Chapter Twelve
‘Give me an hour,' said the hot butcher in a low Scottish burr as I sheepishly handed the empty tray back across the counter. ‘I've got an order coming in, there should be enough to pull together the same again, give or take.'
‘Amazing. Thanks, mate, you're a life-saver,' Joe replied, handing him the other trays of meat to go back in the fridge while I hovered behind him, an anxious mess of deep bows and prayer hands.
‘Mostly scared of her mother,' the butcher countered. ‘She's a very exacting woman. Last month, she returned a chicken because the legs were different sizes.'
They both gave me a look, as though I was the one who went around judging chickens on their appearance.
‘He shouldn't have skipped leg day?' I offered.
Neither of them laughed. Harsh but fair.
‘We'll leave you to it,' Joe said, catching my wrist in his massive hand and leading me back out of the shop.
‘What are we supposed to do for the next hour?'
Joe flashed his eyebrows and I exhaled an unimpressed huff.
‘All right then, we've got two other options,' he replied. ‘We can either stand here and argue for another sixty minutes or we can go for a walk. Lady's choice.'
‘Walk where?' I asked, turning in a circle and seeing nothing but green. ‘The pub is too far away and I don't think we'd be able to kill much time at the post office.'
‘You know you can put that back in the car,' he said, nodding at the tote bag on my shoulder. ‘It's not going to disappear again.'
‘No way. It doesn't leave my sight.' I was holding onto it so tightly, the sharp edges of the hardback book dug deep into my ribs. ‘What if I leave it in the car and the car gets stolen? Or it gets so hot in there, my computer explodes? Or—'
‘Sixty minutes of arguing it is,' Joe declared happily. ‘Not what I would've chosen but—'
‘Fine, we'll walk!' I muttered. ‘Even though there's nothing to walk to.'
‘Are you joking?' He strolled ahead of me on the narrow footpath and waved his hands around at my alleged nothingness. ‘Maybe I've spent too long living in cities but this is beautiful. It's called the countryside, Sophie, you don't have to do anything, you just exist in it. Appreciate it for what it is.'
‘Oh, god, you're one of them,' I groaned, clutching the straps of my bag.
‘One of who?'
‘One of those awful city people who only leave London twice a year and think it's hilarious to say things like "Ahh, fresh country air" every time they smell manure.'
‘There's nothing like a bit of cow shit to clear out the lungs,' Joe said, inhaling deeply until the buttons on his shirt began to strain across the chest. ‘Like it or not, you're stuck with me until Braveheart back there can replace the chicken you dropped, and unless I'm very much mistaken, you owe me a favour.'
‘And this is how you want to cash it in?' I looked out across the patchwork quilt of fields that rolled off into the horizon. ‘On an unplanned rambling expedition?'
‘You say unplanned rambling expedition, I say spontaneous outdoor adventure.'
‘And what if I don't want to go on a spontaneous outdoor adventure?'
‘It's too hot to sit in the car but you're welcome to wait outside the butcher's like a badly behaved Labrador,' he replied helpfully. ‘Or you can stop being a brat, get your arse over here and come with me.'
‘I'm not being a brat,' I argued, even though I definitely was. I couldn't help it, he had an uncanny ability to bring out the absolute worst in me. In fact, he seemed to have a direct line to all my baser instincts, something that became painfully clear as I watched him hop up onto the wall, his khaki-coloured trousers pulling taut across his backside as he went. And on top of that, he was impossible to read. One minute he was all slick charm and double entendres, the next he could almost pass for a decent human being. There was no way to know which one was the real Joe and I wasn't about to risk my sanity to find out simply because he had a spectacular arse.
Objectively speaking.
‘There's an ice cream van parked over there,' he called, pointing off down the field as I ventured over towards the wall. ‘Hurry up if you're coming, I want a Mr Whippy.'
‘It better be proper ice cream or we're not having it,' I shouted back. ‘Those soft serve machines are full of bacteria.'
‘That must be what makes it so tasty.'
My legs wobbled as I clambered up the wall, tote bag banging against my hip, old stone scratching against my jeans. Once I was positioned on top, one leg dangling on either side, I saw that the drop down to the field was far greater than from the street.
‘Need some help?' Joe asked, balancing on top of an old tree stump.
‘No, thank you,' I replied, hoisting my other leg over until I was balanced right on the edge of the wall.
‘Want me to hold your bag?'
‘I've got it.'
He hopped off the stump and leaned casually against a tree.
‘Looks like it.'
