Tiller opens my car door and pulls me out onto the street. “Are you okay?”
“Hmm?” I smile up at him, distracted.
“You’ve been quiet since your brother’s place.”
“Oh, no — yeah. No—” I nod. “I’m fine.”
He pulls me in towards him, rests his chin on top of my head and holds me against him tight.
“You seem sad,” he says into my hair and I pull back, glancing up at him.
“No — I’m—”1
“Sad.” Tiller nods, sniffing a smile.
“My brother—” I shake my head. “There’s never a time where — he’s never been indifferent towards my safety before.”
Tiller turns me around and starts walking down the street, hugging me from behind. I hear him sigh. I feel stupid and embarrassed for all the times I’ve defended Julian to Tiller, for telling Tills about the kind of person my brother can be when he’s not trying to prove something to a room full of idiots I miss every day.
“I’m not indifferent about your safety,” he tells me, trying to make me feel better.
He isn’t. I know he isn’t. That little worried crease in his brow that’s been there since we left The Compound tells me he isn’t.
“I know.” I nod up at him as we stop outside of Tell Your Friends,2 where I’m meeting Dellina3 for breakfast.
He turns me around, drops his hands to my waist. “I love you.”
“I know.” I nod again.
“You love me too,” he tells me and I nod a third time.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to be okay here? Getting to the hospital?”
“I’ll be fine.” I shrug. “No florists anywhere around here.” I flash him a playful look.
It feels easier to just dismiss it now that my brother has. Like I’m an idiot to worry about it if he doesn’t.
But then again, I am dead to him, so…
Tiller rolls his eyes — he doesn’t like any of this, and he really didn’t like how my brother was. He ranted about it for about an hour, which was sweet, actually — how indignant he is about how dismissive Julian was.
They might be two sides of the same coin, Tiller and my brother.
If one wasn’t ragingly good and the other possibly quite, quite bad, if he wasn’t in law enforcement and my brother wasn’t a criminal — if Tiller hadn’t been my brother’s foil and antagonist for practically the last five years — I think they’d probably be friends.
I can tell Tiller is really in his head about it all — stress-eyes aplenty.4
“I can wait for you,” he offers, eyebrows up. “I’ll just be late for work.”
“No—” I wave my hand through the air. “Miguel’s bound to be lurking around here somewhere.”
Tills frowns. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “I’ll be fine.”
He nods back, still not sold, then brushes his mouth over mine, kissing me a bit then kissing me more. Which is always how our kisses go. He might be my favourite kisser in the world, actually. Because it always starts out quick, like a habit, and then it’s as though he remembers how good we are at it, and he kisses me more and more and his hands go in my hair and on my face, and I feel like I’m the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, but that’s just how it feels whenever I’m with him. That’s how it’s always felt with him even before we were together — that he always liked me, mostly by accident — which he’s said is true — that he never meant to like me, let alone love me. Never meant to have sex with me that first night. He hadn’t even planned on kissing me, but he couldn’t figure out how to… not.
Romeo, he’s always loved me but he was never shy about watching another girl in the room. And then Christian, for the vast majority of our relationship, I was an afterthought. Maybe I wouldn’t be now, I’ll never know anyway — but Tiller…
Kissing me how he is on New King’s Road at nine in the morning, like he’s forgotten we’re in public, like he doesn’t care either way — if this is what being loved by him on accident feels like, I can’t imagine what it’d feel like to be loved on purpose.
I pull back and my cheeks are all pink.
“Okay,” I laugh. “Bye.”
He ducks down and peers through the window, waving once at Dellina, and then he walks away. “Call me when you get to the hospital, okay?”
I walk into the restaurant and sit opposite my ex-boyfriend’s mum, hands on my cheeks so she doesn’t see the pink — she doesn’t need to anyway, she knows all my faces.
She gives me an amused smile. “He’s very sweet.”
I’ve missed her voice. Mostly British but still faintly trimmed with the hints of her Eritrean accent.
She leans across the table, kissing each of my cheeks.
“You’ve missed our last few breakfasts.” Dellina gives me a look.
I give her one back. “You’re my ex-boyfriend’s mother.”
She breathes out her nose. “I am more than that.”5
I roll my eyes as I flag down a waiter. “You know what I mean—”6
She nods, thoughtfully. “Yes.” Purses her mouth. “Romeo said he saw you the other night — that there are some flowers?” She frowns, confused. “He seemed concerned?”
She’s right — Romeo did see me the other night, and though not on the spot, he was concerned. That whole sentence is an understatement as well, because the truth is after that night I told my brother about the flowers, I’ve seen Romeo every day since.
The last four days I’ve finished work, gone downstairs to the carpark, and he’s just waiting there by the elevator.
He doesn’t say anything to me. Doesn’t even look at me, actually.
Walks about a metre behind me. He walks me to my car, watches til I drive out of the garage and then he leaves.
“I wouldn’t know—” I give his mother a polite little look, because I don’t know that he’d like anyone knowing he’s doing that. “He’s still not speaking to me.”
“You would know, even if he’s still not speaking to you…” she begins. “Which, we all know you deserve—” she tacks on at the end and my eyes drop from hers.
“Of all the people to do that in front of — my son?” She shakes her head. “Daisy.”
“Dellina,” I sigh. “It was ten months ago.”
“And he’s still in therapy for it.” She nods. My shoulders fall. “Imagine harming yourself in front of a boy who’s spent his whole life trying to protect you.”
That makes me want to cry, not just that she’s disappointed in me (which she is) and not just that he’s in therapy because of me (which he is)7 but that Romeo is what he’s always been to me, even when he hates me. My protector.
“But…” She shrugs her shoulders. “You know this. This is why you’ve been avoiding me.”
I pout. “I haven’t been avoiding y—”
“Uh uh—” She holds up a finger to silence me like she’d do when I was five. “I wasn’t asking, I was telling. You have been avoiding me.”
I put my chin in my hand. “Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”
She takes a sip of her tea. “The second you ask.”
1 Shattered.
2 175 New King’s Road, SW6 4SW
3 Bambrillia, in case you’ve forgotten her, but how could you?
4 Cute, but.
5 She is so much more than that.
6 I order an oat milk latte and Dellina orders a pot of tea.
7 To be fair, he needed it anyway.
