“What are you doing?” I ask him, shielding my eyes to the sun while I bring out my sunglasses.
He looks up from a well-groomed patch of bluebells and grins at me, those dimples deepening on his cheeks.
With a ray of golden sunshine hitting him just so, he looks good. Really good. I know it’s only been three days since I saw him last but I don’t know. Maybe something has changed in those last few days. I’m noticing muscles I’ve never noticed before (which I know have always been there), the way he holds himself, the glint in his eyes when he’s looking at me.
Fuck. Don’t pull a Phenelope. If she can’t have Luthwen, you definitely cannot have Blake.
“Honeybees,” he says, gesturing to the bluebells. “I’ve been watching them.”
“Okay. Why?”
He walks over to me, hands jammed in his pockets. “Because they’re fascinating. Ever learn up about them? Study them?”
Do I unleash more of my nerdishness or not? “When I was younger I knew a lot more. I’d read the National Geographics my dad had in the basement. There had to be a thousand copies. I read them all. I’m sure a few of them were about bees.”
“Impressive,” he comments, stopping a foot away from me. He cocks his head, studying me. “You look rather pretty today. Is that all for me?”
I roll my eyes and turn away before he can see me blushing. Fucking fair skin and overactive blood vessels. “You wish.”
“Perhaps,” he says with a quick grin as we stroll to the gate and he opens it for me.
“So why the bee fascination?” I ask him, walking side by side. I don’t know what it is but in the last couple of minutes it feels like the dynamic between us has changed. Maybe it’s because for once we aren’t bound by anything, we’re just together because we want to be.
No, I remind myself. It’s because he’s promised to woo you with something secretive and you want to find out what it is.
“My manuscript,” he says as we reach the car. “To build a believable alien race I had to study the colony structure and instincts of the honeybee. They’re bloody fascinating, actually. There’s a whole world around us that we don’t even get a glimpse of, all happening right under our noses.”
“I bet you wouldn’t say that about Fluffy,” I point out, getting in the passenger seat. I’m taken aback about how clean it is. No pile of random shit to move into the backseat. Just last week he had a camping stove here. I wonder if all this consideration is for me, but unlike him, I would never say anything.
“Fluffy is a monster from the bowels of hell,” he says as he buckles himself in. “But believe me, he’s made his way into the novel. Just picture him a hundred times the size.”
Blake rarely mentioned his work-in-progress while we were together. I didn’t even know the genre. So to hear him talk about an alien race, I have to figure he’s writing sci-fi.
Beneath his strong, lean build, big hands, cocky smile and gorgeous head of hair, it turns out that Blake Crawford is a closet nerd. I know a month ago I would have gone running to Rio with this information but now I sit on it gleefully, knowing for all our differences, he’s an awful lot like me.
“So I’m guessing you’re writing science fiction,” I tell him. Mr. Mean roars to a start and we speed off down the streets, turning the heads of pedestrians as we go. I raise my chin, pretending I’m actually cool.
He leans in to look me over. “Sci-fi horror,” he says matter-of-factly, his face inches from mine.
I instinctively suck in my breath, even though I ate lunch ages ago and if anything I should smell like wine. I wait for him to go on.
“It’s called Blood Aurora,” he says eventually, turning his eyes back to the road. “And I feel like I’ve been writing it since I was a wee one.”
“How much have you written?”
“Maybe seventy per cent. Not a lot.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “Are you kidding me? Not a lot? I’ve been struggling at the halfway point with my book for ages now and no matter what I do, I can’t move past it. I’m stuck. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”
“Then maybe it’s good that you agreed to come with me.”
“Why so I can drink my face off and forget that I have a book I need to finish?”
“Peach, I’d love to see you drink your face off. You’re cute when you’ve had a few.”
I shoot him daggers over that fucking Peach nickname. At this point I’d rather have Tits McGee.
He only smiles. “Sorry. Bad habit.”
Blake was right about Spinnakers not being too busy. We manage to snag a seat on the upstairs patio, both of us getting the Scottish ale from the brew pub, and I sit back, watching him curiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Before it does though, I take a moment to drink in the scene and just…
Pretend.
It’s what I’m good at.
I’m looking at Blake sitting across from me, paying attention to every little thing about him, the hairs on his sinewy arms catching the light, the way his thin shirt clings to his broad shoulders and ropey biceps, the thick slope of his neck leading up to the sharp jawline, the way his lips twist to his left, as if he’s about to tell you a secret he shouldn’t, his eyes that glitter with a million untold jokes. I feel like I’m sitting across from someone who is one hundred per cent alive and ready to take on the world. For all his faults – and he has many – there’s something almost enigmatic about him, something that makes you want to learn more. Something that makes you want to learn from him.