It wasn't the longest drop of all time, only about three and a half feet, but I'd never been a fan of heights and, as far as I was concerned, heights meant any time my feet were an uncomfortable distance off the ground. If human beings were meant to be up high, our bones would be made from a much more forgiving material. I shuffled as close to the edge as I could before launching myself into a slow-motion slide down, scuffing my trainers and destroying my dignity as I went. Graceful, it was not.
‘Impressive,' Joe said as I swiped the muck and moss off my backside. ‘Are you a professional climber, by any chance?'
‘No,' I answered. ‘I'm retaining my amateur status so I can climb down walls in the Olympics. Now where's this bloody ice cream van?'
The thought of a man eating soft-serve was a definite ick. Holding the cone, poking the ice cream with a little pink tongue and lapping at it like a Pomeranian with a Puppuccino. Like all great icks, I couldn't say why but it was one of those weird things that turned my vagina into the Sahara Desert.
Or at least it usually did.
‘With this ice cream, I call an official truce,' Joe said, holding his cone up high. ‘Deal?'
‘Deal,' I replied as I tapped my phone against the card machine. ApplePay at the ice cream van, it just felt wrong. ‘At least until you do something to piss me off again.'
He laughed as he turned to walk away. ‘I think that's exactly what they wrote in the Treaty of Versailles.'
‘Word for word,' I replied, giving the ice cream man an appreciative smile.
‘What did you get?' Joe asked. He marvelled at the Franken-Cone in his hand. One scoop of strawberry ice cream, one scoop of salted caramel, multiple flakes, rainbow sprinkles, a bubble-gum ball in the bottom, and strawberry and chocolate syrup on top. It was a crime against god and man.
I held up my regular 99, one scoop of vanilla and one chocolate flake in a cone, and he let out a long, disappointed sigh.
‘Sophie, you didn't even try.'
‘Can't beat a classic,' I argued. I was thrilled with my choice.
‘Not very adventurous, are you?'
‘I'm adventurous when I want to be.'
He wrapped his full lips around the peak of his strawberry scoop then licked them clean. ‘Really?'
Definitely no trace of the ick.
‘Really,' I replied, looking away. ‘But I also prefer to avoid disappointment and I can't think of many things more disappointing than ordering the wrong ice cream. What if I ended up with something I didn't like?'
‘How do you know what you like if you never try new things?' he countered.
‘There are lots of things I've never tried and I already know I don't like them.'
The ice cream van's engine revved into life behind us, a tinkling piano rendition of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel' filling the silence.
‘We don't always know as much as we think we do,' Joe said with a wicked grin before marching off down the lane. ‘You should be a bit more open-minded. You might surprise yourself.'
‘I can't believe you said there was nothing around here,' he declared as we strolled along the lane that ran between two fields, waist-high hedgerows on either side.
‘There isn't?' I replied. ‘All I see is sky, dirt and an idiot with an ice cream. That's it.'
‘Don't call yourself an idiot,' Joe admonished and I heard myself laugh. ‘Look around, it's beautiful. Fields of wheat, wildflowers, adorable sheep. There are many fucking sheep, Sophie, tell me that's not amazing? There's nowhere else in the world like the English countryside in the middle of summer.'
I rolled my eyes and took a bite of my ice cream. ‘You were in New York too long.'
‘Truce or no truce, I'm afraid I will have to fight you on this. Stand still and tell me what you see.'
‘Other than sky, dirt and an idiot with an ice cream?' Scanning our surroundings, I hitched up my shoulders into a shrug. ‘I give up. Lots of reminders that I forgot my hay fever tablets?'
‘Now sit down,' he instructed, nodding at a fallen tree that rested by the side of the lane, a kind of makeshift bench. ‘I'll tell you what I see.'
We both sat, him moving closer to me than was necessary, and I could smell the synthetic strawberry and sugary sweetness of his ice cream fighting with the light woody touch of his cologne. The true quiet of the countryside had always unnerved me. I'd always been a city mouse, or more like a mid-sized town guinea pig. Tring wasn't exactly the epicentre of the world but I liked to know there were people around me, relatively reliable public transport and a twenty-four hour shop with milk, teabags and that one out of date can of chickpeas that had been on the bottom shelf as long as I could remember. Sitting here beside Joe, I quickly developed a new appreciation for the middle of nowhere. The air was already heavy and hot but the tall grass behind us rustled as we sat, a soothing, fluttering sound that almost made me want to lie down and feel them brush against my skin.
‘Look at that sky, crystal clear and cornflower blue,' Joe said, seemingly awestruck by a perfectly normal day. ‘Then you've got the fields, all those merging shades of gold and green.'
