“Oh, please, please tell me your brilliant idea, please? It’s not like your last one got me in this situation!”
“Maybe you could just go with it.”
“What? Let him love me? He’s not a stray dog, he’s a person, or–”
“C’mon Ash, he floats your boat. I realised that when I picked up the book. You kept getting sent the kinds of guys I would have liked to burst into my life, so I went and found a book with the kind of guy you’d like.”
“Really? That really tall elf guy with the purple eyes and tinsel hair? That’s what you’re into?”
“He was supposed to be thousands of years old. That’s plenty of time for him to . . . hone his skills and anyway, I thought he was beautiful.”
“He looked like an old piece of driftwood with Christmas decorations draped over it, like some kind of terrible kiddie art project.”
“He was an embodiment of the element of wind.”
“Wind? Oh, yeah, I can see it now, he did look like he wanted to fart but couldn’t. Please tell me you pulled his finger at least once, please.”
“Anyway, he didn’t even notice me because of the bloody curse, but back to you and your predicament. Why don’t you just bring him?”
“Because end of the world and civilisation as we know it. You know Mum, I’ll be in my 90s and she’ll be haunting me as a ghost for bringing ‘that man’ into the house.”
“Oh, she’s not that bad. You’ve seen the pics of Dad when he was young. He was kinda groovy.”
I leant back in my chair and scrubbed at my hair, eyes darting to the shower. The water had just been turned off. “How do I get out of this?” I whispered. “How do girls break up with these guys?”
“Break up? They don’t. This is their true love.”
“Oh fuck, so you’ve saddled me with some kind of outlaw stalker with a giant wang.”
“So didn’t need to hear that.”
“This is not my true love. I don’t even know what a true love is. If you love someone, doesn’t that make it true? What’s a false love?”
“Do you really want to philosophise about this because I’m tired and want to go back to sleep?”
“Why, up with Merlin the Magnificent all night? Tell me, does he live up to his name?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Whoa, I had expected her to act all coy and shy, but instead, I got up front and daring? Where had my timid little sister gone? And what was going on with her and the millennia-old magician of myth and legend? Why was it all old guys with her, anyway? Apparently, my pause to think was taken as a no. “Look, Ash, bring, don’t bring. It’s up to you. You usually do what you want to do, anyway and Mum deals. Remember when you shaved your head? She can’t freak out more than that. I’ll see you there.”
Gabe came out of the shower, rubbing his long locks with a towel. “Look, I gotta go. There’s a few bikes I should have finished by now, been a bit distracted with setting up and the shop and everything,” he said.
“Gabe–”
“Hey, I misread the situation. I won’t waste any more of your time.”
“This hasn’t been a waste of time. You only had to listen to me to know I was into this as much as you were.”
He nodded, then smiled slightly, “Yeah, you were squealing like a bunny.” I preferred sensual, full-grown woman but potatoe, pahtato. “Look, babe, you got places to be. I’m going to take a ride, let off some steam and get some work done. Have fun at your parents’.” He deposited a brief kiss on top of my head and laid the towel across my dining room chair before picking up his bag and walking out the door. It closed with barely a sound, leaving me standing in my flat, wondering what the hell had just happened.
19
“So, did he pledge his troth under your ficus or what?” Tess asked, climbing in the passenger seat. I’d picked her up outside the front of her place,
“No.”
“At the breakfast table? No? God, it wasn’t midway through sex, was it? ‘Uh, uh, I love you!’” Tess cackled.