The tiny tower of empty pistachio shells topples over, scattering across the carpet. I lean over to scoop as many of them up as I can, scraping them back into a heap in front of me. “I told you it was going.”
“You were playing safe.”
“You weren’t.” I throw a stray shell at him. His hand snaps out and catches it. Smugly. He drops it back on top of the pile and I start picking at bits left behind on the carpet; I can’t imagine Darknight Comics will be too happy if they come in later and tread on a load of half-eaten nuts, scavenged from a leftover crate of event supplies.
“Is there a reason we’re hiding under here?” He flicks at the edge of the white cloth draping the trader’s table above us.
“The lights are giving me a headache.” The fib is surprisingly easy to tell, falling from my mouth with worrying speed. I suppose it’s partly true – the fluorescent lights are getting to be a bit much after a whole day running around under them, and now getting stuck here. But more than anything, it just felt…right. Ever since I read Piecekeepers, since Aidan told me that I knew him because I’d read it, I’ve felt that I somehow have an unfair advantage – like I’ve been spying on him. Bringing him under the table seemed fair. This is my safe place – however stupid that sounds – and somehow, the idea of showing him that, showing him me, letting him see me…it suddenly feels like the right thing.
Besides, Rodney may decide that tonight is the night he actually does his midnight rounds, and now we’re here, it’s probably a better idea to stay put until morning and slip out when everyone else starts coming in. Fewer questions, fewer problems. And if it gives me more time with Aidan…let’s just call that a bonus.
“Isn’t your dad going to worry about you when he can’t find you?”
I was so busy thinking about Aidan that I hadn’t even noticed he was talking to me. I shake my head; a bit of pistachio skin falls out of my hair. (Always glamorous, this life. I wonder, if I wasn’t Lexi Angelo, if I was someone else – someone who’d never even been near a convention or who had never even touched a clipboard – would I have beautiful hair that was always shiny and glossy and never had bits of dust or cardboard or pistachio in it?) He watches it glide to the carpet and raises an eyebrow at me. Well, he’s never going to get that at any of his big publishing parties, is he? I provide dinner and a show.
“I doubt Dad’ll even notice I’m not around. He’ll be busy all night, and he’ll probably assume I’ve just gone to bed.” Even if he’s not doing convention stuff, the wedding seems to be taking over his head; not the actual planning – he’s got somebody else doing all that – but the Bea-wrangling. That would probably make him a Bea-keeper. Huh. Funny.
I realize Aidan has been watching every centimetre of this train of thought chug through my head.
I pick at my hair.
“He doesn’t check in on you?”
“No. Why should he?” I don’t know who’s more puzzled right now – me or Aidan. It’s like the idea of my dad not needing to know where I am every second is completely alien to him. I mean, it’s a hotel. How far could I have got?
“You don’t think that’s weird?”
“I’m a big girl, thanks. I don’t need my daddy to hold my hand, if that’s what you’re saying.”
He pulls a face. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“So what did you mean?” I try to keep it light, but I’m not sure I want it to be.
“It’s just…you’re telling me he wouldn’t be bothered about this?” He waves a hand around, presumably to illustrate the two of us, alone in a convention centre, under a table. Surrounded by pistachios. “About us?”
I ignore the “us”, even though it makes my fingernails sweat and fills my ribs with butterflies. “As long as all the merchandise is fine, no. Why should he?”
Aidan gives me a long, hard look and opens his mouth like he’s about to say something – but then blinks and obviously changes his mind. He starts stacking the shells again.
It’s suddenly got surprisingly chilly under our table.
Our table.
Us.
I try to break the silence again and grab a couple of shells from the pile to lean against each other. “You’ll never get them to balance like that,” I say, carefully letting my two go. They immediately fall over. “And apparently, neither will I.”
“What about your mum?” He picks up my fallen shells and gently, so gently, stands them upright; his fingertips hovering a hair’s breadth from them until he’s sure they’ll stay. “You said your dad was getting married soon, but she’s not your mum, is she?”
