The Road to Her (19 page)

I moved my face from her neck and tensed as she reached out and took my face in her hands, then slowly bent her head and moved her lips closer to mine. Memories of kissing her as I’d done in my dressing room immediately came back to me, and the thought of our lips touching again held me back, almost as if I didn’t dare let her kiss me now, for fear of what would happen this time. Clearly, Elise was feeling exactly the same way.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled her head back just as she was centimetres from me, dropping her hands from my face as she did so. “Can we try again?” She looked anxiously at Stuart, who nodded.

“From when Casey takes Jasmine’s face in her hands,” he said. “Take two.”

We repeated our previous actions; Elise held my face again, stepping closer to me and lowering her head towards mine. She hesitated, her eyes roaming my face, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

“Fuck…”
Again, she dropped her hands from my face and stepped back, this time taking two or three steps away from me.

“Cut!” Stuart’s voice rang out.

“Elise.” I reached out and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she said quietly, dropping my hand. “I don’t think I can do this.” She turned and walked a little way from me, just as Stuart came over to us.

“Everything all right?” he asked, glancing down at his filming schedule.

“Fine, Stu,” I said, looking over his shoulder towards Elise. “I think she just needs five minutes, okay?”

Stuart frowned. “Okay, five minutes,” he said, walking over towards the lighting guy to speak to him.

I wandered to Elise, still standing some way from me. She was hugging herself, staring down at a small beetle that was making its way unevenly over the earth by the trunk of the tree.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing down to it. “Keeps falling over on his back, but then just wriggles his legs a bit, then gets up and carries on like nothing’s the matter.”

“Are you okay?” I said, from just behind her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just…tired, I s’pose.”

“It’s been a long day,” I agreed.

“Very.”

“You wanna talk about the scene?” I asked. “We’ve pretty much sailed through all the other stuff.”

“The scene’s fine,” Elise said wearily. “I’ve no problem with the scene. I just needed a breather.”

“Cool,” I said, watching her closely.

I watched her take a deep breath, mentally composing herself, then lift her head slightly higher.

“Ready when you are, yeah?” she called to Stuart.

I followed Elise back to our marker by the tree and stood in front of her, taking her hand again, ready to shoot.

“Scene two, take three!” a voice, this time not Stuart’s, called out to us.

On our cue, we leant towards one another. Elise looked from my eyes to my lips and to my eyes again, sparking countless emotions inside me that I tried desperately to blot out. I wanted to cup her face in my hands, kiss her tenderly, to taste her lips on mine again. I wanted to kiss her again as Elise, not as Casey, and kiss her properly, lovingly, gently. Like I totally meant it. I was so close to just giving in to everything, wanting to wrap my arms around her and kiss her like I’d kissed her in the dressing room. I wanted her to respond the same way she had, knowing that she had to be thinking the same thing.

But neither of us could.

This time, it was me who pulled away just as our lips were centimetres from one another’s, pressing my lips together hard, then pulling my hands irritably through my hair, making Laura immediately come over to me to tidy it up again.

“Thought I was going to sneeze,” I mumbled unconvincingly to Stuart as he approached me. “Sorry.”

“Shall we try again?” Stuart said patiently as Laura moved away from me again. “Their kiss has to mean everything, so no holding back.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Kiss her like you really mean it, Holly.”

I glanced at Elise, standing close to me, staring down at her nails. When she sensed me looking at her she slowly looked back up at me, a strange expression on her face.

I stared back at her, neither of us wanting to be the first to look away. Finally, I dragged my eyes from hers and focused on our marker in the grass by our feet. If I kissed her like I meant it, then she’d know all about it, and so would every other person on the set. I watched as Stuart walked away from us and stood next to the camera, holding his hand up and giving us our cue. I took Elise’s hand once more and looked directly at her as Stuart called out some instructions a little way from us.

The second I heard Stuart call, “Action!” and with my head pounding and my breath coming faster with every second, I leant in towards Elise, placing my hand on her neck, pulling her closer to me.

