Have Your Cake Page 11

  She covered her nose with her hand and frowned at him. Everything he’d said had been past tense. ‘You don’t want those things anymore?’ Had she been so bad a second date that there was no coming back from it? Did she even want another chance with a man who drank in excess? She had enough problems without dating a problem. And, of course, it was impossible not to think of her late father; an alcoholic who’d muddied her family name long before Abigail had.

  Dillon sighed and dropped back onto his seat. ‘I do still want them,’ he said, and his voice was dense and sad. ‘But I did something else that you’re not going to like, and when I tell you you’re going to grab that crazy-matching bag thing there and stalk out. And I wouldn’t blame you for it.’

  Abigail glanced at the distance between them, then eased herself down onto the chair opposite. Dillon was not her father and he was not alone in the odd overindulgence. She wanted to know more about what she was dealing with. About the level of it all. Was he a drunk? An enthusiastic party boy? What was it about him, or what had he done, that was so bad he was convinced she would leave?

  She swallowed to clear her throat. She didn’t want it to crack when she spoke. ‘What else did you do?’

  Dillon pushed his palm across his mouth, propped his elbow on his knee then dropped his forehead into his hand. He spoke to the floor. ‘I didn’t think I was going to see you again after last night. I thought you’d changed your mind. Lost interest. You didn’t say anything about another date and you cleared out like it was a relief to be free of me.’ He paused, then looked up. ‘I’m sorry. That all sounds like I’m blaming you for my choices but I’m not. I just want you to understand what I was thinking when I made them.’

  Abigail pulled her shoulders in and fidgeted with the quick on one of her nails.

  ‘I stayed at Circus for a long time. At the bar. I met someone there and I went home with her.’

  Abigail was on her feet before she’d consciously decided to stand. She whirled towards the door and was across the room in half a dozen strides.

  How humiliating. She’d travelled all this way to be dumped.

  The door was locked. Panic speared through her middle.

  ‘The staff door’s unlocked,’ Dillon said quickly, coming up behind her. She rounded on him and he stopped approaching. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. If I had known I had any chance at all of seeing you again I would’ve gone home when you did and sat by the phone.’

  Her laugh was as rough as gravel.

  ‘I mean that,’ he insisted. ‘I think you’re incredible. I know it was a bad date but this isn’t bad.’ He pointed between them.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You don’t get to compliment whatever thing passed between us over food projections, then sleep with someone else. This—’ she mimicked pointing between them, ‘—started bad, got good, then just ended. Or rather, it ended last night, I just didn’t get the memo.’

  She stepped around him and hurried towards the corridor Ben had left through.

  Dillon pursued her. ‘Wait! Your bag—’

  ‘Choke on it!’

  He didn’t know there was food in there. That was going to sound weird. She didn’t care. Not enough to stop, anyway. She’d buy another cooler bag—one that didn’t match any of her shirts.

  ‘Abigail, please wait. You came here for another chance, right? You came to apologise? You said there was another reason—’

  ‘Why would I confide in you now?’ She pushed through the staff door and found herself in a small staff kitchen and lunch room. She hesitated. She spotted the exit and hurried towards it.

  ‘Would you stop?’ Dillon begged from behind her. ‘C’mon, there’s enough between us to fight for.’

  ‘There’s not. I just sodding met you!’

  ‘You’re in the position of power here.’

  Abigail looked over her shoulder, perplexed by the statement.

  The eye contact emboldened him. ‘I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. You came here for another chance and I gave it to you. You came to apologise and I accepted it.’ He straightened abruptly when she turned. His voice was considerably quieter when he said, ‘Now I’m asking for the same things.’

  So if she fled a bad situation she was a hypocrite. Nice.

  ‘Please,’ he said, even quieter still. ‘You have no idea how much I like you. How much I … I looked at every Instagram post on your account. And read the descriptions. I’ve thought about you so much. I drink a lot. I do. I probably have a problem—I can get it checked out. I can fix myself up. All I know is I came home from our first date happy. I didn’t drink a thing. I didn’t need to.’

