The Road To Her Part 18

Another text from Grace the next morning-the day of Millie's leaving bash-was waiting for me when I woke up. I'd spent a lousy night, unable to sleep, drifting off only occasionally, just to be interrupted by dreams of Elise. In my dreams, we were rowing a boat down the Thames on a bright summer's afternoon and everything was-as it sometimes tends to be in dreams-absolutely perfect.

It was just the two of us, lying together, the warm sun on us as our boat floated down the river to goodness only knew where. It was the sort of dream I'd had so many times since I'd admitted to myself that I liked Elise, but the one I'd had that night had been stronger and more vivid than any of the others. When I woke up and realised that it hadn't been real, my heart sank and I was left with a sudden stabbing of desperate loneliness.

It stayed with me all day as well, you know how they do? Snippets of it kept coming back to me periodically throughout the day, making me either happy or sad, depending on what state of mind I was in at the time. That, coupled with Grace's text sent at some ridiculously early hour and which I resolutely avoided replying to, made my day much harder than it really needed to be. I was both glad and relieved when all filming was finally over and we could kick off at Millie's party.

We went to a hotel called Morgan's in the West End, a smart place where a lot of other actors hung out, both from theatre and television, and the type of place where you were charged a fortune for a bottle of champagne, but no one ever batted an eye about spending that kind of money there. We went there for special occasions: after awards ceremonies, or if we'd wrapped on a particularly arduous storyline and wanted to go out and get hammered to relieve the pressure.

"The paps'll be there tonight, guarantee it," Kevin had said earlier in the afternoon. "So I want you two to arrive arm-in-arm together."

"Do we have to?" I'd asked, worried how Elise would feel about arriving with me.

"The fans will love it," Kevin had said dismissively. "I'm sure you both will, too."

The fans. It was all about the fans, of course, and getting some good free publicity for us all.

Elise looked totally awesome that night, of course, in a stunning low-cut turquoise-blue designer dress that stopped midthigh, showing off her perfect long legs. She was wearing matching shoes and had darkened her eyes, making them even s.e.xier than they normally were-if that was possible. The photographers camped outside the hotel couldn't get enough of the pair of us, calling out for us to turn one way and then another, asking Elise who'd designed her dress, shouting out to me asking who'd done my hair. It was crazy, and we both lapped it up.

Once we'd gone inside the hotel and away from the cameras, we could really let our hair down and start to enjoy ourselves. We wandered into the hotel's nightclub, and I got separated from Elise pretty much straight away, losing her in the darkness of the club as she went to speak to some of the others across the other side of the dance floor. A small part of me thought that was deliberate; I guessed it had been hard enough for her to arrive with me. Why should she then want to spend her evening with me, too?

"You look like a puppy waiting outside a shop for its owner." Bella put her arm around me, handing me a drink. "You've been standing here for ages, just staring into s.p.a.ce."

"It's always going to be like this, isn't it?" I stared numbly down into my drink.

I'd told everything to Bella in one particularly messy late-night phone call, pouring my heart out to her way into the small hours, about how I'd confessed my feelings to Elise but that she hadn't wanted to know. It hadn't changed a thing, but the relief of telling her about everything had been palpable.

"If that's what Elise wants, then, yes." Bella pulled me away from the edge of the dance floor and back towards the bar. She lowered her voice as the music dipped. "Or risk losing her as a friend."

Kevin appeared with a microphone, ready to make a speech and presentation to Millie. Ten minutes later, I finally saw Elise, standing across from me, amongst some of our other co-stars, looking so breathtakingly gorgeous, my heart bunched up just at the sight of her. I was desperate to make eye contact with her, so she'd know where I was. When she finally spotted me, her face lit up with happiness. An overwhelmingly intense rush of both relief and love washed over me. Nerves fluttered in the bottom of my stomach as she slowly picked her way across the club towards me, apologising as she b.u.mped into people, waving to others who were evidently offering her drinks, gesticulating to them that she was heading my way. At last she came to stand in front of me, her face shiny from the heat of the club and vast quant.i.ties of champagne, still managing to look effortlessly amazing.

