Page 17 of When Grumpy Met Sunshine
Though of course she couldn’t say any of that.
Better to go with something that made her feel less weird.
Something jokey, she thought. And it came to her, a second later.
“Yeah, if the Wolfman was inexplicably hairless. There’s three strands there.”
“Only if three means thirty million to you.”
“If there was thirty million of them you wouldn’t be able to lift your bloody hands. You’d just have to drag them along the floor like great hair-filled shovels,” she said, and didn’t think much of it when she did. It wasn’t like she was being mean, after all. Heck, she was being the opposite of mean when you really got down to brass tacks. And yet somehow, the second the words were out something weird seemed to happen to his face. The angry eyebrows tried to separate from each other, and his cheeks were doing this weird up-and-down thing, and hismouth.
His mouth did not look the way it usually did.
That mean thin line he kept it in was trembling.
It was fighting him somehow, she could see it was.
But before it could win whatever battle he was having with it, he turned his back to her. Fast, like it was of the utmost importance that she did not see the change happen. Even though she already had. She even suspected what it was, but just couldn’t quite believe it until he spoke. “Look, just give me your poorly filled bowl of water and I’ll sort my eyes,” he said, and there it was. Shocking, but undeniable.
Laughter, wavering around underneath his words.
Like he was trying to keep his amusement under wraps just as much as she had. Though of course in his case it was quite a bit weirder that he was even doing it in the first place. After all,she was well known for being a giggler. Her nickname in college had been Champers—because she was bubbly. To this day, some of her friends still called her that, and not always kindly.
But Alfie Harding?
He was not bubbly.
Or even easily amused.
Once during a match he’d kicked the ball and his boot had somehow come off and smacked the goalie in the face. But he hadn’t so much as cracked a smile over it. In fact, he’d angrily told everybody to stop laughing about the whole business during his post-game interview. And then threatened the crowd during his next match, because they’d started singingshoe me the way to go home.
So this seemed pretty wild.
And weirdly, kind of calming.
Like his practical manner and reassurance had been.
Now it kind of felt a lot more like she could do this.
“Okay, first of all, my bowl of water isn’t poorly filled. It has a perfectly reasonable amount inside it, despite my attempts at flinging it everywhere. And second of all, you’re not doing your own eyes. You’ve already poked them so much they’re barely able to open. If I let you have a real go at them you’ll end up gouging them out. Now sit down, and keep still,” she said. Then when he turned, quite obviously startled, she pointed at the chair.
And though he definitely went to protest, he did it.
He sat down, face a picture of grumpy resentment.
Like a kid taking his medicine, she thought—though she didn’t take it personally. She knew what he was like. She’d seen him shrug a hand off his shoulder on telly, before today. Even when the hand belonged to his mum.
And he was pretty well known for refusing things like high fives and fist bumps and other even very casual contact-based greetings. Usually he stared angrily at whatever was being offered, so she expected the same thing here. Worse than the same thing, really. It seemed likely that he would topple the table themoment she so much as touched her fingertips to his cheeks, to tilt his head toward her.
So she did her best to do said tilting lightly. Like she was hardly doing anything at all. She was just brushing him, with about as much weight as a spider’s legs running across his face. He shouldn’t have even been able to feel it, her touch was that careful and tentative. But somehow, he did. He quite obviously did.
She saw it happen, almost immediately.
All in one big rush, like he couldn’t contain it.
Her hands made contact, and that was it. Every muscle in his face just seemed to melt. The deep line between his eyebrows dissolved; his tightly pressed-together lips parted. And though she could see him fighting to keep his eyes squeezed shut—like this was agony, like it was unbearable, like she was killing him with her fingertips—she could see them started to smooth out.
And it made her bold.