  ‘You want me to be responsible for your sobriety?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m trying to tell you that I’ve been lonely for a long time. I’ve been … apart from so many things. But I feel different now. Meeting you changed something. It … it bettered me, I don’t know. I want to be around you.’

  ‘When your bed’s not otherwise occupied.’

  ‘Come on. For the first time in years I want to connect with someone. With you. Please don’t storm out because I was stupid and impatient. I should have tried again.’ He pointed in the direction they’d come from. ‘I should have turned up at your shop with some kind of fancy bag and tried harder.’

  She didn’t answer, and the silence stretched and strained.

  This couldn’t be worth it, surely. She liked him—mostly—but they’d had two dates and already they were up against crap some marriages didn’t even have to deal with. Surely it would be easier to cut her losses and go.

  ‘Please be the one who didn’t give up,’ he said. He held his arms out from his sides. He was imploring her.

  Abigail felt embarrassed by the shamelessness of his words. He was fighting for her like they were lovers. As if the history they shared spanned years, not days.

  What would he be like in love, if this was what he was capable of when infatuated?

  A taut moment passed.

  What, she thought, would it hurt to see? He hadn’t cheated on her. Not really. He’d not been driven into self-imposed monogamy since meeting her, and sure, that would have been nice—she certainly hadn’t flung herself at another man—but they hadn’t had that conversation so he wasn’t technically at fault. It stung her pride but it hadn’t wholly obliterated his chances. The drinking, though. That was an unbeaten path for her, and she wasn’t sure she had the right footwear for such a trek.

  ‘The booze …’ she said.

  He made a cutting motion with both hands.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Have you given that speech before?’

  Dillon’s forehead smoothed. ‘No. I’ve begged for second chances before, but not like that.’ He was beginning to smile. She was relenting, and she knew he could feel it.

  She pointed at his face. ‘All right, a second chance. Or a third chance, really. But I don’t like you when you’re hungover, okay? Everything in my body wants to get far away from you.’

  Was it just the hangovers, or was it more than that? Was he bad news? Broken in some way, bound to drag her down? Was she about to enter another unhealthy relationship? Her poor heart still had scar tissue from the first.

  She spoke over her worry. ‘If what I tell you doesn’t send you running, then no more women, okay? Not while we’re doing whatever this is.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘If you’re done, you tell me.’

  ‘Absolutely. Unlikely, but absolutely.’

  Her mouth twitched.

  She waited by the staff door when he hurried away to retrieve her cooler bag, and hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. Mal had never begged for another chance from her; not reservedly, nor ostentatiously as Dillon just had. She had to believe Dillon’s perseverance contributed to the making of a good man. And maybe he would turn out to be the prize at the end of the rainbow she’d been chasing for months.

  If this generous affection lasted a few weeks,
it might be long enough to scour away some of the grime over her heart. If it lasted longer … well, that’d be a rise-from-the-ashes tale worth sharing.

  Dillon returned and followed her out. They had to exit through a discreet security door leading onto the street behind the lot. The front of the lot was now secured inside a solid fence that seemed to have come out of nowhere. It shouldn’t have surprised her, cars like the ones she’d seen needed to be protected, and yet the yard had become Fort Knox without her realising.

  They walked towards the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Mostly in silence, but occasionally they spoke about the things they’d done that day and the weather. Dillon had few stories. He’d woken alone, eventually managed to get to the couch, then had slept on and off as he’d binged on Die Hard movies. Abigail also had stories. She had sold her pictures. She’d landed five new custom orders and gained another hundred followers on Instagram. He made a lot of happy noises, and he didn’t push for her second reason for being a lousy date. He just seemed content to be there, confession or not.

  She hit him between the eyes with it when they were sitting and she was tearing the plastic away from a wheel of brie.

