Page 90 of The Next Chapter

I turn the shower on and then turn it to cold when it splutters to life. Plumber! We need a plumber around here! I clutch the edge of the sink and look at myself in the small square mirror above it. I look like an animal trying to get out of a cage.

I just need a plan. Plans make everyone feel better.

What I’ll do is stay in the shower so long that if Noah wants to flee, he can do so without me catching him in an awkward half in, half out of the door situation (this actually happened to me once. Seb still brings it up).

I’m in the shower now. It’s not even a hair wash day, but I shampoo twice and then condition the ends. My skin is tingling and wrinkly by the time I switch the shower off, realizing that in my mad dash I didn’t pick up any clothes.

Instead, I dry off and wrap a towel around me. My hair is soaked, running rivulets down my arms. I don’t know why, but everything just seems so hyper focused here; my skin feels rawer than it ever does at home. There must be something in the water.

I pull open the bathroom door to find Noah sat on the couch, one ankle resting on the other knee. The cottage is dark, the heavy curtains pulled across the glass doors for once.

I think a part of me hoped that he’d still be here. That he wouldn’t walk away. I needed him to not walk away. I don’t know if the realization comforts or terrifies me.

He puts down his wine and walks towards me.

‘Lily,’ he says and I feel it deep in my bones. He twists a piece of my wet hair between the end of his fingers and I’m not thinking about how something feels different this time. I’m not.

‘I don’t know how to do this,’ he says.

‘We don’t have to do anything, it’s like I said, about the future thing.’

I try to get the words out with some gusto, but proximity to Noah is scrambling my brain.

‘I want to try, though,’ he says, ducking down to whisper in my ear, making my skin break out in goose bumps.

And oh god, how is it possible to get what you want and feel so conflicted about it? Because in this world, where Noah realizes that he wants to stay, where Noah figures out how to do this, I’m still lying. It’s still ruined because he doesn’t know who I am.

But when his fingertips trail across it at the edge of my tightly pulled towel, I kind of forget the whole ruined bit.

My heart is racing super fast.

‘You want to try, like girlfriend, boyfriend try?’ And who doesn’t appreciate clarity at a moment like this?

He nods.

I feel like I’m losing my mind.

Especially now since his hands are working my towel, then tugging on where it’s tucked in on itself. Then it’s on the floor and he’s kissing me. His clothes against my bare skin feel illicit out here in the open.

I don’t want to think about how this feels different, I really don’t. But I can’t help it. It feels like I’ve crossed some sort of chasm that I didn’t know existed.

‘Take off your clothes, please.’ I hardly recognize my own voice, it’s desperate and needy and wild.

Noah pulls me towards the couch, and I go, willingly.

In some deep, dark crevice of my brain, the thought that I don’t want to acknowledge pushes to be acknowledged.

How am I ever going to give this up?

Chapter Fifteen

To Do:

Truth reveal to Lola?

Tidy cottage

Amend timetable – when will we build the pagoda now?