Falling For You (22 page)

It’s not.

When I look up at him his eyes are riveted to mine, amused, interested, but he shouldn’t be.

‘Do you like your tea weak or strong?’ I ask now.

‘I like it however you want to give it to me, Rose,’ he says in a low voice.

Man, I wish he wouldn’t do that. All that double-entendre; though he’s delivered it with a poker-straight face, I can feel the colour creeping into mine.

‘I’ll let it brew a moment then.’ The bags must be yonks old, because this one’s split at the bottom. ‘Careful, there’ll be the dregs of tea at the bottom of that cup.’ I stir the bag round to hurry the brewing on a bit.

‘So …you need your fortune telling, Lawrence?’ I can’t resist asking, even though I’m not going to offer to do the honours.

‘Do you think that would be a good idea?’

This isn’t about what I think, I frown slightly at him; it’s about
what you want?
He’s not opening up on that though, is he? Mum always said that ninety per cent of people who came to her for a reading wanted to know about their relationships. Do I
really
want to hear about the girlfriend? It’s bound to be a woman isn’t it? What else would make a sensitive guy like him feel so cut up and unsure about what he should be doing next?  I sigh.

‘It depends. People always want their fortunes read when they feel there’s most at stake. When they’re feeling most vulnerable.’ I cut him a sideways glance but his face remains inscrutable. He isn’t giving me any indication if this is the case. ‘However, Mum used to say that can be the most fruitful time. When we’re at a crossroads, all possibilities open up. We have to make a decision what path to take.’

‘What if I’ve already made my decision, though?’ He looks right at me and I know, for all the things in his future he seems so unsure about - right now, he’s set on a course from which he won’t be deterred. ‘What if all I need to know is if it’s all going to work out all right?’ To look at him, he seems so quietly still, so centred, and yet out of the corner of my eye I can see he’s drumming his fingers against his thigh.

You’ve made your decision to do what?
I wonder curiously. If he doesn’t want to tell me it seems impolite to press it.

‘Mum used to say; it’s
our choice
that’s the thing that counts. Not the outcome.’

‘Most people would say it’s the outcome,’ he notes.

‘They would. That’s because we all want things, don’t we? It’s easy to forget that it’s how we get there that counts.’   I stop short, because it’s all very well to quote Mum’s view about ‘our journey being the most important thing’ when
I
haven’t been able to journey anywhere for a very long time.

Maybe that’s what I get for violating one of the first rules of Wicca.

Shit.
I feel a rush of heaviness to my chest and I push it away immediately; just like I always do. For heaven’s sake. All I ever wanted was to be normal. Lead a normal life …

‘So - what do
you
want, Rose?’
H
e pulls my thoughts back to him.

‘I want to go out and experience everything that the world has to offer, that’s what I want to do right now, not stop at home wondering what it all means…’ He laughs, taking in my ambivalence.

‘So; if I could find some way to grant you your Christmas wish
.
’ Lawrence leans in a little closer as if he’s hanging on my every word. ‘What would it be?’

My Christmas wish? Wow. It’s been such a long while since anyone asked me something like that.

My Christmas wish.

‘I want…’
I want someone like you
, I think before I can stop myself. I know we only met less than twenty-four hours ago but … I want to know what it would be like to be with someone who makes me feel the way you make me feel. I want to sit over there where you are, lean my head so close to your chest that I can hear your heart. I want to feel your strong arms around me like I did yesterday only not because you’re
rescuing
me, but because you want to hold me, and to know that you’re someone who’ll
be
there for me, through thick and thin.

It’s a nice fantasy, so I continue it
.

I want to hear that you too, are really interested in me and I’m not just imagining it. I want to know that there isn’t any girlfriend waiting in the wings and that you’ll still somehow be around in the coming weeks, the coming months …

It’s still a fantasy, of course. This guy is way out of my league. His eyes open slightly wider and I catch his vague amusement at my confusion.

‘What do I want?’ I stutter. He’s just asked me a question and all I’ve done is stare at him, open-mouthed. I feel caught out, as if he might somehow be reading my thoughts in my expression. This is … this is unbelievably embarrassing.  Is this what it’s like to feel like you might be falling in love? Hell, it can’t be, surely? I’m not ready for this. All these feelings swirling up from deep inside of me. How can you know if you’re falling in love if you’ve never felt it before? Like your world is about to
spin right
out of control because you’re entering new and unchartered territory and yet something still feels so very, deeply right about it that you know there’s a danger you just might sacrifice everything,
anything
to keep on feeling it …?

I pick up the spoon and lift the tea bag out of his cup. I ladle a couple of spoons of sugar in and hand it to him.

What do I want?