I don't think I'd ever seen her look so lovely or so happy, standing there in front of me with a half-empty gla.s.s in her hand and her hair sticking up slightly, swaying and giggling so much that she had to put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself.

"I've been looking for you." She bent her head to me, her hair tickling my cheek, and whispered in my ear, "You were just behind me, then you disappeared."

She was looking slightly drunk but still managed to exude this air of ubercoolness that made me want to kiss her right there and then. The fact that she still had her hand on my shoulder and was standing so d.a.m.n close that we were touching really didn't help matters at all, either. I could smell warm wafts of alcohol on her breath, and the champagne was making her flirty, too, I was sure of it, as she leant in close to me and looked at me long and slow. She ran her hand, which had been on my shoulder, leisurely down the length of my arm, making my bare skin p.r.i.c.kle, before finally taking my hand in hers. I gently took hold of it, almost childlike.

"I was looking for you, too," I replied, glancing down at her hand in mine. I knew I shouldn't let her touch me like this, but I couldn't help myself.

"I've been dancing with Pete." She groaned.

"Pete?" Robbie leaned over to us and laughed out loud. "Is he going to be your next one then, 'Lise?"

'Lise?

I caught a look exchanged between Robbie and Elise, one that crushed at my chest. It was a knowing, mutual-understanding look. The kind swapped between people that have shared something in the past.

And it stung like h.e.l.l.

We turned and applauded, Elise finally dropping my hand, as Millie took the microphone from Kevin and said a few words about how she was going to miss us all and about how excited she was to be taking a new direction with her acting. I listened to her talking, all the while looking at the back of Elise's neck, so perfect and lovely, her strands of blond hair cut neatly against it. How I wished I could have been those strands of hair, nuzzled happily against her skin.

"s.h.i.t, here comes Pete again." Elise turned and groaned again as Millie finished her speech and the music started up, making me instantly drop my gaze.

"Allow me." Robbie suddenly grabbed Elise's hand and walked her to the dance floor, nodding to a disappointed Pete as they pa.s.sed him. Elise turned and looked back over her shoulder, pulling a face at me.

Soon she was dancing with Robbie, leaving me standing there still thinking about her lovely neck and how I'd felt when she'd run her hand down my bare arm. I stared down at the gla.s.s in my hand and was suddenly more miserable than I'd ever been in my life. I was nauseous, as if there were rocks in my stomach, and so alone I could have broken down there and then and cried my eyes out. It seemed like everyone wanted a piece of Elise tonight, including me.

I watched the pair of them slow-dance, Elise with her hands on Robbie's shoulders, those same hands that had been in my hands just a few minutes earlier, then felt a sensation like a cold knife in my heart as I watched him run his hand up and down her back, finally letting it rest just above the abbreviated hem of her dress. Despite Elise repeatedly moving his hand away, he kept putting it back there. A primeval scream began to build inside me when I saw him do it. I wanted to leap onto his back, pull him off her, and beat him to a pulp. His hand didn't belong there! It should have been me dancing with her, me moving my hips gently against hers, her hands on my shoulders, me putting my hand where Robbie was putting his.

They turned around so that Elise was now facing me. When she saw me watching them dance, she mouthed something to me over his shoulder, pulling a face. I shrugged back at her and peered into the murky darkness of the dance floor as she mouthed it again, but I still couldn't make out what she was saying.

She kept mouthing something over and over in my direction, looking increasingly frustrated as Robbie continued moving against her. I wandered closer to the dance floor and she mouthed it again, slower this time: "Help me!"

I rolled my eyes and shook my head, figuring she was just larking about, and wandered back to where I'd been standing, watching as she disappeared into the darkness of the club once more with Robbie. Finally the music changed to something faster, and the next thing I knew, Elise was standing next to me again.

"I'm done here, are you?" she bent her head towards me and shouted.

"Already?" I shouted back. "We just got here."

Ignoring me, she grabbed my hand and led me from the club, occasionally squeezing my fingers to let me know she was there in the darkness. I liked that.