He remembers that? “Aren’t we full of questions, Mr Green?”
“Writer. It comes with the job,” he says with a grin. “And you didn’t answer.”
“Mum lives in France. She and Dad split up years ago and got divorced when I was twelve, and I think they’re both happier with it that way.”
“And you?”
“What do you mean, and me?”
“It didn’t sound like you’re a big fan of what’s-her-name…”
“Bea,” I reply automatically. “She makes Dad happy. She’s fine.”
He opens his mouth again, and I know where this is going. It’s the how-do-you-feel? conversation again; the one Mum keeps trying to have with me – the one she’s apparently been having with Sam on my behalf. I shut him down, shaking my head again.
“No more questions – not unless I get to ask you some.”
He laughs. It’s an easy sound – and for a second I picture him slouched on a sofa somewhere, guard down and feet up. All Aidan, no Haydn, and not a signing queue in sight. Except in my head, he appears to be shirtless.
I stare very, very hard at a small hole in the carpet.
“Go on then. Ask away.”
“Where did Piecekeepers come from?”
“Jesus, Lexi,” he groans. “I didn’t realize it was an interview – you could’ve read that in the magazine…”
“No. Not the magazine answer. The real answer.”
“How do you know the magazine answer isn’t the real answer?” Suddenly, I have his attention; he looks up at me from beneath half-lowered lids, the start of a smile on his lips.
“The magazine answer is never the real answer. So?”
“That’s not fair. You have me at a disadvantage.”
“It’s completely fair. And you know you want to tell me…”
That was absolutely not what I was planning to say. Not even slightly.
I’m this close to panicking when he laughs again. Apparently, my accidental and terrible attempt at witty banter worked.
“You win. It was for a girl.”
And that’s when it happens, when I’m least expecting it – he plunges his hand into my chest, rips out my heart and tears it to pieces. Or he might as well have, anyway.
“A girl?”
Look at me. I’m so casual. Nothing hurts. This doesn’t hurt. Not at all.
“I know, I know. It’s pathetic.”
“Not. At. All. Tell. Me. More.” I enunciate every word like I’m biting pieces off a rock.
“It was ages ago, but there was…this girl. Ali. And she was into all these fantasy books, you know? Magic and secret doorways, proper Narnia stuff. And I’d always written stories, and I thought how hard can writing a whole book be? So I started writing this one to impress her.”
Ali. There’s a character called Ali in Piecekeepers. “And that was it? That’s how the book started?”
“Christ, no. That was a piece of shit. But it had magic in it, and that idea gave me another one – about magic trapped in paintings, and what would happen if it ever got out and nobody could control it.”
“So you wrote that story.”
“Yep.” With a well-aimed flick, he knocks the whole pistachio tower down. “And when I was halfway through, Ali started going out with my mate, Nick.”
“Does she know about it?”
“The book? Probably.”
“No – I mean, does she know it’s you?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Not any more. Besides, she’s another one not really into…this.” Another hand-wave. I’m going to assume “this” means “conventions” rather than the nebulous “us”.
Us.
“Well, if she doesn’t know yet, she will soon enough. It’ll be everywhere in a couple of weeks, not just at a convention. Your publishers are pushing the book hard – you’re lucky.”
“I know.” He smiles again, but it’s a sad smile somehow, not the full beam I’ve seen him give – the one that lights up his face and makes him glow from inside. “And don’t get me wrong, I’m really grateful. There’s probably a million people who’d give their right hand for it – it’s just that, you know, the publicity stuff? It’s all him.”
“Him?”
“Haydn. Not…you know, me. I just want to write. All this” – he gestures out at the World Beyond the Table again – “it’s intimidating, you know?”
“Are you serious? Intimidating how?”
“Intimidating every-how. Maybe not to you – you’re used to it. But this” – another wave: isn’t he supposed to be good with actual words? – “is pretty new to me. Me-me. Aidanme. I’m still catching up.”