‘I thought I was supposed to be the romance writer,' I replied. ‘Sounds like you're describing a leprechaun orgy.'
‘And I thought you were a primary school teacher.'
I took a big bite of my 99. ‘You should eat that monstrosity before it melts,' I told him, fighting through the brain freeze. ‘It wasn't cheap, you know.'
‘Got it. We're changing the subject. No problem.'
He did as he was told but he couldn't just eat an ice cream like a normal person, oh no, that would be too easy. Joe concentrated on the task at hand with a passion that made me weak. Every time his tongue darted out of his mouth and wrapped itself around the ice cream, his eyes closed with pleasure and involuntary groans of ecstasy escaped his throat. It was obscene.
I'd never been so turned on in my life.
‘I have a confession to make,' he said, licking his fingers one at a time when the ice cream was gone.
‘A confession?' I replied, thick, creamy vanilla dripping down my fingers, melting almost as fast as I was. He reached his hand out towards my face and I held my breath, his thumb grazing my chin as he slipped my bag off my shoulder and reached inside to pull out the hardback edition of Butterflies.
‘It's about your book—'
‘As if that's the Spice Rack special edition of Butterflies?'
Appearing out of nowhere, a girl somewhere around my sister's age came running towards us, arms outstretched, her hands making desperate grabby motions. ‘It is! How do you have this? No one on earth has this!'
‘Where the fuck did she come from?' I asked Joe, looking over both shoulders and seeing no one else for miles.
‘I was out running,' she replied, doubled over as she caught her breath. ‘I saw the book, I ran faster.'
Joe turned the book over in his hands to check the back cover and there it was, the little gold Spice Rack book of the month logo. The girl gasped, pressing multicoloured fingernails against her red lipsticked mouth. Out for a run in a full beat wearing gold lamé leggings and a lilac lace bralette. First two ice creams cost me the best part of twenty pounds and now this? I swear I aged a decade every day.
‘There were teasers on TikTok but it hasn't even been confirmed yet. This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, you've got to tell me how you got it,' the girl babbled, then she turned her gaze on me, eyes opening wide, defying the weight of her false lashes. ‘You,' she whispered. ‘Are you—'
‘I work for the publisher,' Joe interrupted, casually waving the book back and forth to get her attention. It worked, she couldn't take her eyes off it. She was Gollum and Butterflies was her precious. ‘It hasn't been announced yet, I managed to get an early copy for my friend.'
‘Please,' she said with complete reverence, hands clasped together in prayer. ‘Can I touch it? I promise I won't run off with it, I just want to see it.'
Joe looked at me, I looked at her then back at him.
‘Of course you can,' I said, taking it from Joe and handing it over. ‘It's just a book.'
She took it carefully in her hands, grasping it only at the very edges. People held newborn babies with less care.
‘It's stunning. The foiled boards, the spredges, the printed endpapers …'
Even though I knew my book inside out, I suddenly got the feeling we were intruding on something extremely personal. She had a relationship with Butterflies that existed well beyond me, a completely different connection. I might be its mother but she was its lover and watching her fondle the book with her mouth hanging half open felt deeply inappropriate.
‘Can I ask you a question?' Joe asked as I dropped the remains of my ice cream behind the tree trunk, too anxious to eat it now. ‘What is it that you love about Butterflies?'
He held out his hand for the book and she stared back at him, confused, before slowly realising what he wanted. Heartbreak etched itself onto her face and, with the greatest reluctance, she gave it back.
‘Everything,' she told him, whimpering as the book passed out of her grasp. Her whole body lurched with it like the two of them were physically linked. ‘The story, the characters.' She paused, her cheeks turning scarlet. ‘The spice.'
The way I sucked my cheeks was so violent, it was a wonder my entire face didn't collapse in on itself.
‘It's the connection,' she expanded. ‘When Jenna meets Eric, it's electric. I want that. All that passion and emotion. He really sees her, you know? That's so sexy.'
‘Interesting, OK,' Joe replied, rubbing the underneath of his chin with the back of his hand. ‘You don't think books like this give women unrealistic expectations?'
She glared down at him, appalled.
‘Only if you don't think you deserve love.'
‘Ouch,' I said through gritted teeth as he winced. ‘I felt that one.'
‘I do deserve it,' she stated as I silently cheered her on from the sidelines. ‘I deserve someone who supports me, believes in me and knows how to hit it. We all do. You probably don't understand.'
‘What makes you say that?' he asked.
‘Because you're, like, a conventionally attractive straight man,' she replied. ‘So, you know, you're limited.'