We left the hotel, this time by the back door to avoid the photographers still grouped out the front, and walked in silence down the road a little way, just grateful to be out in the cool night air after the heat of the nightclub.

"Why didn't you save me from Robbie?" Elise asked as we slowed to wander along the South Bank, the Thames rippling softly alongside us, lit up by the moonlight.

"Seriously?" I looked across at her. "You really wanted me to help you?"

"I didn't want to dance with him." Elise looked back at me. "I was trying to tell you I didn't want to dance with him, but you just rolled your eyes and wandered off again."

"I thought you were kidding, Elise," I said, with a laugh.

"I wanted you to help me," Elise said, suddenly serious.

I was surprised to see her still looking so sombre.

"You looked like you were enjoying yourself, so how was I to know?" I asked. "He had his hand on your a.r.s.e, I noticed." I looked at her from the corner of my eye.

"You were looking at my a.r.s.e, were you?" She dipped her head slightly and raised her eyebrow mischievously.

"No. Well, I guess, but that's not what I meant," I mumbled.

"And did you also see me trying to get his hand off me, as well?" Elise asked, turning her head and gazing out across the river. "G.o.d, I'm so sick of men mauling me sometimes, it's unreal."

She slowed her pace. "Can we go to yours?" she suddenly said. "It's close. We could walk it from here." She peered up into the night sky. "It's a nice night for a walk by the river," she said quietly.

My place? Why did she want to go there?

"Sure," I stuttered, making a mental calculation of the tidiness of my apartment and figured that two pans left soaking in the kitchen sink plus one odd sock on the bathroom floor didn't equal a squalid mess.

It took us about another fifteen minutes to walk back to my street, and by then, a heavy rain had started to fall, so we ran the last hundred yards to the apartment block's front door.

"So unfit!" I breathed hard as I put my key in the door. "Although how anyone's supposed to run in these shoes is anyone's guess." I lifted my foot, and Elise gave a knowing half laugh. We went up in the lift to my floor in silence, both damp from the sudden rain, and entered my apartment. I watched as Elise wandered about the lounge, whistling quietly in approval when she walked to the large open window and looked at the lights of London shining out in front of her.

"I'll never get used to just how lovely it is here," she murmured, turning back to look at me. "It feels like you can see the whole of London lit up like Christmas lights."

I tossed my keys into a wooden bowl next to the front door, eased my pinching shoes off, and wriggled my feet into slippers with a sigh. The night was over. Time for some comfort.

"I'm gonna fetch myself a towel," I called out. "You want one?" I grimaced as I took a look at my reflection in the mirror by the front door. The sudden downpour had messed up my hair, so perfect and neat earlier in the evening but now sticking up in all directions and beginning to plaster itself most unflatteringly to my forehead.

Elise nodded, then turned back to carry on admiring the view in front of her.

I hurried into the bathroom, hastily kicking a crumpled-up pair of sweatpants into the corner on my way, and returned with our towels. I stood next to her at the window, handed her one, and watched, from the corner of my eye, as she dried her hair and face. She raked her fingers through her wet hair, sc.r.a.ping it back from her forehead, and wiped at the remaining make-up on her face with her towel, the rain having washed most of it away. I watched as she stood gazing out the window, hair swept back from her face, completely unselfconscious about the fact she was now totally free of any make-up. She looked beautiful.

"Are you happy here?" she asked, still looking out the window.

"Very, yes," I replied.

"And...are you happy?" she repeated.

"Yeah, I just said."

She turned and looked at me. "No, I mean are you happy? In life? Happy with yourself?"

I shrugged. "I guess." I looked at her, urging her to read my expression, needing her to know I was still struggling with the whole just good friends thing, and that I'd be a darn sight happier if she'd give me what I wanted: her.

"Would you be happier still if Grace were back in your life?" She wandered away from the window, looking back over her shoulder to me, and sat, with her towel still in her hands, on my sofa.

"I don't know," I said truthfully, remembering with a pang that Grace had texted me again that morning. "I sometimes wonder if she'd help me...take my mind off things." I stayed rooted to the spot by the window, not wanting to move, my heart beating a bit faster than it was before. "Would you be happier with things if Stig came back into yours?" I asked, turning the tables on her.

