Page 40 of Falling for You

Nate

I sit back on the bed and look around the small boxroom.

Low wooden beams are propped up in the corner, holding the weight of the room.

The walls are covered in a sage and champagne striped wallpaper, with framed photos of Annie as a child, her parents hugging her tightly or carrying her on their shoulders.

It’s the house. It’s the house me and Mom have spoken about for years.

It’s like stepping into a version of my childhood that I don’t have any more, where the four of us – Mom, Dad, me and Stevie – were all at home, sat around our dining-room table.

Laughing and poking fun at each other, playing board games and watching TV.

We haven’t been that way for years. Even when I am back home, the relaxed ease that Annie and her parents have has left my family.

We can all be laughing, absorbed in a new series or marching along the streets of New York …

but it’s always there. That faint thread of worry, winding us all together, ready to give a sharp tug if any of us get too lost in the idea that everything is okay and life is how it was before.

‘Hey.’

I look up as Annie walks into the room. It’s funny, I thought she was beautiful the first night I met her, when she was in her incredible costume.

I thought she was more beautiful when I saw her last week, and she was dancing and having fun, flailing her arms around without a care in the world.

But now, seeing her in her hoodie and baggy jeans, her cheeks pink from the warmth of the fire and her face bare of make-up … I think she’s the most beautiful yet.

‘Right,’ she says, quietly closing the door behind her. ‘They’re distracted. I think I can get you out now.’

I raise my eyebrows at her in surprise. ‘Out?’

‘To a B&B or a hotel, if you found one you liked the look of,’ she says. ‘You absolutely do not have to stay here.’

As we had chatted around the dinner table earlier in the evening, Annie’s mom had asked what I was doing in the Cotswolds.

When I told her the story, about how I’d come down here for a fun, spontaneous day and would have got stuck here if it wasn’t for Annie saving me and helping me find somewhere to stay, they both sprang into action, insisting that I must stay the night and get the train home in the morning.

It was far too late to find somewhere else now, and they had a spare room.

Really, it would be madness not to and they insisted .

I knew I didn’t have a choice, but I agreed quite gladly.

‘Of course,’ I say, catching myself. Annie had said she’d help me find somewhere to stay.

She clearly didn’t invite me to stay with her and crash her family meal and weekend.

‘Sorry. You want me to go,’ I say, getting to my feet.

‘I’ll be on my way. Thank you so much for helping me.

I really appreciate it.’ I glance at Annie and notice her face change.

I’m not sure if it’s the light, but she looks disappointed.

‘No, it’s not that,’ she says, sitting on the bed. ‘I just … you came here for a break and my parents have ambushed you into staying with us.’

‘I’m having fun,’ I say honestly. ‘Really, this weekend has turned out better than I could have expected. But you’ve done more than enough. I’ll go.’

‘No,’ she reaches forward and touches my arm, ‘it’s fine.

If you’re okay then of course, stay. Fuck, Mum will kill me if she thinks I’ve kicked you to the kerb.

’ I meet her eyes and for a second I’m lost. They’re a deep, chocolatey brown, upturned at the corners and framed by feathery, dark eyelashes.

‘Stay,’ she says, pulling my arm so I’m sitting next to her on the bed. ‘Really.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she nods. She folds her legs underneath herself and runs her fingers through her hair. It takes everything in me not to take her hand, just so I can hold it in mine.

‘So,’ she says, ‘how does all this madness compare to your childhood? Was it just you and your parents?’

I lean so my back is against the wall and shake my head. ‘No, I have a younger brother. I live with him now.’

She smiles. ‘I always wanted a sibling.’

I stroke my beard, the image of Stevie with his angry, scrunched-up face floating into my mind.

Then another image of him, when we were both kids.

When he was always laughing, trying to get someone to chase him round the garden and playing pranks on everyone.

He used to laugh all the time before … well, I guess before Mom got sick.

‘What is it?’

I look up at Annie, breaking from my thoughts. ‘What?’

‘You looked a million miles away there.’

‘Ah,’ I smile, ‘I guess I was. I was just thinking back to my own childhood. Being here sort of reminds me of home.’

Annie watches me for a second. ‘Go on, then.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Oh,’ I laugh, ‘it’s all very boring.’

She pokes me in the ribs. ‘Everyone says that about their own life. I want to know.’

I take a deep breath and dip back into my memory, feeling myself warm.

‘Well,’ I begin, ‘I guess the best way to describe my childhood is to say it was ordinarily extraordinary. It was just like everyone else’s happy childhood, nothing particularly spectacular.

