Interlude
When Alex had shut the front door, heart still thudding in
his chest, he let his gaze wander the room, staring back at the abandoned Play Station
controller on the sofa, the paused game, and the soft dent in the sofa cushion
where she had been sitting, and felt a sigh drawn from his lungs almost without
his permission. Like a ghost, Sam had vanished. He could almost believe
that she had simply slipped out of his field of vision, perhaps stepping into
his right eye’s blind, blank void, but he knew damned well that if he turned
his head, the room would still be empty. She’ll be back tomorrow though, for
heaven's sake; don’t freak out, Norwood, he scolded himself as he
switched the PS off and put the console on to charge again, bustling about the room,
injecting some life and movement into it.
Will had been very silent all afternoon, and Alex thought he
probably ought to check on him, knowing his brother was as bad as he was about
forgetting that life continues to flow around you when you work. Sure enough,
as he pushed the door to Will’s room open ajar, he could see a slightly
frazzled figure tugging at the straw-coloured hair by his temple. “Hey, you
going to stop to refuel any time soon?” he asked.
Will didn’t seem to hear him at all.
“Will?” he hissed
insistently.
“Hmm?”
With a fond laugh, he repeated his question. “Are you going
to stop to refuel, or just burn out?”
Will seemed to surface from his maths-induced trance and he
turned his watery blue eyes on the clock behind him on the bedside table. “Oh,”
he exclaimed, “It’s a bit later than I thought it was... I should stop. I just
wanted to get this fixed...”
“What’s not working?” Alex asked, wheeling in and glancing
over his shoulder at Will’s chicken-scratch writing.
Will made an indistinct grunt of disgust and poked his thin
finger at a section, and the two brothers began to tease out a solution until
finally, over an hour and a half later, they’d sorted it out. Alex eased
himself back into the low backrest of his chair, regretting having spent that
time leaning forward against the desk, his back dipping as he'd rested his
weight on his forearms to see their page of notes and working. He glanced
behind him at the clock and said, “Right, that’s enough. Come on, I’m doing
chicken stir-fry and I’d say we’ve earned a glass or two of wine.”
Over dinner, Alex noticed how many times Will mentioned a
woman named Eva. A Romanian PhD student, she had been writing a paper on a
similar topic to him, and they’d apparently got talking in the small department
coffee room. “Nothing like bad, over-brewed coffee and cheaply upholstered
seats to bring two people together,” Alex joked.
Will’s cheeks burned red as a sunset for an instant. “Well,
I mean, we were just… you know… we just got talking because we’re doing the
same kind of thing… it probably won’t go anywhere, but we spent ages just
chatting and she’s got a wicked sense of humour…”
A bright peal of laughter rang out from Alex’s chest as he
tried not to imagine Will bumbling his way through a conversation, fumbling his
way to a chat-up line as though it were a game of blind man’s bluff. “Well,” he
chuckled. “If you like the girl, for heaven’s sake let her know, won’t you?
Learn from your little brother’s experience.”
A pair of bright, nervous, blue eyes blinked back at him
from across the table and their owner sighed. “I’ll try not to be such a
schoolboy about it…” he smiled. “It’s hard though, isn’t it?”
With a wry snort, Alex replied, “The more you like her, the
harder it is.”
***
Sam and Dan leaned over the pan looking dubiously at the
contents. “Come on,” Dan said with a grin, as he poked at his efforts with the
sauce. “How hard can spaghetti bolognese be?”
“It’ll be fine. This is one of the few things I can actually
do,” Sam reassured him with a smile and a dig in the ribs. “Move over. Will you
relax?”
“Only if you pass me that wine,” he said, nodding at the
open bottle of Chianti that stood on the side. Most of it had already gone into
the bolognese sauce.
“Don’t drink it all...” she chided him jokingly, passing it
to him. “We’ll want that as a reward when we’ve served this lot up...”
He took it from her, poured a small glass for himself and
said, “Yes ma’am.”
