Love in London by Flora Ferrari

Chapter Seventeen

Gabby

“Seriously, Oz,” I complain, squeezing his hand tighter where it’s entangled with mine on the backseat of the cab. “You shouldn’t have bought all of them.”

“Why not?” Oz asks. He looks at me seriously, his eyes piercing into mine. “I have the money. You look good in all of them. Why shouldn’t I be selfish and want to see you wear them?”

“But you won’t,” I say softly, even though I kind of hate myself for bringing it up. “I can’t possibly wear all of these clothes before I have to go home at the end of the week. You won’t see all of them.”

Oz shrugs, lightheartedly. It makes my hand jump as he shifts. “Then you’ll have to take pictures when you get back home and send them to me.”

My heart drops, just a little bit. When I get back home. No, invite to stay longer, then. Not that I was expecting it or even hoping for it. It’s just – that was the perfect opportunity for him to say it, and he didn’t. Which means it’s not going to happen. In just a few days, I leave here, and I might not come back at all – or if I do, it will be months from now, and he’ll probably have moved on by then.

“You’re going to ship all of this back with me?” I ask, pretending not to notice what he said or that it hasn’t affected me. “I don’t know if it will fit in my suitcase.”

“Of course, I’ll arrange for it to join you,” he says with a smile. “Wouldn’t be much of a gift if you had to pay excess luggage fees to enjoy it.”

I glance out of the window and realize we’re pulling up in front of a huge glass and stone building, an impressive modern construction right by the river. The driver is stopping, so I guess this is where we’re headed. “Is this where you live?” I ask.

“Yep,” Oz replies, leaning over quickly to pay the fare, giving me a grin. “Ready to come up and see it?”

I remember why we’re here, and the excitement rushes back through my body again. “I’m ready,” I say, even though the trembling nerves inside me aren’t quite sure.

Even if they aren’t, something else is. The heat pooling in the bottom of my stomach in anticipation of what's to come.

Oz takes my hand again as the taxi pulls away, and keys in a code at the door to let us in. Then we’re moving to an elevator and up – and up – and up…

I start to think about what I actually just saw. The lobby. It was… plush, fancy. And there was a doorman, even though he wasn’t at the door itself, but just inside. Oz put all of our bags down beside him without even mentioning it, so I guess he must be bringing them up for us. And then there was the uniform he was wearing – a kind of red suit with a plain white shirt and a red tie. Very nice. Even for a doorman.

And the elevator is marked with a lot of floors, but we seem to be going past all of them, and…

The penthouse. We stop at the penthouse.

Because, of course, we do.

Oz lives in the penthouse suite of the fanciest apartment building I’ve ever been in. That figures.

The doors slide open and Oz walks me to a door which he unlocks, letting me inside. Behind it is something that almost defies words.

Safe to say, it makes the lobby look like it was outfitted at a bargain bin.

Oz’s home is decked out in mostly dark or neutral shades, dark wood furniture with black velvet fabric, walls in a shade of paint that isn’t quite white but isn’t so far as to be called grey – a soothing kind of tone that makes all the black seem less severe. There are black framed works of art on the walls, sculptures made of hard and masculine materials in dark colors, and even the extremely plush carpet is a soft grey.

All of it leads to one thing, and one thing that can’t be ignored. The wall at the other side of the room is all glass, a view right out over the Thames and beyond. From here, it looks like you can see the whole of London.

It’s amazing.

And I can’t even think about how much it must have cost.

“I can’t believe you live here,” I say out loud, turning in a circle of wonder.

Oz laughs. “It took me a long time to get here,” he says. “Fifteen years. If you’d met me when I graduated, you wouldn’t have been so impressed.”

“But I’m meeting you now,” I say, turning to look at him. Behind us at the door, there’s a flurry of activity, the doorman, and someone else I haven’t seen yet in the same red uniform, bringing up all the bags of clothes we bought.

“You are,” Oz says, bending softly to kiss me on the lips.

Once everything is inside and the others are gone, it’s just the two of us alone in his penthouse apartment. I’ve been wandering around the living room, mostly because I feel a little awkward about people doing manual labor on my behalf, but now there’s no excuse for hiding anymore. Oz joins me looking out of the windows across the city, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders.

“I never get tired of it,” he says.

I love to hear his voice, how easy it is to see that he really loves this place. It makes me happy to know that he is. It really does.

But…

At the same time, a traitorous part of me listens to what he says and hears something else. Hears, he would never leave this place. He would never want to be anywhere else, and this place is… well, it’s a penthouse. The kind of place a bachelor lives alone. Not somewhere suitable for a family. And I do want a family, more than anything. I’ve always been sure of that.

Which means, when you put it all together, there’s just one more barrier between us. One more reason why this weekend is the end of our relationship, full stop. If you can even call it a relationship. Isn’t it just sex? We haven’t even spoken about it being anything more. And it’s not like I have a great deal of experience in this area.

Oz’s hands work gently across my shoulders, smoothing out some of the tension which has rapidly gathered there, and I let out a loud groan.

“Good?” he asks. In the pane of glass, I can make out his reflection over my shoulder, his teasing smile.

“Really good,” I say. “I hadn’t realized how much those muscles were aching until you started to rub them. I guess it’s been a busy week.”

“You had that long flight, too,” Oz murmurs, starting to knead my muscles more purposefully. It’s like heaven, a short burst of pain when he touches the muscles, but then utter relief as he rolls his thumbs over them, making them finally loosen up. “That’s never good for your body.”

“You would know, I guess,” I say, half-joking but half-digging for information. “You must be on international flights a lot.”

“Not as much these days,” Oz says quietly, which almost makes me want to cry in frustration. Why do there have to be so many reasons for us not to see each other? Why can’t there be just one coincidence, one excuse, that means we can?

The only way I might see him again, ever, at this rate is if I do decide to stay here in London and study. And I shouldn’t make that decision based only on him. I know I shouldn’t. This is about my life, my future career.

But…

“Come over and lay down,” Oz says, gently nudging me towards his couch. “You need some proper work here. You’re so full of tension.”

He doesn’t know the half of it.

“Okay,” I murmur weakly, allowing him to guide me over. I lay down on my front, pillowing my head on my arms in front of me, trying to forget about all the negativity. We’re here together, right now. That’s all that should matter. I need to live in this moment, to enjoy it to the fullest.

I close my eyes as his hands land on my back again and try to shut out everything else until it’s just the two of us floating above the city high up and far away from all of my worries.