The Road to Her (20 page)

All the while he was talking, my mind was hissing
shut up, shut up, shut up
over and again, willing him to go away, so that I could have Elise to myself. I just wanted to
talk
to her, to let it be the two of us, no one else. Selfish, I know, but it just goes like that when you’re mad for someone, doesn’t it?

“Okay, so they’re at the back of the stand,” Robbie now said. “But a freebie’s a freebie whichever way you look at it, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” Elise replied.

“Did I ever tell you about the last time me and Rory got tickets?” Robbie continued.

All the time he was speaking, my eyes would drift to hers, which would invariably then glance at mine, hold my gaze, then look away again, only to repeat the action a few seconds later. Her hands, cupped round her coffee cup, were so temptingly within reach, that all I wanted to do was lean across and put my own hands round hers, just so that I could feel her skin on mine. When she spoke to Robbie, I was transfixed by the simplest of actions, like when she casually flicked her hair from her eyes or touched the cloth of her bracelet as she spoke, and I sat, mesmerised, just watching her gorgeous lips moving, and listening to her beautiful, husky voice.

I was drawn to more than just her beauty, though. As I watched her, I tried to put my finger on exactly what it was about Elise that I’d fallen for. It wasn’t just her hair, sitting so flawlessly across her perfect eyebrows, or her dimples that appeared and disappeared whenever she smiled or spoke; it was more about her character, her intelligence, her wit, and, most tellingly, her confidence and attitude. Even though I’d disliked it when I first knew her, now I knew it was a part of who she was, it was yet another thing that just kept drawing me to her. I loved the way she moved her hair from her eyes even though it always kept falling back; I loved the way she arched her eyebrow when she spoke, and the way she’d walked towards me in the canteen with that look of cute concentration on her face.

There were so many indefinable things about Elise Manford that I really liked, but the only definite thing I did know was that I had fallen for her, totally and utterly. It was killing me, sitting there in that canteen, wanting her and knowing that she felt the same way but had the strength to ignore her feelings for me, whereas I didn’t.

“We should go, Hol!” Elise’s voice roused me from my thoughts.

“Hmm?” I jerked my head up. “The football?”

“No, the new club in Knightsbridge Robbie’s just been talking about.” Elise smiled and shook her head just a tiny bit, barely enough for me to notice. “You’ve been away with the fairies, haven’t you, silly?”

“Sure. Club. Knightsbridge. Sounds awesome,” I said, draining the last of my now-cold tea and glancing at my watch. “Shit, I have to go. I’m on set in five minutes.”

“Lucky you! I’m done for the day.” Elise leant back in her chair, linking her fingers and stretching her arms out in front of her.

“Oh.” A plummeting disappointment punched me in my stomach because I desperately didn’t want her to stay on in the canteen without me.

I looked at her, willing her to say she was leaving for the day—without Robbie—but instead, she asked him if he wanted another Coke, and the sensation in my stomach turned to one of spikes, scratching away inside me. Even if she’d just walked with me back down to my set before going home, it would have given me precious extra time with her. I’d have taken that at that moment.

I scraped my chair back noisily, making a big show of gathering my things, hoping that it would make Elise take notice of the fact I was going. It didn’t. Instead, she carried on talking to Robbie, barely acknowledging my quiet goodbye to them both or, apparently, even noticing that I’d left.

Chapter Eighteen

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 sexier 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 space.”

“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 bumped 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 quantities 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 glass 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 damn 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 prickle, 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 hell.

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.

“Shit, 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 passed 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 glass 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 arse, I noticed.” I looked at her from the corner of my eye.