Joe quirked an eyebrow. ‘What makes you think I'm straight?'
‘Your aftershave, your haircut, your trousers, your shoes, the way you're sitting and the fact you asked that question.'
He bowed his head as I smothered a laugh.
‘Guilty as charged.'
‘Then it's probably too hard for you to understand,' she said, altering her tone to address him the same way I talked to the kids in Year One when they didn't want to share the colouring pencils. ‘But Este Cox gets it. That's why I love romance novels. When I read a really good one, I see how the world could be. Should be. I'm only twenty-three and I've already been through, like, more than enough. Books like Butterflies let me take a time-out from reality.'
‘Then it's escapism,' Joe said, trying to summarise her explanation. ‘Romance novels are popular because they're escapist.'
‘And what's wrong with that?' she challenged.
‘Nothing,' he replied quickly before she could shred him into another thousand pieces. ‘I didn't say there was—'
‘Good, because anything that lets you take a much-needed step back from everything going on in the world today seems very fucking important to me.'
She snatched the book back from his undeserving hands and cradled it defensively, covering its ears so it wouldn't have to hear his ignorant comments. I didn't move, couldn't speak, but somewhere in my chest, I felt a spark of pride. She really, truly loved the book.
My book.
‘You should keep it,' I heard myself say. ‘We can get another one.'
She looked at me like I'd offered her front row Taylor Swift tickets and not a slightly fancier copy of a book she already owned. It wouldn't have even taken a feather to knock her down, the slightest sigh would've done the trick.
‘Are you serious?' she said. ‘I can really keep it? It's my favourite book of all time, I'll take such good care of it.'
‘Just promise you'll keep it under wraps for now. And leave a positive review on Goodreads,' Joe said as I forced myself to sit in the unfamiliar glow of her adoration.
‘Already done,' she gushed, hugging her book to her chest. ‘I'm counting down the days to the sequel. Literally, I've got a countdown on my phone. Only two hundred and eighty-five to go.'
‘That's not terrifying at all,' I whispered, holding on to my tote bag extra tightly in case she had X-ray vision and could somehow see inside. If she knew what was inside, there was every chance I'd lose a limb trying to protect it.
‘I know, how am I supposed to wait so long?' she laughed before cutting herself off, dead serious. ‘Like, Este, write faster, babes.'
‘You probably want to get on,' Joe said as I tried to remember to breathe. Two hundred and eighty-five days. ‘Nice to meet you …?'
‘Chloe,' she replied, snapping back to her senses. ‘Chloe Khan. ChloeKhanReadsItAll on TikTok, add me. And thank you so much!'
She took off down the hill, running so fast I couldn't have caught up with her if I'd tried, vanishing into the distance almost as quickly as she'd appeared.
‘OK that was mad even from my perspective,' Joe said, watching as I slid off the trunk and deposited myself onto the ground, pressing my palms flat against the cool grass on either side of me. ‘What was it like for you?'
My fingers curled around the long blades of grass and yanked them out of the ground.
‘It was very, very weird.'
‘Good weird?'
‘Weird weird.'
I rubbed the grass between my palms, bringing my hands up to my face so I could breathe in the fresh scent, something natural and grounding to calm me down but it didn't work. I was too high on sugar, sun and Chloe Khan to know how I felt about anything.
‘But she loves the book,' Joe pointed out, joining me on the ground. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of Chloe Khans out there, hanging on your every word. How are you not screaming from the rooftops and celebrating every second of the day? I would be.'
‘Because for every one of her, there's ten Joe Walshes,' I replied, dumping the grass and wiping my palms against my already mucky jeans ‘Someone who thinks romance novels are unrealistic and stupid and wants all the Chloe Khans to justify why they read them in the first place.'
‘You don't listen to them, do you?' he asked with a faint laugh. ‘What do the Joe Walshes of this world know?'
I gazed out across the rolling fields and tried to count all the different shades of green. It was impossible. There were so many and every single one was beautiful. So Joe had been right about one thing at least. Also the sheep. There really were a lot of sheep.
‘The truth is, I could read a thousand positive reviews about my book and I would only remember the one negative one,' I admitted. ‘The bad stuff is so much easier to believe than the good. I want to be proud of it but deep down, if I'm totally honest, I think the people who say it's bad and worthless might be right.'
Joe didn't answer right away, instead he sat with my words, thinking them through, and I let him, resisting my perma-urge to fill the empty space with a joke or a change of subject. Eventually, his forehead creased in a troubled frown, dark eyebrows drawing together over his blue eyes.