"Stig? He was no one," she said dismissively. "He was just company when I felt like I needed it. He took my mind off things." She looked steadily at me and my insides lurched.

"Anyway," I said, my voice wavering, "I guess I'll find out about Grace soon enough."

Elise looked up. "I'm sorry?"

I swallowed hard, watching her face intently. "I'm meeting her tomorrow night for a drink."

Okay, it was a lie.

But I'd blurted it before I'd even realised. I have no idea why, but the barely disguised flash of jealousy that spread across Elise's face suggested to me it might have been a good move.

"I thought she'd moved to Ireland." Elise pulled herself upright on my sofa. "You told me she was living in Ireland."

I shook my head. "Only temporarily," I said. "She plans to move back here eventually." I watched her closely. I had the bit well and truly between my teeth; there was no going back now, I figured. "She, uh, she wants to get back with me," I lied, my eyes never leaving her face.

"I see." Elise's face flickered with something new now. Not jealousy this time, but something else. Hurt? Confusion? "And you? What do you want?" she asked.

"I want to forget about you," I said bluntly. "Grace can help me do that."

That could have been partly true. At least Grace wanted me, didn't she? Grace would be the easy option.

"And do you think that's a good idea?" Elise's voice sounded thin.

"It's logical," I said. "Grace wants me. You don't. It's a no-brainer really, when you think about it."

"But you don't want her anymore," Elise said. "You already told me that."

"Still," I said. "I can't keep on waiting in the hope that you'll change your mind about me and you, can I?"

I remained standing by the window, clutching my own towel lamely in my hands. When Elise didn't respond, I wandered over to her, holding my hand out for her to pa.s.s me her towel, just wanting to do something to break the uncomfortable silence now hanging in the room.

Our hands touched as she pa.s.sed me her towel, making me pull mine away as if it'd been stung by static electricity. She looked up at me as I eventually took it from her, holding my gaze for a few seconds, then looked slowly away as I moved past her and over towards my bathroom.

I tossed the towels into the laundry bin and turned to come back out again. Elise was now in the bathroom doorway, leaning against the door frame, watching me closely. "Did I tell you just how nice you look tonight?" she said. "I meant to tell you. I don't know if I did."

"No," I said, taken aback. "You didn't."

"Well, you do," she said, smiling uncertainly.

"Thank you," I said. "Uh, and so do you."

Elise frowned, looking as though she was stopping herself from saying something else. With an exasperated sigh, she ran her hands irritably over her face, rubbing at her skin. "Why did you have to be a girl?" she asked, fixing me with a look.

"I'm sorry?"

"Things would be so much easier if you'd have just been a man." Elise rubbed at her face again.

"Don't," I said, sounding stupid to my own ears.

She was anguished and exasperated and angry all at the same time, as if she was having a thousand arguments with herself inside her head. While she'd been wound up when she'd first told me she liked me, I'd never seen her quite as agitated as this before. "Don't what?"

"Why say that now, Elise?" I asked. "Knowing how I feel about you? It's not fair." I remained rooted to the spot, waiting for her to answer. She didn't. "Elise? Talk to me."

"You know why!" Elise pulled herself upright again. "Because you know that I think that...that..."

"You think...?" I asked, looking straight at her. I took a step closer to her, noticing she was breathing fast. I stopped just in front of her and looked questioningly into her eyes.

She glanced away, focusing on a spot on the floor, as if she couldn't bear to look at me. She was breathing hard through her mouth now, running her thumb over her other hand over and over again, struggling to speak.

"Think what, Elise?" I pushed, wanting to take her hand.

"I think..." Finally she made eye contact with me. "That I can't do this anymore," she blurted, turning from me and walking quickly back into my lounge.

"Elise! Can't do what?" I caught up with her, reaching out for her arm and turning her to face me. "What can't you do, Elise?"

"This," she said. "I can't do this." She walked to the door, wrenching it open and stumbling out into the hallway.

I followed, calling, "Elise! Wait! Elise!"