  ‘My last customer on Monday,’ she said, giving undue attention to the cheese, ‘was an old friend of mine. She’s getting married.’

  Dillon didn’t react to this. Weddings were a key part of her market.

  Abigail set the cheese down on the small wooden chopping board and sank the blade of a small knife into its heart.

  ‘She’s marrying my ex-fiancé.’

  Dillon’s relaxed expression tightened. ‘Ah.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me so much that it was only six months ago that I was engaged to him. It bothers me, I guess, that she seems determined to follow the same path.’

  ‘Well, yeah, if she’s marrying your ex.’

  Abigail nodded. ‘We had a lot more in common than I realised. But when I looked at her … when she smiled at me … I just wanted to tell her to run.’

  They were sitting on a gentle slope, facing the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture. Insects whirred and clicked in the grass, and at the bottom of the slope a young family were cycling around the park, calling to one another and laughing.

  ‘It ended really badly. Me and Mal. I don’t suppose many engagements break down over a pint and a laugh, but ours was particularly bad. Isobelle, this friend, knew all the ugliest details and yet she wants me to make cakes for their engagement party and wedding.’

  ‘She’s mental,’ Dillon said flatly. ‘Or cruel.’

  ‘More of the first than the second.’ Abigail plucked at a blade of grass then discarded it in the breeze. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say, in this convoluted Days of Our Lives fashion, is that I was blindsided just before our date, and I spent the rest of the night obsessing about it.’

  ‘That’s rough.’ Dillon reached into the cooler bag and tore open a packet of crackers.

  ‘Rough,’ she agreed. She took a dozen of them from him and set them on the cheese board.

  ‘Six months and already engaged.’ He reached into the cooler bag again, this time for the bottle of Coke and two plastic cups. He filled each, handed her one. ‘You reckon they were going behind your back?’

  Abigail’s fingers tightened on the plastic. She hadn’t thought about that. But now that she was thinking it, it not only seemed possible, but likely. ‘That would be ironic,’ she said, and drank.

  Dillon watched her, unmoving. The breeze stirred his hair and the sun made the strands shine bronze. ‘You ended it?’

  She shook her head then registered his surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘You just sound so removed from it.’

  ‘It’s not my life anymore.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but most people have a bad reaction when it comes to cheating.’

  Abigail loaded a cracker and popped it in her mouth.

  A young girl, the littlest rider of the cycling family, tumbled and screamed.

  ‘I had a bad reaction,’ Dillon said. He bent his knees and propped his elbows onto them.

  Abigail kept chewing. She was going to let that comment slide. She was going to finish her cheese, get her things together and go. This conversation had squashed the mood, anyway. She felt an overwhelming urge to retreat to a corner and lick her wounds. They were exposing themselves so quickly and so wholly, that her mind was spinning and her instincts wanted to shut down. She didn’t like being vulnerable. Not anymore. Not after Mal.

  But Dillon looked at her as if expecting a question.

  Not Mal, she reminded herself. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said thickly. ‘Sounds like there’s a story in that comment.’

  ‘Yeah, there is.’

  She finished her drink and eyed the rest of the food. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Let’s lighten the mood.’ If she closed the cooler bag he wouldn’t see the chilled chicken Caesar salad in the bottom, or the two vanilla spearmint cupcakes in their perfectly sized containers. When there was no more food, there would be no more date.

  Dillon wasn’t Mal, but Abigail still wanted to slow things down.

  ‘No, I should tell you. You’re being honest with me. You should know my story too.’ Dillon cut a wedge of cheese and crammed it between two crackers.

  Yes, she thought, eat fast. Shove it down.

  ‘I was with a woman for six years.’ He fidgeted with the food. ‘We met after university and moved in together quickly. We didn’t know each other as well as we should have. Anyway, I had big dreams and I was really driven. I’m not saying I drove her into some other guy’s arms, but she got her attention there in any case. I found out she was cheating on me two years in. By that time we were living with her parents—really nice people who believed in me more than she did, and I was trapped.’

