Page 64 of Under Your Spell

‘Oh my God.’ I flop back down and close my eyes. ‘Why are you in my bed, arguing with me at seven thirty in the morning?’ I ask weakly.

‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’

I crack open one eye and he’s looking down at me with such warm affection that the corners of my mouth lift all by themselves.

‘It’s not nice,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s too early for anything to be nice.’

‘Anything?’ Theo lifts an eyebrow, and for a second it flashes in front of my eyes, the image of him leaning down, pressing those warm lips to mine, the weight of that hot, hard body on top of me, my hands in his hair, his hands under my pyjama top.

I blink and the image is gone, but the way Theo’s looking at me makes me think that the whole fantasy was written all over my face.

‘I meant presents, you little perv,’ he says, his voice rough. ‘And a nice breakfast. Though I’m very open to your suggestions.’

I feel the blush travel up my body from my toes to the roots of my hair. ‘I do like presents,’ I manage.

‘Then get up and meet me downstairs.’ He jumps off the bed.

‘I will if you put on a shirt,’ I yell after him, because, honestly, there’s only so much a girl can take.

When I shuffle downstairs, still in my pyjamas, yawning and combing my fingers through my messy hair, I find that Theo has laid the table. There’s a jar full of Michaelmas daisies, glasses of fresh orange juice and a plate full of warm pastries as well as a small pile of wrapped gifts.

‘I’m just making coffee,’ he calls from the kitchen.

When he walks in, I’m still staring at the table. I blink hard, but my eyes won’t stop tearing up.

‘Hey!’ Theo exclaims, striding towards me and wrapping his arms around me in a hug. ‘What’s this about?’

I press my face into his chest and sniffle into the T-shirt he is now, thankfully, wearing. He holds me tighter, rests his cheek on the top of my head. It’s the greatest hug I’ve ever had, by a factor of a thousand, and I give in and let myself cling to him. Call it a birthday treat.

‘This is just really nice,’ I say finally, breaking away with no small amount of reluctance. ‘How did you even know it was my birthday?’ I certainly hadn’t made him aware of the fact.

‘I knew it must be coming up because you said you were a couple of months younger than Serena, so I asked Lil when she was here last week.’ He pulls out a chair for me. ‘We’ve been scheming.’ He looks so boyish and pleased with himself that it honestly feels like an attack. It would be the most natural thing in the world to lean over and kiss him, and even acknowledging that feels dangerous. Neither of us have discussed the fact that in four days we’ll be going our separate ways. It’s like we’re just pretending it’s not happening at all, and that’s making everything even more confusing.

Which is why, instead of kissing him, I sit and return my attention to the table. ‘And you really did make breakfast,’ I say. ‘Without burning the house down or anything.’

‘I had some help from Mrs D,’ he admits, taking his own seat across from me.

Mrs D is approximately one hundred and fifty years old and she owns the general shop in the nearest village. She has absolutely no idea who Theo is, but she’s known me since I could walk and she insists on calling Theo ‘Clemmie’s nice young man’. Theo never corrects her, and the two have become unlikely friends, bonding over their shared love of Mini Milk lollies and muscle cars.

‘She made the pastries and all I had to do was heat them up in the oven.’ Theo’s brow creases. ‘Which was actually a lot harder than she made it sound because some of them started burning around the edges before the others were warm, but I don’t think I did too badly.’

‘They’re perfect,’ I say, biting into one, and they are, but at this point I think I’d eat a lump of charcoal if he’d got up early to make it for me on my birthday. Aside from my family, no one has ever made a fuss before. Not Len, who said birthdays were ‘not something to be celebrated by people over the age of thirteen’; certainly not Sam, whose big gift was breaking up with me right before my eighteenth birthday; and I don’t think Ripp even knows when I was born, not exactly. He might have sent the odd card, but come to think of it that was probably Uncle Carl.

‘Okay, okay,’ Theo says impatiently. ‘Now open your presents.’

He doesn’t have to tell me twice, and I rip into the paper.

There’s a sunny yellow hardback first edition of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume; a bottle of my favourite perfume; a voucher for two people to take a goat yoga class; a poster of the Chaucer painting I have on my wall at home but with Theo’s head superimposed on top (‘I got David to make it in Photoshop and now he thinks you have a really weird kink.’). And, most impressively, a signed and framed photo of the cast of Blood/Lust.

‘I asked them to do one for me too,’ Theo says, starry-eyed. ‘I’m going to put it on my wall next to the platinum records.’

I’m laughing so hard that there’s orange juice coming out of my nose and I don’t care.

‘And that’s not all,’ he says when we’ve finished breakfast. ‘You have to go and shower and get dressed. We’re not done with birthday celebrations.’

‘Why are you doing all this?’ I ask, bewildered.

Theo groans. ‘Honestly, Clemmie. For someone so clever, you can be very, very dumb. If you need to ask that, then you’re really not paying attention.’ He ushers me from the room.