‘Before we were interrupted, I was about to make a confession,' he said, nudging me softly. ‘When I said all those stupid things yesterday that you very clearly and understandably took to heart, I hadn't read Butterflies.'
‘You hadn't read it?' I replied, not even slightly able to conceal my surprise. ‘But you're king of the brand team? You're in charge of the message of the book, isn't that what you said?'
‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘But I only skimmed it.'
‘You mean you read the dirty bits?'
‘I read the whole first chapter!' He paused for a moment. ‘Then the dirty bits. Someone else on my team read it and gave me the overall gist. I suppose I thought I didn't need to read it to understand it.'
A self-deprecating laugh forced its way out of my throat.
‘Wow. Thanks for proving my point.'
‘Actually, I proved myself wrong. And when I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong.'
‘Thanks, Dr Houseman,' I mumbled, furious at the tears I felt burning the backs of my eyes. There was no need to be upset, it was hardly a shock. Plenty of people made assumptions about my book, about all romance novels, without reading them. My parents. My head teacher. Half the internet. Every single media outlet that chose to act as though the entire genre didn't exist.
‘But,' Joe continued. ‘I stayed up half the night reading it and I loved it.'
‘Course you did,' I told him, one treacherous tear clinging to my lower lashes. ‘You don't have to lie, Joe. I meant what I said before, I really don't care what you think.'
‘Then you won't care that I thought it was funny, sexy, emotionally intelligent and that I shouted at Jenna when she refused to admit how she really felt when Eric asked her.'
‘Liar.'
‘One hundred percent the god's honest truth,' he declared. ‘She might have questionable taste in running gear but Chloe was right about your book. The whole time I was reading, everything else just went away. When I got to the end, I was in pieces. It felt so real.'
‘Well, bugger me,' I muttered, flicking away the solitary tear when no others came to join it. ‘Joe Walsh embraces a happily ever after.'
‘Something like that,' he said with a crooked smile. ‘She was right about the rest of it too. You put something into words I didn't know how to express. I want what Jenna and Eric have.'
‘Or you don't want me to tell Mal all the shitty things you said and get you sacked?'
My eyes met his, chocolate brown and ocean blue, and I searched for the lie. The smirk behind the smile. But there was nothing there. As far as I could tell, he was completely genuine. As far as I could tell. He turned his body towards me, brushing my hair over my shoulder and whispering right into my ear.
‘I want to be consumed,' he said, his words a soft growl as he leaned in. ‘I want the thought of her to set me on fire. I want to surrender to the flames and burn until there is nothing left but my love.'
A violent thrill shot through me, as though someone had shocked my spine with a cattle prod. I couldn't believe it. He was quoting my book at me, word for word.
‘You read it,' I replied with wonder. ‘You actually read it.'
‘Every chapter, every page. Some chapters more than once.'
I wrapped my hands around my legs and squeezed tight to stop myself from shaking. ‘Chapter five?'
‘I liked chapter five,' he confirmed. ‘But not as much as chapter seventeen.'
When I gulped and I knew he was close enough to hear it.
‘Chapter seventeen kept me awake all night,' Joe said, moving as close as it was humanly possible to be without making contact. I could feel his lips on my ear even though we weren't quite touching. ‘Chapter seventeen might keep me awake forever.'
The world around us, the trees, the grass, the sun and sky, all disappeared. There was nothing above and nothing below, just us. His face was too close to see clearly, an Impressionist blur, and it drew me in, proximity clouding my mind and my judgement. It was too much and not enough but no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn't do it.
‘Would you look at the time!' I exclaimed, leaping to my feet and accidentally clobbering Joe in the face with the corner of my tote bag. ‘The barbecue is supposed to start soon, isn't it? Mum must be wondering where we are. We'd better get back to the butcher's, a fuck load of chicken waits for no man.'
‘You can ask if he's got a steak for my eye while we're there,' Joe grunted, his right eye tearing up as he stood. ‘What are you trying to do, blind me?'
‘Don't be such a wimp,' I replied, marching on the spot. ‘I barely touched you.'
‘I know,' he murmured. ‘And look at the state of me.'
He took a step back, eyeing me warily as though I was the dangerous one, and I clucked out a laugh in a vain attempt to dispel the tension.
‘It hasn't even left a mark,' I told him shakily. ‘You'll live.'
‘As long as I stay away from you,' he replied, grim and determined. ‘You're a menace, Sophie Taylor. Just keep your distance, yeah?'
Speechless, I watched him stalk off down the lane, leaving me in his dust.