his hand in mine .

I try to remember when the last time was that I held hands.

It must have been with Patrick, but I can’t ever remember feeling like this before.

I search my memory banks for a name for it, but I can’t find it.

It leaves me uneasy. I don’t like uncertainty.

I like to be fully prepared at all times. But nothing prepared me for him.