Page 34 of Topped

“You know, if you want to reminisce, you can do it while making a couple of hampers,” I said cheekily and waved my hand in the direction of the counter.

“Certainly not. I have questions I need to ask first.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

I finally looked at him and raised an eyebrow over my glasses. “Fine, but I reserve the right not to answer them.”

“Are you being safe?” Norman asked, the tiniest hint of worry flickering across his eyes. I knew exactly why he’d asked it, and I couldn’t begrudge it as a question. Not after everything he’d experienced.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Thank you. Now, I know you don’t want me to tell anyone, but can I at least tell Sidney? Please, darling, you know I can’t keep this sort of thing to myself. I promise it won’t go any further.”

“Won’t it?”

“I swear it. And if it does, I shall let Sidney pick my waistcoat every day for a month.”

“Only a month?” I asked. Mostly because I was curious about how far he’d go for this.

“And… I shall tell him he can wear that hideous yellow waistcoat to my funeral.”

I stopped what I was doing to stare at him, completely stunned by what he’d said. I hadn’t expected him to offer something like that. “Holy shit, you are serious then.”

“As the grave. Which I shall be in soon if you force me to keep this secret. My poor, aged heart shall give out from all the stress.” He clutched his chest dramatically, like he’d been mortally wounded.

“Really? It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh yes it is! Back in May, you practically declared this man to be an enemy of the people and now you’re taking him home with you to do a horizontal tango. And while I do approve of sleeping with your enemies—it’s truly Machiavellian—I cannot let you dismiss this as ‘not a big deal’.”

“He’s not my enemy,” I said as I started to drape bits of cobweb across the window display, making sure it was dense enough to support some chocolate spiders, but not so thick it would completely obstruct anything behind or underneath it. “It was… a misunderstanding. One we’ve now resolved.”

“A misunderstanding?”

“Yes.”

“Rupert, he threatened to set an army of seagulls on you, drew the borders of his shop in chalk, with a ruler, and put Vaseline on the back door handle. Those are not misunderstandings. Those are acts of war. Petty ones, but still.” He almost sounded impressed by Milo’s creativity, despite the fact he’d cursed him out as much as I had.

“I’m aware. And I retaliated. Neither of us are innocent in this.”

“So, what? Now you’ve decided to take your vindictiveness out on each other physically?”

“Not even that.” I smiled softly, my heart doing strange little backflips in my chest while my stomach bubbled. “I like him, Norman. I know we’ve had our disagreements but we’re more similar than I thought, and he… he gets me. He understands my brain, or at least, attempts to. And he talks to me! We actually communicate. Do you know how rare that it?”

Norman’s lips twitched into a smile. “I am aware.”

“Look, I don’t know where this is going, or even what we’re doing, but I’m okay with that right now. I have enough other things in my life to worry about. Don’t I deserve to have a little fun?”

“Of course you do, darling. You know I just worry about you.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “You should come for dinner again soon. Sidney is dying to cook for you. And he wants your opinion on a new waistcoat he’s acquired. Apparently my opinion isn’t to be trusted, because he thinks I have no taste. Why I married him I have no idea! Truly. I should never have tied myself to someone with such poor judgement.”

I chuckled. Their relationship would always amuse me, because they truly adored each other but seemed incapable of saying anything nice about each other ninety percent of the time. I assumed they were very different in private, and that this public vindictiveness was a bit of a defence mechanism from a time where it had been so much harder for them to be openly together.

Or maybe it was simply their personalities.

“I’d love that. Maybe next weekend? You have a much busier social calendar than me, so you let me know what works for you and I’ll be there.”

“Excellent.” Norman beamed, then handed me the box of chocolate spiders. “These are for you, by the way. Wretched things. I should send a box of them to Mrs. Lambert. They’d fit perfectly with her aesthetic. Do you know she was in here again the other day demanding Christmas updates? I’d have thought she’d prefer to wait until her celebration was over. After all, not everyone gets an entire day dedicated to them. Spiteful witch.”