“Kiss me like you really want me,” she whispered to me, so quietly I could barely hear her. “I want you to.”

I dragged her to me, pressing my lips hard to hers, kissing her hard then soft, hard then soft, running my hand round the back of her neck to pull her even closer to me. She fell into me, her body soft against mine, her arms tight around me, her hands on my back, sending icicles up and down it.

We kissed for what seemed like ages, Elise kissing me back as hard as I was kissing her, just as she’d done back in my dressing room, this time so passionately and forcefully I felt faint.

Finally, we heard Stuart yell, “Cut!” and give us a thumbs up. I pulled away from Elise in an instant, stepping back from her and dropping my arms from her.

“Like that, you mean?” I said.

Chapter Seventeen

The scene had to be greatly edited, of course. Okay, so I know Stuart had said for us to give it our everything, but somehow I don’t think he meant quite as much as we did. After I’d kissed her—
like I really wanted her—
I’d stumbled away, leaving her still standing under the tree. I didn’t need to turn round to see what her face was like; I just knew. I hadn’t been professional. Giving in to my longing for her like that had been totally unprofessional but totally unavoidable at the same time.

I wasn’t due to film with Elise again for another two days, but if I thought the time away from her would help settle my mind and give me head space in which to think about things, I was mistaken. And that was all thanks to Grace.

Grace had flown to Ireland the day after she’d gate-crashed my afternoon with Elise at the cafe and had spent some time at her parents’ cottage in Cork. Now she was coming back to London for a while, staying with an old friend of hers, and looking for work in the capital, which was all well and good, if only she’d stop texting me relentlessly to tell me of her plans. Her messages talked about the same stuff that she’d said to me when we’d talked in my car: that she missed me and still thought about me often and wanted to get together while she was in London.

I replied to a few, telling her I was busy—which was true—but she still kept messaging me. Her texts became increasingly flirty as the days wore on, despite me answering them with barely two words sometimes. It confused me all over again. Her texts suggested that she really meant everything she was saying, and that she genuinely had missed me, and truly did want to hook up with me again. They nearly drove me mad, churning stuff over and over, making me think that maybe, just maybe, she really did mean it this time.

I was reading one of Grace’s texts for about the third time when I finally saw Elise again. I was on my way to the green room for a ten-minute chill, walking and reading Grace’s message at the same time, when I pretty much walked straight into Elise as she came around a corner. We had one of those awkward moments where you look at each other for a second, which feels like a minute, before one of you speaks.

“Hey,” I finally managed to say, hoping she’d reply and not totally blank me. I hastily stuffed my phone into my trouser pocket the moment I saw her and stood, gawkily, in the middle of the corridor.

“Hey,” Elise said. “How are you?”

“Good,” I replied. “You?”

“Mm.” Elise nodded. “Good, too.”

We stood in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, the memory of what had happened the last time we’d seen each other hanging between us uneasily.

“I…uh…I was going to get a coffee, actually.” She nodded her head in the direction of the canteen. “You fancy it? Canteen crap today, though. No time to escape!” She looked exaggeratedly at her watch and shrugged.

Relief washed over me at the fact she hadn’t snubbed me and, even better, still wanted to hang out with me.

Despite that, I still found myself turning her down. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?” I said. “I’m trying to keep it professional—on your wishes—so maybe hanging out together between takes isn’t going to help.” I held her gaze. “It didn’t help the other day, did it? Up at the park?” My stomach flipped over at the memory of kissing her under the tree.

Elise’s face fell. “Please?” she said quietly. “We can still hang out as friends, can’t we?”

“This is tough for me, Elise,” I said. “I want to be with you, but…”

“I miss you,” she said simply, making me hastily drop my eyes from hers. “I just want to see you.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to maintain a calm face when I was dancing inside. “One coffee.”