She rounded on him, brandishing the wooden spoon, “Don’t
you ma’am me!” she laughed, hand on hip like an aggravated
matron.
Dan saluted her comically, took the wine glass and said,
“Yes sir, sorry sir,” and marched from the room with a distinctly ‘Ministry of
Silly Walks’ air about his high-step.
Sam’s laughter rang out above the sounds of the kitchen and
she called, “Don’t you go away for too long, Private, I’ve got more work for
you to do!”
His voice emanated from somewhere down the corridor. “I’ll
be back in a second, don’t worry.”
Before they set dinner on the table, Sam tasted the
bolognese sauce just in case - she didn’t think she could bear to watch
Vivian’s face as she fell down another notch in her estimation - and it was
actually not too bad at all. With a bit of red wine in their systems,
they’ll think it’s fine, I’m sure, she told herself as she dished up
and carried the plates out two a at time to the dining table in the living
room.
Richard was very complementary about the meal, Vivian less
so, but all in all, it wasn’t a total failure. Dan helped her with the washing
up, and when they were done they headed into the living room to watch a DVD
they’d rented.
As the title credits rolled, Sam stretched, winced, and then
said, “Oh gosh, I’m so stiff now!” Vivian looked at her as though it was
nothing she didn’t deserve for behaving like such a yob with all that taekwondo
and running.
“When you’ve all finished with the bathroom, I think I’ll
have a bath if that’s ok? I got soaked coming back from Alex’s earlier, and I
don’t think that exactly helped my muscles recover from taekwondo.”
Richard’s ears pricked up at the mention of Alex, and he
asked, his face and voice full of paternal concern, “Alex? That’s not a name
I’ve heard you mention before - who is he?”
She felt herself flush crimson. “Um, he’s someone I met a
while ago at the UL...” She had not expected to have to
explain herself to Dan’s parents at all, and as she floundered awkwardly, she
looked at Dan for support. Uncharacteristically, he seemed to be quite content
to let her squirm, and he stayed quiet.
“Is it serious?” Vivian asked, straightening her already
ram-rod straight spine a little in her recliner.
“We’re still getting to know each other,” Sam said
diplomatically. “I’ve not told my mum and dad about him yet - it’s all a bit
sudden after grandma... I don’t want them to get the wrong impression.” Or
you, she thought, wondering how well Vivian would react if she knew Alex was
technically not just her boyfriend, but her 'disabled' boyfriend. It was a label, she was only now beginning to
realise, that would gradually fade from her vision, but never from the sight of
others.
Dan’s head rose from his iPad and he said, “Aren’t you going
round there tomorrow night?”
Vivian’s eyes widened in horror, as Dan had no doubt
intended, as she assumed Sam would be staying
the night. Sam was forced rapidly into damage-control and babbled, “Yes, I’m
going round for dinner, so I’ll probably be home relatively late –
I thought I mentioned it yesterday…”
“Oh yes,” Richard said, running his hand through his silver
hair as he remembered, “You did say
you weren’t going to be in tomorrow evening; I must have forgotten. I hope you
have fun. And thank you for cooking this evening - I have to admit that Dan
said you were terrible, bit that was delicious.”
Sam shot Dan a childishly hurt expression and turned back to
his father. “I’m glad it was ok. It’s one of my limited repertoire of
recipes...”
Dan snorted.
“Don’t you mind a word he says,” Richard laughed, standing
up with a grunt and making for the door. “He couldn’t do any better, and he’d
be lucky to do half as well as you did, my dear.”