Where does Aidan stop and Haydn start? That was what I wanted to know, wasn’t it? And now I can see the seam where he’s stitched them both together. Haydn is the lighter one, the one who grins at the spotlight. Aidan is the one who told me his own parents haven’t read his book. They’re different, but they overlap. Two versions of the same guy. So which one am I falling for? Or am I falling for both? Because it’s pointless trying to pretend I’m not falling – I am. My name is Lexi Angelo, and I am falling hard. I was falling before tonight, before I even realized. But now I know and I’m sure of it and there’s no way I can hide from it any more.
I try another approach. “I don’t believe that your parents aren’t proud of you. I can’t believe that. They must know what a big deal this is!” I want to say what a big deal you are, or how good it is, but this feels safer.
There’s that smile again, the sad one – and this time it comes with its very own Aidan-shaped laugh. “Maybe they would be if I’d written a ‘proper’ book. Maybe one about a tortured artist who has to cut off his own thumbs or something. Or maybe a book about a middle-aged art historian – one with big words that only fifteen people in the world actually use. But not so much a book about magicians…” He stops abruptly. “Let’s not go there, okay? Not now.”
Well done, Lexi. Kick a guy while he’s down. That’s absolutely the thing to do.
“But it is a proper book. It has a cover and pages and words. Proper book. And anyway, I liked it.”
“You did.”
I more than liked it.
“More than that – you got it. And you got all the stuff about Venice too. That meant a lot.”
“I…what?” An alarm bell goes off somewhere in the back of my head. I haven’t said anything to him about the bit of the book set in Venice. I’m sure of it. In fact, the only time I’ve mentioned it is in an email…
…An email to his publicist. Thanking her for the proof copy she’d sent Dad.
…In which I gushed like a screaming fangirl about how amazing the book was and how amazing the author was and particularly – particularly – about the whole section at the start of the book where the magician and his assistant have a duel in Venice.
…An email Aidan has clearly read.
…Oh. God.
It doesn’t come out as a question. It isn’t a question. It’s more a statement of mounting horror. “Lucy showed you my email.”
“She forwarded the comments, said they were from a reviewer. There wasn’t a name – I didn’t know it was you – until…” He stops as though he can’t find the words. Ironic, that.
“Until what? I made a massive idiot of myself in May?”
I want to disappear. I want the ground to swallow me, the sea to dissolve me. I want to step off the roof and float away into the clouds – possibly riding on a kangaroo made entirely from embarrassment and the light from streetlamps.
“Until earlier. On the roof.”
What did I say? I said something, I must have done.
“On the roof?”
“I don’t know exactly what it was, okay? It just felt the same. It felt like you. It sounded like you do. It’s stupid. I just…it was you. I know it was.” He doesn’t sound quite so sure of himself now, not at all. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Mayyyyybe…?”
“You just asked me if Lucy showed me your email!”
“I could’ve been talking about another email?”
“Fine.” And his smile is back, the real one. “What I meant to say is that I hope it was you.”
In my head, I flick my hair back and give him a dazzling but carefree and enigmatic smile and say something deeply witty.
In reality, I mumble something about him being clever and what time is it anyway and manage to almost elbow him in the face checking my watch.
2 a.m.
Even Dad will be winding down by now; has he noticed I’ve not been around all evening? Will he be looking around in case I walk through the bar? Text me? Try my phone?
Why would he?
Why wouldn’t he?
As Aidan picks up the pistachio shells in great big handfuls, saying something about needing to stretch his legs, I wonder why I’ve never asked that question before. Why it’s taken Aidan turning up to jolt it out of me.
He crawls out from under the table and groans as he straightens up – and then a hand appears back under the edge of the tablecloth. “Come on,” he says from outside.
He’s waiting for me to take his hand.
I slide my fingers into his, half-expecting there to be sparks.
There aren’t – at least, none that anybody could see – but I feel them all the same.
“What’s up there?” He points up to the galleried walkway running around the upper half of the room.
“It’s the gallery.”
“Well, yeah – but what’s up there?”
“No, it’s literally the gallery. It’s where the art show is.”
“Oh. Oh? Can we get to it from here?”