We walked together in near silence, occasionally muttering a greeting to another cast member whenever we passed one on our way down there. It was fairly quiet when we arrived, but we still somehow ended up choosing a table in a far corner, both subconsciously wanting a bit of privacy. While I sat at the table and waited, Elise fetched a coffee for herself and a tea for me, then wandered back over to me. It was damn good to see her again. Even if it had only been a few days since I’d last seen her, it had seemed like the longest time ever. Any hope I might have had over that time of trying to get over her disappeared the second I saw her picking her way carefully through the chairs towards me, a cup in each hand, and a look of adorable concentration on her beautiful face, which made my insides totally melt. It’s always the simplest things when you’re mad for someone, I guess.

She handed me my tea, my hand coming up to take it from her. Our fingers touched as I took the cup that was offered to me, a small drop of tea spilling onto the table as my hand shook slightly from the contact.

Elise gave a nervous half laugh.

“Sorry!”

We both said it at the same time.

“My fault.” I put the cup down, afraid that Elise would see my hand still shaking, and took a paper napkin, dabbing it at the small pool of tea. “I’m such a klutz sometimes.”

“No, my fault.” I saw Elise’s face had flushed. “I kinda thrust it at you. Sorry.”

We both looked down at the table, painfully aware of the ridiculous situation.

“How are you?” I asked, just for something else to say.

“I’ve been filming with Pete all day.” Elise pulled a face. “Can you imagine?”

“I can’t imagine, no.” I laughed, rolling my eyes.

“And filming with Millie, too,” Elise continued. “Her last day tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“It is, yes.” I nodded. We carried on like this for a while—just idle, polite chit-chat. I didn’t mention again anything about what had happened under the tree on location, as though if neither of us talked about it, then it hadn’t happened. But it was there. It just remained this unspoken thing lingering between us, even though it really had happened.

All the while we talked, I kept reminding myself what Elise had said to me about us being friends, but at the same time I couldn’t stop thinking about the look she’d had on her face just now when she told me she’d missed me. Part of me was stoked that we could still chat easily just like we’d always done, while another part of me died whenever she looked at me a certain way, or when she played with her hair whilst talking to me, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to cope with just being her friend. At those times, I had a rush of longing and sadness, knowing that it was her who wanted it to be like this—all terribly polite and friendly—but never anything more, and if I didn’t want to lose her forever, then I’d have go along with it, however painful.

I wanted to tell her that I’d missed her, too. I wanted her to know that I’d spent every hour of every day since I’d last seen her just thinking about her, wondering how she was, where she was, what she was doing. I wanted her to know that I’d looked at my phone a hundred times in the days since Hyde Park, wanting her to text me, to speak to me, to let me know she was thinking about me as well. But she hadn’t, had she?

“So did you see your ex again?” Elise suddenly asked.

“I’m sorry?” I looked at her strangely, flummoxed and jolted from my thoughts.

“Your ex,” Elise repeated. “Have you seen her again since that time in the cafe?”

“No,” I said bluntly. “She’s in Ireland now anyway.”

“Ireland?” Elise raised her eyebrows.

“Living with her parents over there,” I said. “But she’s—”

I didn’t get a chance to finish or to tell her that Grace was bugging me to meet her again because Robbie suddenly appeared beside us. I’d been so surprised by Elise asking me about Grace that I hadn’t even seen him approaching our table.

“Can I join you?” he asked, sitting down at our table before either of us had answered. That was the end of our conversation on Grace. I glanced at Elise, trying to gauge whether she was pleased that Robbie had joined us, or whether, like me, she resented his intrusion. Her face gave nothing away.

“So this is where you’re both hiding!” Robbie opened his can of Coke with a loud fizz. “Is it Millie’s last day today?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, more sharply than I should have done. “We were just talking about it.”

“And you’re going to her do, of course.” It was more an assertion than an actual question to us both.

“We are.” I hoped my blunt replies might make Robbie realise he was an unwanted guest at our table, but he seemed oblivious.

“Did I tell you I got free tickets to see United on Saturday?” Robbie turned his attention to Elise, who listened, expressionless, as he continued to tell her about the football match he was going to.