Page 39 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After avoiding Sam as best she could, he noticed. Of course he did, because normally Evie is all over him like a bad rash, as her mother might say.

He bailed her up in the back room one afternoon.

‘Have I done something to upset you?’ He looked upset himself.

‘No!’ she said quickly, and laughed falsely.

He still looked upset. ‘Something’s up,’ he said. ‘I know that.’

He stood there looking at her, which was both exactly what she wanted and unsettling.

‘Can we go to dinner?’ he asked. ‘Have a chat?’

She could hardly say no – they’re co-workers and refusing him might have made the Seaside Salon a less sunny place, not just for them but for Trudy and Josie too.

So now, sitting across from him in the Chinese restaurant on the main road at Bateau Bay, she feels nervous.

Not able to speak properly. Which he may take as evidence that something’s wrong, but really it’s just how she’s always been around him when she’s not making a huge effort to control herself.

Spring rolls, san choy bow and prawn crisps have been put in front of them and Sam is dipping a roll in soy sauce and crunching into it. They’ve barely spoken since they sat down and it’s strange. Normally he chats even when she doesn’t.

‘So,’ he says, once he’s swallowed his mouthful, putting down half of the spring roll and looking at her expectantly.

‘Hm?’

She picks up a roll and goes to dip it in the soy sauce but he reaches across and puts his hand on hers.

‘Stop avoiding the subject,’ he says.

Obediently she puts the roll into the bowl in front of her. ‘Which subject?’ It’s childish of her to say but she really doesn’t want to be the one to define what they’re talking about. That would make it real, both her feelings and her heartbreak.

‘Evie.’ He says it lightly but he looks so serious. And handsome.

Her whole heart is right here in front of her and she can’t have it, and it feels as if someone has taken a sledgehammer and whacked her in the chest. She presses her lips together, trying to not cry.

Except didn’t she try to tell herself that she might be able to have it? Have him? She can still cling on to that hope. Sam asked her to have dinner with him, after all.

‘We need to talk,’ he says, and now her hopes fire. ‘Because you’re not talking to me any more. Aren’t we friends?’

Aren’t we more than that? She wants to say this. She won’t.

‘Yes,’ is what she says instead.

‘I thought we were getting to be close,’ he says. ‘But something’s changed. I think I’ve upset you and I don’t know how. But I want to fix it. If you tell me what I’ve done to upset you, I won’t do it again. I promise.’ He smiles.

Oh, how she loves that smile.

Except how does she tell him it’s not anything he’s done but someone he is ? How does she express the galaxy of emotions currently swirling inside her?

If you don’t ask, you don’t get . Her father used to say that.

Want a discount at the fish shop? Ask for it.

And likely get it. He would get a lot of things by asking, and people never seemed to mind the asking even if they couldn’t give him what he wanted.

She may not be able to express the emotions but she can ask for what she wants. Can’t she?

‘You haven’t done anything,’ she says weakly, because even saying this feels like a bold start.

‘Is there something else going on, then?’ He looks so concerned.

Bless him. Yes, bless him. He is kind-hearted. Sincere. So good. She doesn’t deserve him, with her ridiculous behaviour and her teenage crush.

‘Mm,’ she says, feeling nervous now. Shaky, even.

She bites her bottom lip to try to steady herself because she knows this is the moment she needs to say something to him and she can’t , she can’t , she can’t .

But she must. Because if not now, when? There will never be another moment for her to try to claim the future she wants.

‘I …’ She breathes out. It sounds loud to her. Almost as if she can’t quite get the air to leave her lungs.

The stakes are so high. The highest. She’s no poker player. No card player at all. Nothing involving risk. Nothing involving change. What is she doing?

‘Evie?’ Sam prompts gently.

What she’s doing is what she must.

‘I love you,’ she rushes out, looking at him, then looking away, then looking back, and he doesn’t seem surprised, and that feels almost insulting. Shouldn’t a declaration of love involve the other person gasping or crying out or something to mark the moment?

Instead he’s leaning over to take her hand again, as if he’s comforting her.

‘I guessed,’ he says, holding her hand firmly. ‘It’s all right.’

All right. All right.

Now she really wants to cry. Who says that being loved is just all right ?

