Page 27 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

‘And I don’t mean the hair.’ He somehow knew exactly what I was going to say, and he picks up his stylus pen and uses it to reach over and lift a half-pink and half-purple curly lock of my hair and hold it up, and I appreciate him understanding that too.

Colourful hair gives an impression of confidence, but sometimes it’s masking the exact opposite.

‘Everything about you makes you the most memorable person I’ve ever met. A real force of nature, and I wish I had something I cared about as much as you care about this place. It’s inspiring.’

Something in my chest catches and I push out a stuttery breath because it sounds like one of the most unfiltered things he’s ever said.

His eyes are locked on mine, and I forget where we are, I forget who we are, and everything around us evaporates apart from the desire to get closer to him, and in my head, I can see how easy it would be to lean forwards, inhale the subtle leather scent of his aftershave that I keep getting hints of, to hold his face in my hand, run my fingers over his dark stubble, and…

He clears his throat and drops the curl of my hair with a shaky huff of breath, and then flops down onto his back again, almost throwing the stylus pen back towards the Tablet of Gloom like it was solely responsible for whatever just happened, and I feel like someone’s yanked the dustsheet out from under me and left me sitting here wondering what did happen.

Unexplained creaks of the museum’s quirky floorboards fill the awkward silence, and eventually I swallow hard. ‘I’d notice. If you didn’t show up for work, I would notice.’

‘Yeah, now, because I’m here every day and I’ve taken over your office space, and if I didn’t show up, you’d probably do a dance of joy and be like, “Oh, thank God he’s not here today!” but before?’

‘We’d never met before. You can’t notice someone you don’t know.’

‘Yeah, I know, I just meant…’ He meets my eyes again and he looks deeply tired in a way that has nothing to do with the time of night. ‘I don’t know what I meant. The late night is making me punch-drunk. Just ignore me.’

‘You meant that you want to be important to someone. You want your life to matter.’

‘Yeah, but in a good way. The impact I have on the world now is…’ His eyes look up at the ceiling as he struggles to find the right words.

‘You bring magic to life. You make children believe in something. This museum is something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, whereas I…

I don’t think I’ve ever left anything better than I found it.

Nothing has ever been improved by my input.

That’s something I keep thinking about lately.

That’s why I’m really here. This seems like a place to discover what life should be like rather than what it is like, and I saw a chance to help it rather than destroy it. ’

For once, I believe him. He’s so laid bare and open that it’s impossible not to. ‘We can implement the gift shop. Not all your suggestions are bad ones.’

He laughs so hard that he curls in on himself and it’s the first time I’ve seen him laugh so unreservedly. It eases the tension and I flop down beside him and realise I’ve forgotten that we’re anything other than two friends having a very strange sleepover.

Darkness has long since fallen, and somehow it’s nearly midnight, the hours have passed in a flash, and the room is only lit by the otherworldly glow of the streetlamps outside coming in the window behind us.

I get up to turn the torch on when I realise he’s struggling to see my face in the dark.

He’s shifted closer and he’s squinting every time he looks at me, looking like he’s struggling to make out what I’m saying.

‘Has your Tablet of Gloom got enough battery to make use of your Disney movie subscription?’

He laughs. ‘I knew I was going to regret telling you that.’

‘Oh, come on, what better way to stay awake than by watching a Disney movie? Call it doing important research for the gift shop you’re going to implement,’ I suggest, knowing that a ‘sensible use of working time’ is something he can’t deny the appeal of.

‘You choose it while I go and make another cup of tea.’

He pushes himself up with a groan. ‘I think this is only going to work if you choose it. Whatever you think is most important for me to see. I’ll go and make the tea.’

Once he’s standing upright, he stretches and it shouldn’t be as sexy as it is, but my eyes are glued to the sliver of stomach that appears as his grey top lifts, and the flex of a forearm as his sleeve catches and rises up.

‘And Liss?’ He’s looking at me like he knows exactly where my focus was, and I try not to think about how much I like him shortening my name. It feels friendly and easy-going, something we’ve struggled with until now. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘I’m not sure.’ His head tilts as he thinks about it, making his dark hair flop to the side. ‘Watching my professional front splinter and helping me hold it together?’

He disappears up the stairs to the kitchen before I can formulate a response.

Even though I’m not much of a ‘professional front’ kind of person, I think he’s done exactly the same for me too, and I force myself to stop pondering it, otherwise I’ll still be staring at the blank tablet screen when he comes back.

I straighten out the dustsheets and plump up the sleeping bag, and then prop the Tablet of Gloom against the baluster posts in front of us, open his browser and find Beauty and the Beast, and it’s almost as difficult to get his words out of my head as it is to stop thinking about the colour of his eyes, the fall of his hair, and the scent of his aftershave, and how I expected this to be the longest night of my life, and now I’m wishing morning would never come.