Run To You (28 page)

A lot.

I’m staring at the ceiling and clenching my jaw by the time it gets to the third ring, and by the seventh I’m close to certain. I more or less was yesterday, but this is confirmation. He’s already moved on. He’s just not the sort of guy to wait around while someone he’s dallying with decides what she wants, and even if he was … haven’t I been cruel enough? If
he
cut out on
me
without a word I’d be devastated. I’d never forgive him.

It’s not right to expect him to forgive me – though somehow I’m still doing it. I’m still doing the thing I never do. I’m
hoping
. Or at least I’m trying on hope for size. Lucy said I was sad anyway, so why not? Why not just let it take root inside me, and see where it leads?

Even if it leads to me lying awake at five in the morning, waiting for a call that will never come. Somehow I’ve turned into the kind of woman I never wanted to be, hanging everything on a man who simply isn’t interested. He’s no longer bothered, and it makes me want to be the same way. I don’t want to toss and turn, wondering how things will turn out between us.

I want to get rid of him.

I want to not feel like this.

Which is probably how I end up on the beach in dawn’s early light, still in my nightie and stumbling bleary-eyed like some fool. But if I am a fool then at least I’ll be the strong kind. The independent kind. The kind who takes a snow globe to the ocean, with every intention of tossing it in. It’ll be fitting, I think, for an idealised island to disappear into the waters around a real one. It’s nice and symbolic. It’s perfect and circular.

But when I get down there I can’t do it. It’s just too much. It feels like I’m giving up more than a stupid gift, or a chance of a passionate relationship. It feels like I’m giving up any chance of ever hoping about anything ever again.

This is it, I know. Once I’ve done this I won’t believe any more. I’ll go back to the way I was, eking out an existence in tiny cautious portions, never going for something more because something more is this. Something more is daring to go to an illicit meeting with a strange man; it’s calling him and talking to him and doing all the things you thought you never could. I never thought I could be with someone like him.

I never thought I could be with anyone.

And if I throw it, then I’ll know I can’t. I’ll just be this melodramatic idiot who refuses feelings, the way other people refuse meals at terrible restaurants. Lucy will look at me with pity and I’ll spend the rest of my days knitting afghans, and all because I couldn’t make a phone call or hold onto a snow globe.

I have to hold onto it, I think, but that just sends me into a spiral of options that make no sense. I’ll put it in a sock drawer, I tell myself. A really deep sock drawer that probably doesn’t contain socks. It’ll have thorns in it instead, so I’ll never be tempted to put my hand in and take it out.

Only that doesn’t seem any better than tossing it away, to be honest
.
The end result is still the same, when you really think about it. I’m just locking my feelings away instead of hurling them into an ocean, and my mind doesn’t take kindly to that. Just get rid of the thing, it shouts, but I think my mind may well be an idiot. Because the moment I raise my hand up to throw – that’s when I see him.

I see him coming down the beach towards me, like some insane mirage.

Oh, Lord, please don’t let this be a mirage. It could be, because he’s wearing something other than a suit and I’m sure that’s never allowed. His suit is his secondary layer of skin, as essential to him as teeth are to a shark. It’s just not him. And his feet are bare, which is even
less
like him. It’s actually much closer to some romance hero on the cover of a book, and that definitely makes me think I’ve gone temporarily insane. I’m losing my mind, one piece at a time.

But if I am, that’s OK.

I’ll gladly trade my sanity for the sight of Janos striding towards me over the sands like something out of the Sheik’s Runaway Mistress, dressed in white cotton and with his hair hardly brushed at all. You can see the slight curl to it and there’s almost no parting, and after a moment of intense study I realise what that means:

His hair is
tousled
.

He’s all
rumpled
.