‘It’s not,’ she says, and it almost hiccups out of her. ‘Because you don’t love me back.’ Might as well get it out there.

He takes her other hand across the table and Evie worries that the soy sauce will go everywhere.

‘I do love you,’ he says.

And she is both intensely in this moment and outside of it.

Aware of the dry warmth of his hands and wishing she weren’t, because he’s saying what she wants to hear but not in the way she dreamt of – not with passion, not with urgency.

Not in an I can’t live without you way, which is not the way she’d ever thought of being told anything until she met him and wished for nothing else.

‘And I wish …’ He sighs and lets go of her hands and sits back in his chair.

The soy sauce remains undisturbed. She stares at it.

It helps, to have something to stare at when you feel you’re at a major point in your life and it’s completely out of your control, yet you are strangely sure of what’s about to happen.

Which is to say, she knows he’s going to confirm that he’s breaking her heart.

‘I wish I could love you the way you deserve to be loved.’

He sounds so sad, and that makes her look up. Look at him.

A waitress comes over just then and Evie wants to scream at her to get away, but instead she smiles as the woman asks if they want more drinks. They both refuse.

Once she leaves, Sam sighs again. ‘I can’t love any woman like that,’ he says, and his eyes are round and serious. ‘I think you know what I mean.’

So there is her confirmation: there is absolutely no chance for her. For them. For her dreams to come true.

Her feet feel heavy. It’s so odd. She really wants to get up and run out of here but instead she feels stuck, as though she couldn’t even move one foot away from this table.

She hears a noise, as if someone is crying but not quite making it. As if the cry is half coming out of them.

The noise is coming from her.

Should she be embarrassed? Perhaps. But she doesn’t even feel as if she’s in her body. So maybe she’s not the one crying. Her body is doing it all on its own.

‘Oh, Evie.’ Sam reaches across the table again and this time he cups her face in his hand.

You’re making it worse! She wants to scream it at him, but also not. Because she would never want to scream at him. He’s precious to her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he’s saying, gazing into her eyes, then he drops his hand. ‘I didn’t realise you felt quite like that about me.’

She sniffs back the tears that are not quite making it out of her.

‘I knew you felt something ,’ he continues. ‘I could tell by the way you looked at me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly.

‘For what?’

‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Evie.’ He says it softly but forcefully. ‘Evie, please look at me.’

She does, and she sees the face she loves and will have to stop loving.

‘It’s the most amazing thing, to be loved by you,’ Sam says. ‘The greatest compliment. Honestly. And I’m not going to insult you by saying that if I were straight I’d want to be with you, because that’s not how it works. Is it?’

She shakes her head, although she doesn’t entirely agree with him: maybe it would work, the two of them. More likely, she then thinks, he would be a different man – a different Sam – and she wouldn’t like him the way she does now. So he’s right.

‘But I do love you,’ he says. ‘You have such a big heart. So generous. You are caring and loyal and kind.’

‘I’m boring,’ she murmurs.

‘Boring?’ He snorts. ‘Hardly, darl. You’re so funny, the things you notice about people. Do you really think I would want to spend time around someone boring?’

He winks and she feels her face relax into a smile, although she’s still not quite in her body.

Mainly because she doesn’t want to be. The fantasy she had of life with him was so much nicer than this reality in which they will never be together and she’s going to have to find a way to live without the comfort of that love.

‘No,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t.’

They sit in silence for a little while, then he smiles sadly. ‘I hope you still want to be my friend,’ he says.

Does she want that too? She thinks of how much she enjoys his company – has that been only because she thought there might be something more to it? No, she does genuinely like him. He amuses her, and it seems she amuses him. That’s a start. Maybe it’s everything.

‘I do,’ she says.

He looks so relieved. ‘Great,’ he says. ‘Then you can help me hoover up this lot of food before our sweet and sour pork arrives.’

She laughs, even though she doesn’t really feel like it, and picks up a lettuce leaf for the san choy bow.

The rest of the meal is spent in light conversation. It’s pleasant, spending time with him, even as she wants to go home and lick her wounds.

Later, as she climbs into bed, she feels at last back in her own self, and once she turns out the light she lets herself cry, and she keeps crying until she falls asleep, waking up six hours later with tears on her cheeks.