Sinking into the softly crackling bubbles of the bath forty
five minutes later, Sam let her mind meander and wander wherever it chose to
go. It took her nervously to the upcoming graduation ceremony, and she wondered
what kind of preposterous bowing and hat doffing there would be at this archaic
rite of passage. It then turned to taekwondo, and to all the things she needed
to work on before the grading which was also rapidly approaching. She ran
through all her poomsae in her mind, enacting step by step the
moves she needed to make – how and when and which way she needed to turn – and
then she did the formal ‘one-step-sparring’ techniques as well. Mentally
standing squarely in choon bi, the ready stance, she closed her
eyes, floating in the blissfully warm water, and thought how she would counter
the formal right-hand punch. Blocking it with a double knife hand in back
stance, she ‘stepped’ her back foot through to the front, swinging her
right elbow up in a smooth arc to her imaginary attacker’s temple, right fist
meeting left palm on impact, before drawing back the elbow and aiming another
‘blow’ at the nose. Once she’d run through other similar one-step sparring and
self-defence moves, the water had begun to cool, and she thought vaguely about
adding some more and staying to soak a little longer, but she knew it would be
wasteful of the hot water, and she was only a guest.
The big fluffy towel kept most of the cold air out as she
darted for the spare room, but she still shivered a little as she wrestled her
pyjamas on over still slightly damp legs. She still wasn't sleepy enough to go
to bed, so she took a blanket from the shelves at the top of the wardrobe and
curled up underneath it to devour another chunk of Game of Thrones.
Finally, nearing midnight, she began to feel sleep tugging
insistently at her eyelids. As she curled up in the dark and listened to the
rain, she allowed her thoughts to turn to Alex. As sleep claimed her, she
imagined that the heavy duvet around her shoulders was in fact his arm, draped
protectively over her, and when she woke the next morning, she felt safer and
more rested than she had in years, and childishly excited at the thought of
seeing him, meeting him in the pub and bending down to kiss his handsome face,
and tell him – silently of course – with a mere look that she loved him.
I feel as warm and toasty as Sam did all bundled up in her duvet! Can't wait to read more.
ReplyDeleteAww, thank you, and I'm glad. I'll post part one of their dinner date soon as it's a really long chapter. They kind of ran away with me a bit...!
DeleteI'm here to read story's of and about devotee's. Can you give us more?
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely sure what you mean in your comment - Sam in my story doesn't really know she's a devotee - and I'm not even sure she really is one - she just fell in love with Alex, who happens to be disabled. Cambridge Connections is more of a kind of trashy chick-lit tale of two people falling in love, one of whom just happens to be in a wheelchair.
DeleteThere are loads of much more devy stories on this site though, and far better written than this one, if you're looking for dev-specific angles. You will 'see' more of Alex as their relationship develops if that's any help...
Thanks for commenting though.
I just I remember chapter two when Sam sees Alex walk and she gets a 'kindled tingling heat between her legs that she had not expected'. Sorry that I assume your story was going in that direction. Can't wait to see Alex and Sam relationship intensify. And I'm sorry if my tone of my comment sounded harsh. I do love your writing and I love that you post weekly.
DeleteNot at all and I'm glad you commented. It might go a bit in that direction, I'll see where it takes me really.
DeleteIt's cute to see Will maybe having a relationship of his own. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Chie - another bit of your advice helping my story along :P. I'll see where this tangent leads, but it won't be a major plot line, I don't think. I just don't want him to be lonely.
DeleteVery nicely done, Rose. I'm looking forward to the next chapter.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'll post it whenever I get some time next week, and if there's a free slot because you're right - crikey has this site been busy!!
DeleteNice chapter Rose.
ReplyDeleteI like Alex and Will relationship, how they care about each other.
I'm not so fond of Dan's parents though, specially her mother. I have the feeling she doesn't approve Sam completely and I'm afraid she won''t like Alex either.
I'm waiting for next chapter and their dinner date.
This comment actually made my morning. As a reader, you are *exactly* where I want you and that is very comforting. The Alex/Will relationship will get much more interesting in a few posts' time. It's been hinted at before, but there's a bit of a moment for Sam when she finds something out about the brothers. And I'm glad you're not so fond of Vivian - she's very old fashioned...
DeleteThank you for taking the time to make my morning by commenting :D.