He’s looking right at the open stairs against the wall. Maybe he thinks they’re some kind of Escher-inspired installation…?
“It’s not locked or anything. If you want to…”
I don’t even get to finish, because by the time I’m halfway through saying it, he’s striding towards the stairs with those long legs of his in that way that makes it look like he knows exactly where he’s going. Even when he doesn’t. What’s that like? I wonder. Being able to give the impression that you know it all and nothing can bother you and you’re absolutely in control; making yourself be in control.
Oh, of course I know. I do it all the time; it’s what the clipboard’s for – to give the impression I know what I’m doing…
Ah.
That’s what he was doing in the green room, the first time we met, wasn’t it? He was doing it then, pretending he knew what he was doing, pretending he was in control. And the stupid comments about the clipboard were his way of telling me we’re the same. And I thought he was being a prick.
Ah. Oh well. Nobody’s perfect, I guess.
“Come on!” He leans over the rail of the stairs and waves down at me, impatient, and I’m torn between running to catch up with him and standing beneath him and stopping, just to look up at him with his glasses sliding down his nose and his hair curling wildly after the day’s heat and humidity – even in here, even in the middle of the night.
He was right.
We’re not locked in here.
Everybody else is locked out.
And I could leave the rest of the world locked out, if only it meant I got to stay in here with him a little longer.
“Lexi! Come on! What are you standing there for?”
So I stop standing still, and I run.
The fluorescents aren’t as bright upstairs – most of the lights are below our feet up here – and Aidan peers into the relative gloom of the art show with a disappointed face.
“Wait here,” I say, pointing at the floor to make sure he knows where “here” is (sometimes there really is too much of my father in me). I duck round the corner behind the stairs. “Ready?”
“Lexi…”
I flick the switch on the lighting panel and a hundred tiny white spotlights flare into life; each of them carefully positioned to bring out the best in the art they’re illuminating. The boring grey of the gallery floor is suddenly a wash of vibrant reds and blues. Fairy-tale castles shimmer on canvases, blown-glass sculptures in every shade of the rainbow glitter on stands. Across the void, a life-size ceramic hooded man stands frozen with his hand on the hilt of a sword tucked into his belt – and behind him, a sea monster’s tentacles crash out of a painting onto a beach made from pebbles that Nadiya and Bede helped a local artist collect across the road yesterday morning.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone’s jaw actually drop before – but Aidan’s does. “Wow.”
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
“I was thinking this afternoon that I wasn’t that bothered about the art show so I’d give it a miss.”
“Seriously?” I think I’m offended on behalf of the artists who’ve put so much into their work – not to mention all of us who spent hours getting splinters and blisters setting it up…
“I’ve spent a lot of time in art galleries, Lexi,” he says with a wry smile. “But I’m glad I missed it anyway.” His whole expression, his whole face, softens. “Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t get to see it like this.” He turns away from the art as I walk back over to him; looks right at me. “With you.”
This is too much for the tired, overworked bit of my brain – which immediately takes control. I hear a voice – my voice – replying to him. And what do I lead with? “Do you want to see the insects?”
Snap me in half, and you’d see ROMANCE written all the way through me like a stick of Brighton rock.
He blinks at me. “The insects?”
“They’re much better than they sound. Honest.”
“You really know how to sell them, don’t you?”
“Just…shut up and come see them.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Aidan.”
His name feels different in my mouth – heavier and lighter at the same time – and it’s all I can do not to keep saying it over and over.
Of course, it has been a long time since I slept, so there’s always that to consider…
We pass a large painting of superheroes fighting Vikings; another of a ballroom filled with waltzing skeletons, the wisps of fabric drifting behind them so real I want to catch one and run it through my fingers… And then we reach the corner, where the wood backdrop has been covered in plain white fabric, blinding in the spotlights. Suspended in front of them, hanging on almost invisible nylon threads, are what look like hundreds of tiny dots.
I make a dramatic arrival sound. “Ta-da. This is it.”
“This?” Aidan looks a bit nonplussed. I don’t blame him; it’s completely nonplussing until you see it.
