‘Are you going to be OK?’ Ella said the following morning. ‘Going back?’
They’d stayed up talking for half the night, but finally they’d slept and then Dylan’s alarm had woken them and Ella had made breakfast. Her other housemates were either sleeping in, letting them have some time alone, or already at uni. And Dylan was going back to face the music.
Dylan rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been doing that since he was a little kid. It made Ella feel ridiculously fond of him.
‘Yeah. It’s fine. I mean, I can’t complain about it really, can I?’
‘You can,’ Ella said. ‘You can complain to me. I mean, I might tell you to get over yourself, but you can still do it. You should ring me more.’
‘Could we, like, Skype, maybe? I know I don’t have that much time, but it’s better if I can see people’s faces. Talking on the phone’s a bit lonely, I think.’
‘Course we can.’ She poured him another cup of coffee. ‘Mum’s finally got WhatsApp and she wants me to set up a family group chat, so I’ll do that.’
‘Oh my god,’ Dylan said, grinning as Ella slid the coffee over to him. ‘That’s going to be ridiculous.’
‘Right? Which is why I haven’t done it already. But, you know, it might help you to feel more connected. To us. I don’t want you to feel … I want you to know that we’re always there. No matter what.’
‘I do know that,’ Dylan said.
By the time she got to Nick’s shop, she was shaking with nerves. She’d texted him again in the morning – going with ‘I promise it’s not what you think’ when she just couldn’t stand it any more – but again, she couldn’t tell if the text had even been read. She’d thought about going and sitting on his step first thing because he must have come home and he’d have to leave the house to go to uni or eventually work, but she thought she was dipping deep into stalker territory there, so she’d made herself go to uni – to her lectures, a tutorial, lunch – as usual. Lou had met her for lunch and reassured her that it would be fine once she’d explained to Nick, but to Ella it felt like every minute that passed without getting to speak to him was taking him further and further away. It had been so long now she was scared she wouldn’t be able to get him back.
She saw him as soon as she opened the door. He was standing behind the circular information desk, the first place she’d ever seen him. He was wearing black-rimmed glasses she hadn’t seen him wear before and his hair was swoopy and out of control. Her hand itched to smooth it down. Her stomach flipped as she walked through the shop, never taking her eyes off him in case he darted away. He was leaning on the counter, writing something down, and then he ripped some paper, poked it into a book and crouched down under the counter. Ella had a mad vision of him crawling away before she got there, but he straightened back up just as she reached the desk.
‘Hey,’ she said.
He startled a bit and his cheeks flushed pink as he turned to look at her. ‘Oh! Hi.’ He pushed one hand back through his hair.
‘Nick, I –’
‘I can’t talk. Sorry.’ His eyes darted around the shop. ‘Not here. I –’
‘When are you on break?’
‘I’m not … I’ve only just got here, so I won’t get a break til, like, six? I’m on ’til closing tonight. Nine.’
‘OK. So if I come back at six?’
‘Yeah,’ Nick said, his eyes settling back on her for a second. He was chewing his lip. Ella wanted to reach out and smooth her thumb over it. ‘I’ll only have, like, ten minutes.’
‘That’s OK. I –’
‘Sorry,’ Nick said. ‘I have to go and get something from the –’ He stepped out from behind the desk, but walked around the back so he was as far from Ella as he could get, the enormous circular desk between them. ‘Stockroom. I – See you at six, yeah?’ He looked over at the stairs, where Leila, one of his colleagues, was coming down the stairs. ‘Lei – can you cover for me? I need to go to the stockroom.’
Leila looked confused, then saw Ella and looked thunderous. ‘No problem.’
‘Ella’s going to kill you,’ Lou said, staring at her phone.
‘Seriously?’ Issey asked from the other sofa. ‘Why, though?’
‘She has spent almost two years lying to people who asked her if he was her brother. And now you’ve outed her on Instagram.’
Issey picked her phone up off the coffee table and stared at it. As if it would tell her she’d been right to post a photo of Dylan. Instead she saw that her notifications were blowing up – on Instagram and on Twitter (she’d totally forgotten that her Insta posted directly to Twitter).
‘Maybe she won’t care if she’s all loved up with Nick,’ Liane said. She was sitting next to Lou, one foot on the coffee table, painting her toenails.
‘Have you met Ella?’ Lou said. ‘Issey is totally dead.’
‘It’s just …’ Issey held her phone out to Lou. ‘You can barely even see him!’
The photo was of Ella and Lou with Dylan almost, but not quite, out of shot. His hair was partly covering his face, but his dimple was showing. And the neck of his T-shirt was gaping, showing the musical notes tattoo on his left collarbone. The tattoo was pretty identifiable, Issey had to admit.
‘That’s not the point!’ Lou said. ‘Anyway, you tagged him! And Ella, and now the photo has had – how many likes?’
‘Not loads,’ Issey said, putting her phone down again.