‘I want to get out of Merry Ditton.’ I manage after a while.  Before I met Lawrence yesterday, getting out of Merry Ditton was the most pressing thing in my life. Hell, it still is the most important thing in my life. Who am I kidding?

‘You say that like it’s something real important,’ he observes.

‘It is,’ I admit. ‘It’s not just the snow that’s got me stuck here, Lawrence. My whole life has been stuck for quite a while.’  I pause, wondering how far I should go with this. I’m not about to pile on the details about Dad. I know from past experience that the minute I mention it, people make all sorts of assumptions about me.  Either they get bored immediately or they go into that poor-little-you routine and I hate that because it’s self-pitying and helpless. It’s also not very sexy. I’m sure the fact that I’m a Carer has been one thing that puts boys off me big-time.

‘I want to go to Uni,’ I share with him now. ‘I’ve had one or two set-backs but... I’m expecting my Uni offer letter will turn up any day now,’ I say assuredly.  Just to make sure he knows I
have
got plans. ‘In fact,’ I add for good measure
.
‘I think my letter may have turned up already but it’s gone to the neighbours by mistake.’

He nods sympathetically but I can’t read him, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s got into his head about me but now I think of it, me being up here must have seemed pretty odd to him too, I realise. He must have wondered what I was really doing wandering around up here all packed up like I was desperate to
get
somewhere on a day when we were all supposed to stay indoors. Sure, I told him about the medicines, I told him about the argument I had with the family, about how I packed up all that stuff just for show but he might not believe that. He might still think I’m some sort of …runaway? Well I’m not. No matter the circumstances I’ve found myself in, he needn’t think I’m just a small-town girl with no aspirations of my own.

‘… which is a real bummer,’ I add, ‘because I need to reply to that letter urgently if it is what I think it is.’

‘You’ll get there.’ He says it with such an air of quiet authority that I believe him for a moment. ‘You want it bad enough and you will.’ He picks up the mug of tea I’ve just made him and takes a sip. ‘But you, Rose … it’s not just going to Uni, for you, is it? You’re determined you’re going to get away from here, aren’t you?’

‘Is it that obvious?’ I pull a wry grin.

‘It’s a feeling I recognise myself, that’s all.’

He’s felt like it too? He hangs his head a little now, picks two cards out of his deck and leans them up against one another like he’s going to build a house with them. I watch him, intent at his task, lining up a stack of foundation cards but the canvas sacking beneath is uneven. They’re going to fall over before he even gets to the second layer … 

What place did
you
need to get away from? I wonder curiously now.
Lawrence who so far has no second name,
I suddenly think
; handsome Lawrence who just dropped out of the sky to spend Christmas with me and make me get all flustered over him …

‘You know the feeling?’ I prompt.

‘Like you’ve come to the point where things in your life are never going to progress unless you leave? Oh, yes.’

‘What is it you’re going to study?’ He gets that in before I can ask him where it was he wanted to get away from and I have to bite my tongue because … oh, because it seems all too soon to push confidences if he isn’t ready to share them. He reminds me of a silver fish darting tantalising in and out of the water in front of me, playing
now you see me, now you don’t
…  

‘I want to read Law.’ I kindly hand him two more cards from his pack.

‘Law?’ He’s intent on his task again, building his house but something inside of him seems to have gone very quiet and very still. ‘Any particular reason you chose that?’

‘I guess … I just need to prove to myself that there’s still some justice to be found out there.’

‘Some justice,’ he says softly. ‘Because … life has showed you different, Rose?’ Oh, Lawrence. Don’t do this. Don’t probe right into the very depths of what makes me tick like it really matters to you when I know that I can’t possibly matter that much. Not yet. Not like
you’re
starting to matter to
me.
I shoot him a painful glance.

‘Because life has shown me …’ I go down on my elbows on the canvas sacking beside him, ‘That it’s only too easy to lose things that are important to you if you don’t have a leg to stand on in this world.’

‘If you don’t have any power, you mean?’ He flicks one of his cards high into the air and it lands right in the centre of the fire, curling up and shrivelling into black ash in a second. He looks at me, and I shrug, because he’s getting too close to the mark and I’m not sure I want to go there. I
don’t
have any power, do I? I’m just a teenage Carer who everyone probably expects will go into her middle age looking after her ailing Dad, but a guy like Lawrence would never fall for a girl like that. He’d go for a girl who had dreams and ambitions, someone like the girl I am on the inside …

‘This Uni offer letter,’ he says after a bit. ‘You’ll be able to get hold of it as soon as the weather calms down, right?’

‘If they haven’t already thrown it away,’ I mutter. ‘If I can manage to get far enough past their dogs to enquire about it …’ He seems surprised that retrieving the letter won’t all be plain sailing.