We spent weekends on bikes or making dens, playing hide and seek or falling off the climbing frame in the park.

Dad loves baseball, so he would sometimes drag us all out to watch a game.

I think he was disappointed that he had two young kids and neither of them really cared about baseball. Or even had a slight interest in it.’

She laughs. ‘I had the same with my mum and cooking. She’s tried to teach me everything she knows so many times and I just couldn’t care less.’

‘Yes,’ I raise my eyebrows at her, ‘but you love kebabs.’

She laughs louder this time and pokes me again. ‘Okay, what else? What about your mum, and your brother?’

I force myself to pull my eyes away from her.

‘Stevie was born the most annoying person on the planet,’ I say matter-of-factly, ‘but we’ve always been thick as thieves. Nobody used to laugh as much as Stevie did – his laugh was always infectious. He could get away with murder.’

‘Used to?’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Hmmm?’

‘Sorry,’ she says, shuffling herself on the bed, ‘you said, he used to laugh … does he not any more?’

I sigh. Damn, I hadn’t even realised I said that.

‘Sorry,’ she says quickly, ‘that’s none of my business. I shouldn’t—’

‘No,’ I interrupt, taking her hand to stop her from flapping it around anxiously, ‘it’s fine. I just hadn’t registered I’d said it. I guess he’s just more stressed now … we all are, really.’

I start to let go of her hand when I realise she’s entwined her fingers with mine.

‘Because of your mum?’

I nod, smiling. ‘She’s the best one out of all of us.

Like, Stevie and my dad are great, but nobody shines a light close to Mom’s.

She’d love this house.’ I use my free hand to gesture around the room.

‘It’s like everything we used to talk about as kids at Christmas.

She watches The Holiday every year. Like I said, that’s why I came here this weekend …

’ I steal a glance at Annie. ‘I didn’t intentionally follow you home, contrary to what you might think. ’

She laughs and shakes her head. ‘I thought maybe I’d planted the seed last time I saw you.’

‘I think there was far too much vodka for that.’ I grin at her and she giggles.

We fall into silence and I lean my head back against the wall, looking down at Annie’s hand in mine. Her nails are orange, with little black pumpkins drawn in the corners. I’d expect nothing less.

‘So,’ I say, giving her hand a shake. ‘You didn’t tell me earlier that you have a sewing room here. I wouldn’t have put it in our dream house if I knew you already had one.’

She smiles. ‘It’s hardly a sewing room. It just has all my outfits in there.’

‘So … like a shrine?’

She nudges me with her foot. ‘No. But yeah … I guess. God, I would never bring a guy back to my parents’ house on the third …’ She stops herself, her cheeks pinching.

‘Can I see?’ I ask.

‘See what?’

‘Your costumes,’ I say. ‘Or the shrine,’ I add, grinning at her.

She looks at me for a moment, then sighs loudly and gets to her feet, pulling me off the bed with her. ‘Fine,’ she huffs. ‘I guess this night has been embarrassing enough – surely this can’t hurt.’ She pushes the door open and looks over her shoulder at me. ‘Come on, then. This way.’

We walk down the narrow corridor and up another few steps that lead into a small, oddly shaped room. The walls are plain, but it’s filled with colour. Rail upon rail of clothes line the walls, with fabrics folded in different cubbyholes and a bright blue sewing machine sat right by the window.

‘Did you really make all of these?’

She runs her fingers across the clothes, pulling some out and peering at them.

‘Most of them,’ she says. ‘Mum makes them too. We sort of run a business together.’

‘A business?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, letting go of a black lace gothic dress which swings back into place, ‘making costumes for people who want them. Mainly Halloween, but we have orders come through all year.’

I look around at the clothes. There are soft lilac dresses, enormous headpieces for gory creatures with bulbous yellow eyes and fangs, electric-blue gowns and multicoloured woven jumpers.

‘It’s amazing,’ I say, staring. Little sequins and gems glisten as they catch the moonlight bouncing off the settled snow and landing through the window. ‘You’re amazing.’

She snorts.

‘You are !’ I press on. ‘Why don’t you do this full-time? You should be doing this with your whole life, you’re so talented.’

She laughs, but I see her cheeks have flushed pink again. ‘Because I can’t.’

‘Yes, but why?’

‘Because it wouldn’t work.’

‘But what if it did?’

‘Jesus!’ She turns to face me, her eyebrows raised but a full smile spread across her cheeks. ‘You watch too many films.’