‘Hundreds?’ Lou asked. ‘Thousands?’
‘Like, seven hundred and something,’ Issey said.
‘You should prob delete it,’ Liane told her.
‘Not much point,’ Lou said. ‘There’ll be screenshots and everything now.’
Issey flopped back on the sofa. ‘I’ll apologise.’
Ella spent the next ninety minutes in the library. She wasn’t entirely concentrating, but she hoped she’d actually managed to make some notes that might be useful for her next essay. She’d checked the time on her phone pretty much every five minutes – even though she’d set an alarm – and she’d jumped every time she got a notification, even when they were tweets or Facebook posts. There was nothing from Nick. At quarter to six, she packed her books away, put on her coat and headed back to the bookshop. It was already dark, but the quad was lit with fairy lights strung between the trees and street lamps and the cafe was still open, flooding the area with a warm golden light. It was probably Ella’s favourite place in the whole university, she thought as she headed towards Nick’s shop.
He was already outside, wearing his big black coat, his hands pushed into the pockets. He still had his glasses on.
‘Hey,’ Ella said, stopping directly in front of him. Her hands reached out instinctively and she pulled them back against herself and crossed her arms. ‘Do you want to go somewhere?’
‘I haven’t really got time,’ Nick said. ‘I’ve literally got, like, ten minutes.’
‘Do you want to go and sit down? I –’
‘You can just tell me,’ Nick said. ‘You don’t need to give it a big build-up or sit me down or get me a drink or anything. I’m not going to freak out or make a scene. Just, you know, say it. And I can get back to work and you can get back to –’ He shook his head.
‘Nick,’ Ella said. She wanted to touch him so badly. ‘It was my brother. In my room. I know you probably won’t believe that. I wouldn’t believe it. But it’s true. It was my brother.’
Nick looked at her, his eyebrows furrowed. God, he had great eyebrows. ‘You told Liane – or Issey? You told her it was me.’
‘I did. Because I didn’t want them to know who it was. Who my brother is.’ Ella looked around, in case anyone was standing nearby who might overhear. ‘You asked me if I was related to Dylan Jewell. And I said no. Well, I lied. He’s my brother. And I didn’t want the girls to know, which is why I said it was you.’
Nick was tugging on his bottom lip with his forefinger and thumb. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. I know I should’ve told you. But I didn’t know … I hardly knew you then. Even though I liked you, obviously. And it was just … it was one of the things that was really important to me, about coming here. That people didn’t know. That they got to know me as me.’
‘I thought you’d come to break up with me,’ Nick said.
‘No,’ Ella said. ‘I’ve been … God, I’ve been so fucking miserable thinking that you thought – I would never do that. To you. I came to your house last night. I sat on your step. I couldn’t stand it. Thinking that you thought that. Thinking that you’d be upset and hurt. Because of me. I was going to go and sit there again this morning, but I thought it was stalkery and – Oh! Fuck. Also, I’d left my phone at Lou’s. That’s why I couldn’t ring straight away. She didn’t get back for hours and by then … It was late. And I texted. But I didn’t want to tell you all this over text. I just wanted to talk to you and –’
Nick reached out and wrapped his hand around her wrist.
‘You sat on my step? Last night?’
Ella nodded. ‘For about an hour. And then I went to look for you in the pub. But you weren’t there.’
‘I went to my friend Charlie’s flat. Up by the cathedral.’
‘Right,’ Ella said. ‘OK.’ She was distracted by the feeling of his fingers on her wrist, his thumb rubbing over the skin. She wondered if he could feel her pulse racing.
‘He’s really your brother?’ Nick said.
‘He really is,’ Ella said.
‘Is he still at your place?’
‘No. He had to go back to the band. He sort of … ran away. For a bit.’
Nick tugged on her wrist and she took a step closer.
‘Do you …’ Ella started. ‘What are you …’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nick said. ‘I freaked out. I started thinking that we hadn’t said we were, like, exclusive. And I know it’s uni and you’ve got that Fuck It List and everything. And I felt like an idiot. Like I hadn’t realised it was a casual thing.’
‘It’s not,’ Ella said. ‘I don’t … It’s not a casual thing for me.’
‘No?’ Nick said.
Ella took another step until she was right in front of him. Another half step and she could press up against him. She wanted to.
‘No. It never was. I was fucking gone for you from the first time I saw you.’
Nick laughed then and Ella almost shivered with how good it felt to hear it.
‘I’m completely in love with you,’ Nick said.
‘Holy shit,’ Ella said. She ducked her head, pressing the top of it against his chest, before straightening up and closing the gap between them. She slid her hands inside his coat, under his top, across his skin, pressing her fingers against his ribs. She tipped her head back. ‘Me too. I’m completely in love with you too.’
‘Yeah?’ Nick said, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses.
‘I like the glasses,’ Ella said.
And then she kissed him.