“Here. Look closer.” I hand him an oversized magnifying glass hanging from a chain and he peers through it at one of the dots – and then his eyes open so wide behind his glasses that I’m almost afraid they might drop out.
“Holy shit.”
“Everybody says that.”
I know what he’s seen, but I stand beside him and peer round his shoulder to see it the way he is, right now. It’s a bumblebee in mid-flight…and on its back is a tiny skeletal fairy with wings like a fly’s.
Aidan steps back – the way everyone does when they realize what all those little dangling dots really are – and treads on my toe. He spins around – “Sorry, sorry” – and we’re so close that our noses are almost touching. Or, you know, my nose and his chin.
He doesn’t move away.
Neither do I.
My skin buzzes as though someone’s run a current through it. As though Aidan has. Like he’s lightning.
Close up, his eyes are somewhere between blue and grey, flecked with tiny silver specks.
He still doesn’t move away…and I can’t.
I can’t move.
It comes from nowhere. I have no idea it’s about to happen until it does.
I look deep into his eyes and breathe in the smell of him – that salt and ocean, sunshine and late-night smell…
And I yawn in his face.
I clamp my hands over my mouth…but it’s too late. The damage is done, isn’t it?
I look into those sea-grey eyes in horror…and to my surprise (delight? Shock? Relief? All of these things and a hundred more?) he starts to laugh. And I start to laugh with him.
“Maybe you’re right – I wasn’t prepared for an all-nighter either. When did you start work this morning?”
“Umm, seven? Maybe.” Well, that’s a lie. I was in the ops office at half past six, but that sounds like the kind of thing only a crazy person would own up to.
“You’ve been up since seven this…yesterday…morning?”
“What time is it now?”
“Three. Although I don’t think that changes the time you actually got up, does it?”
I try to do the maths in my head and work out how long it’s been since I got out of bed.
Nope.
First time I try, I get fifteen hours. The second time, it’s thirty-two. Neither of which feels quite right.
“It’s twenty. Twenty hours,” he says. “You were trying to work it out, weren’t you?”
“No. Yes. How could you tell?” I stifle another yawn.
“You were counting on your fingers.”
Oh.
I put my hands behind my back. They’re safer there anyway; they can’t accidentally brush his chest or his hips or reach for his shoulders or his jaw or…
Hands. Behind. Back.
“Is there anywhere to sit, maybe lie down? A couple of sofas?” He sounds hopeful but I shake my head.
“Not in the trader’s room – only the standard chairs for them at each table.”
“I guess we’ll have to make do, then.”
When he reaches around me, I freeze. When he takes my hand, I burn. Together, we walk down the stairs from the gallery and my feet are so heavy all of a sudden that I can barely lift them, barely put one in front of the other.
Aidan steers us to a corner at the back of the traders’ room, away from the brightest of the fluorescent lights.
“Here. Sit down. You need a rest.”
I feel his hands guide me as I lean back against the wall and slide down to the floor.
“If I had a jacket, this is the point I’d give it to you for a pillow. But I don’t. Sorry.”
“’S all right.”
He sits down beside me, his back to the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him – and suddenly it’s the most normal thing in the world to rest my head on his shoulder, and it’s not awkward at all.
“You said you’ve been in a lot of galleries – tell me about your favourite.” I keep waiting for him to shrug me away, to move, anything – but he doesn’t. If anything, he edges closer.
“The Holburne at home.”
“Home?”
“Bath. I live in Bath.”
“Oh.” If I wasn’t so tired, I’d be disappointed – part of me has been hoping he’s a Londoner like I am. The same part of me that has been half-hoping I’d run into him on the street – any street, any day – every day since May. I lift my head and settle it again, more comfortably – and still he doesn’t move. “How come you stayed in the hotel in Bristol? You could’ve gone home…”
I’m over the road… Last-minute thing…
“Yeah, I could have done,” he says softly. “But then I wouldn’t have got to spend that time with you, would I?”
Before I can answer, or even really think, sleep turns out all the lights.