I may well be swooning. Is this what swooning feels like? My head is suddenly too heavy for my body and my body has turned to jelly, and there’s this incredible urge going through me – one that doesn’t quite fit with fainting on a chaise longue. It’s more like … it’s more like I really need to break into a run. And I know it is, because the sensation is so unfamiliar it stands out a mile. I never run. I hate running. I don’t know why I want to run here – I only know that I do.

For once I hoped, and it turned out OK.

It’s OK, I think, and then I barrel down the beach to him at something just past the speed of light. If my feet had wings I’d fly. I fly anyway. I don’t even feel the sand as I run, and I hardly care how I look – probably crazy, I know. And definitely crazy when I get to him and just fling myself at his body.

You don’t fling anything anywhere near Janos. He likes measured handshakes, arm’s-length greetings, polite hellos. He’s probably going to pat me now and laugh and tell me to calm down – though I swear I won’t mind. He can do anything he likes as long as the end result is me and him together.

I actually want to be together with someone. Even if it’s hard and there are conversations about hurt feelings and confrontations I don’t like. Even if he hates me. Even if he’s the kind of man to stop and offer a handshake. I’ll take handshakes, I think.

But I don’t have to.

After a second of my desperate hugging, I realise he’s hugging me back. In fact, he’s not just hugging me back. He’s squeezing me hard enough to deprive me of oxygen. One hand is going to leave an imprint on my back, and the other is definitely doing something to my head. He’s got hold of the back of it like he doesn’t want to let go.

I don’t want him to let go. We could just stay like this for ever, and I would be fine with that. And even better:

I suspect he would be fine with that, too.

‘Don’t leave me again,’ he tells me, only he doesn’t just do it once. He says it over and over, until I’m melting. He’s going to have to let go, because hands traditionally can’t hold onto liquidised people.

But I’m glad when he doesn’t. He keeps holding me and holding me and saying all these awesome things, like ‘Never leave’ and ‘I need you’ and ‘I want you’. So it’s unfortunate that all I can think to say back is ‘I’m sorry’. I mean, it’s good to get it out there. And he seems to appreciate it. However, it’s not quite as committed as:

‘What would I be without you?’

Because he also says that, while cupping my face in his hands and staring deep into my eyes and oh, I must have broken the no-hoping machine. It’s somehow operating backwards. I dared to hope and I got all of this, instead of absolutely nothing.

Despite the fact that I probably deserve nothing. I’ve just offered him the weakest apology in the world, and after five minutes of his unconditional love and his unrestrained hugging, the best I can do is this:

‘I didn’t mean to run away.’

Which is pretty poor, even by my standards. It has the word ‘mean’ in there, as weak and wishy-washy as a wet sheet on a windy day. And no matter how hard I search through it, there’s no hint of an explanation. If I was on trial for freaking out on him, I’d be on death row right now. The judge and jury have heard it all before – I’m guilty as sin, and everyone knows it.

Apart from him.

‘I know,’ he says, then just for good measure: ‘It’s OK. It’s always OK.’

I never realised how lovely that word is, before.
OK
. Though I know why I feel that way. It’s because I’ve never heard a man say it to me like that – until now. None of them have ever told me it’s OK to be this way, and that this state may continue for an indefinite amount of time. Not a tiny amount of time, or the amount that elapses before I blunder in some way.

Just this:

Always.

‘Even though I messed up?’

‘You didn’t mess up.’

‘I did. I did. I thought –’

‘You thought I wanted someone else,’ he interrupts, but I’m glad he does. The words I wanted to say were high and tight, whereas the one I actually end up offering is as soft and sighing as the falling wind.

‘Yes.’

‘And that I could only love you as that new person, that perfect person, that glamorous Gucci-wearing doyenne of the social scene.’

‘Yes,’ I tell him again, only the word is not the wind any more. It’s the sound of something breaking, after being too long held in. He isn’t just willing to overlook. He
understands
. He understands me, completely.

‘But you’re sure you can never be that. You need to be yourself.’

‘I do.’