  ‘What do you mean, trapped? You could have left.’

  Dillon’s laugh was quick and humourless. ‘No, I couldn’t have. When I say her parents believed in me, what I mean is they loaned me a scary amount of money so I could get on my feet. Make a life for myself and their daughter.’

  Abigail forgot about the chicken and the cupcakes. Her flight instincts fluttered then settled. She leaned towards him, as if led by a magnet. ‘You stayed until you paid them back.’

  ‘Yes. Every pound.’

  ‘You stayed with a woman who you knew was cheating on you, because of a debt? Why couldn’t you leave her and still pay them back? A few regular instalments and they would’ve believed you were good for it.’

  ‘Because they needed more from me than their money back.’

  There was a story there too, but Abigail didn’t press for it.

  She thought of her sister Louisa, and the debt Abigail owed her. An exchange of money was an exchange of power. It bound you closer to people, and sometimes those bounds were strings that could make you dance. Didn’t she check her bank account balance every day, hoping to see the magic number that would free her? She could relate to Dillon’s obligation.

  His eyes were full of torment; the kind that greyed the horizon and darkened the shadows. That wore him, so could not be shrugged off. Every day for four years he’d shared a bed with a woman who’d shared a bed with another. He’d shared her body, shared her smiles. Toiled towards his dreams and met his obligations, all the while knowing they wouldn’t be together in the end because he wasn’t enough for her. And maybe others had known too, that she’d had a lover. It would have been degrading, emasculating. It would have broken Abigail’s spirit—could anyone blame him for drinking spirits instead? Hell, even Abigail might have become a drunk in that situation.

  ‘Were you … together those last four years?’

  He nodded. ‘I couldn’t be with anyone else, so I took what I could get. Trust me when I tell you it was little better than scraps.’ He looked away. ‘She knew I knew too. Didn’t care.’

  She began to reach for him, had lifted her hand from her knee to close it over his hand, when he said something that made her veins turn
to concrete.

  ‘I despise cheats.’ A waspish hiss of pure vitriol.

  She put her hand down.

  He set his uneaten crackers and cheese aside and turned to her. ‘Now that we’re trying this,’ he said, his voice no longer angry but no less intense, ‘it’ll be only you. Because we’re trying this, aren’t we? You told me your big secret and I didn’t run.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ But she should. She’d told him a secret. Not the big secret. That confession would send him jetting in the opposite direction.

  The world was in slow motion. Her lungs weren’t filling properly. Everything was warm and rolling and somehow wrong. She’d wanted to be honest with him but she’d ended up omitting more than she’d disclosed, and his truths? They were petrol to her fire.

  Dillon was focused on their beginning but all Abigail could see was the end. It would come swiftly, and it would burn.

  ‘Just you and me,’ he reiterated.

  She wondered why he was repeating himself and looking at her that way, then realised he was hoping for a promise from her.

  She hesitated. Selfishly, she wanted to keep him—keep this, whatever this was and potentially could be—even though its end was as certain as a sunrise. Because sometimes it felt really, really good. It made her life more than the routines she’d created and the isolation she’d enforced. What was the harm in just enjoying the now? She could promise him the now. ‘Just you and me,’ she said.

  His smile was staggering. The best one yet, no question.

  She wanted to believe. She wanted to think that happiness was right here in front of her, breathing and smiling and confiding in her. But when they’d come up against so much so soon in their relationship, and would come up against so much again … “trying this”, as he’d said, seemed like grasping at smoke. Beautiful, opaline smoke that added the best kind of atmosphere.

  But still … she’d try.

  (Before)

  Pink

  It was the perfect day for a party. The sky was a cloudless blue and people had been able to leave their jackets on the backs of chairs. The band was playing better than the night they’d auditioned. People were dancing. Mal was somehow more charming than ever, made more luminous by the spotlight of his guests’ attention. And Abigail was … drunk. Tipsy. Affected and affronted.