‘And you didn’t know how to tell me.’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t. Oh, God, you really do have psychic powers. I should have just waited a while for them to kick in,’ I say, and now he laughs. It isn’t cruel, however. It’s warm and good and so easy to sink into. I’m crying like a massive imbecile, but I find myself joining in.

And especially when he says:

‘I don’t have psychic powers, Alissa – your
friend
told me all of this. I called her the moment I couldn’t get in touch with you, and she told me everything,’ he says, like it’s just so simple. He must have searched her out and tracked her down and God knows what else, but it’s simple. And so is this, apparently: ‘Then I took the first flight out here.’

‘You took the first flight?’

‘Of course.’

‘You just … dropped everything?’

‘I couldn’t do anything else. She said you were hurting and I didn’t – I
couldn’t
– think of anything else. I couldn’t think of anything else anyway. But if that’s too much …’

‘Too much?’

‘If you need more space, more time, if you’re afraid of something serious –’

‘
Ohhhh
, she told you that too. She told you that I’m an emotional moron,’ I moan, and for the first time since I ran to him and glued my body to his, I want to step away. I need to step away so I can put my face in my hands. I can’t let him see me like this – hiding is the only option.

But thankfully he doesn’t let me.

‘She may have done,’ he says, and as he does he strokes the hair away from my face so he can see everything, all of me, right down to the roots. He studies every inch of me for signs of pain, and oh,
oh
. I’ve never felt so safe. I’ve never felt so loved.

‘I don’t need more space. I need less space. I need the minimum amount of space possible. This right here –’ I say, then gesture to the place where our bodies are glued together ‘– is too much space.’

‘How about this?’

‘That’s better.’

‘And this?’

‘Oh, yes, I can definitely deal with that.’

‘I love you, Alissa.’

‘Also very good,’ I tell him, only now my words are up and down and inside out. They’re clotted with tears, and all the better for it. Otherwise, how could he possibly know how I really feel? I can’t say it back – not even after he’s said:

‘I love you the way you are.’

Instead, I go with the only thing I can.

‘You do?’

‘How could you ever think anything else?’

‘Because of the dress. Because … because of the place and the makeover,’ I say, as he strokes my tears away. ‘You just seemed to like it so much.’

‘I didn’t like it, love. I was asking you a question.’

‘What sort of question?’ I ask, and in answer he puts his lips to my ear.

‘If it’s so easy – if it only takes a day, a moment, a new dress and some shoes and a hairstyle that didn’t quite suit you – to transform someone into something that fits into my world, why on earth would it matter to me at all?’

My eyes drift closed the second he says it, as though I’m sinking into something soft and comforting and, most of all, obvious. Oh, it’s so obvious I could kick myself, but instead I do what I should have all along. I should have done it the moment I met him, or at the very least five seconds ago.

He flew hundreds of miles to make me feel better. He’s holding me and loving me and, more importantly, he wants me to be myself. He’s OK with me.

I
am OK with me.

‘I love you, Janos. I love you for everything you are, and everything you’ve done. In all my life I’ve never met anyone like you. I didn’t think I
deserved
anyone like you. But you make me believe I do, every day.’

‘And do you know why?’

‘I think I can guess.’

‘Because it’s true, love. You deserve to be happy. And if I can, I will spend every second I have making sure you are.’

‘Even if I’m not fancy?’

‘Especially if you’re not fancy.’

‘And if I’m a fool, what then?’

‘I’ll make you believe again.’

‘I might be difficult.’

‘You always are.’

‘I could fight you, and run from you, and tell you I don’t really love you at all.’

‘And if so I’ll say what I always do, whenever you try to hide from me,’ he murmurs, against the side of my face. His lips are almost on mine and my lips are almost on his, and all I need is to hear it, before we finally kiss.

‘Say it for me now, then,’ I tell him, and he does, oh, he does.

He speaks the word as though it’s the sweetest sentiment in the world.

And here, now, it is.

‘Liar,’ he says.

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