Always Eli by Charlie Novak
Chapter Ten
Eli
“Good morning. Again,”Tristan said, appearing next to me as I refilled the coffee maker and slid the rainbow mug I’d brought in onto the tray. I pressed the button to dispense the coffee and looked up at him, giving him my most flirtatious smile, the one I always used to get what I wanted.
“You know, we’ve got to stop meeting like this. What will people think?”
“They’ll think that it’s only Wednesday of the longest week ever, and I seriously need some caffeine.” Tristan checked the water level in the kettle and flicked it on, giving a heavy sigh and leaning against the tiny expanse of counter next to me. Over the past couple of days, ever since our Mamma-Mia! not date, we’d fallen into an unspoken routine of taking several drinks breaks together. I wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but this morning I’d found myself repeatedly checking the time and waiting for half ten. Pamela had even caught me clock watching.
“That bad?”
“There are days when I love my job, and then there are days like today when I remember why I left both London and banking. I hate the people involved.” Tristan sighed again. “Sorry, I’m not making much sense.”
“I’m going to assume you’re dealing with some asshole banker, or ex-banker, who’s looking to have a life in the country and play lord of the manor, and you are stuck trying to deal with his finances and or processing his mortgage application.” Given the size of some of the properties we had on the market, it was the answer that made the most sense.
“You would be right.”
“You could just tell him to get fucked,” I suggested helpfully as my coffee finished brewing. I picked up the mug and inhaled the rich scent. Work was the only time I got decent coffee without paying through the nose for it, and I made sure to enjoy every sip. The kettle boiled for Tristan’s tea, and he let out a hollow chuckle as he threw a teabag into a ceramic mug, which was patterned with a pretty blue gradient.
“I wish. But unfortunately, I have bills to pay, and dog food is expensive.”
I laughed. “You can’t let your children starve. They’d never forgive you.”
“They’d be packing up their bags to go and live with Alexis. I’m surprised they haven’t already to be honest. She spoils them rotten.”
“You know the more tidbits I hear about your sister, the more I like her.”
“I’m never introducing the pair of you,” Tristan said, giving me a wry smile as he fished the milk out of the under-counter fridge.
“Why?”
“Because you will conspire against me, and I’ll never get a word in edgeways.”
“Are you saying I talk too much?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Yes.”
“You know, I should be offended, but it’s the truth, and even I know it.”
Tristan laughed, the sound sending a warm rush across my skin. He began to scoop sugar into his tea. “At least you know it.”
“I’m fully aware of all my flaws,” I said with a grin. “Talkative, overly dramatic, and far too devilishly handsome for my own good.” I knew I was pushing it, but I couldn’t stop myself. Flirting with Tristan was so natural. The unspoken boundary between us was getting thinner, and any excuses I’d flimsily erected for not wanting to pursue him were melting at speed.
Tristan cast his eyes over me slowly. “I’d agree with all of that.”
There was a moment of silence between us.
“Good,” I said finally. “I’m glad we agree.” I took another sip of my coffee, trying to calm the wild fluttering in my chest which felt like I’d just downed six double espressos. “But I think you might be even more handsome than me.”
Tristan’s mouth twitched, and I saw pink appear around his hairline like he’d caught the sun. “Thanks.”
The phone rang on my desk, and I realised our time together was up. I sauntered out, leaving him behind to finish making his tea. “You’re cute too,” I said, pausing in the doorway to look back over my shoulder at him.
I didn’t stay to see how pink his face went.
“Do you want a biscuit?” I asked when Tristan appeared at the bottom of the stairs on Friday afternoon for our last tea break of the week. “Usually, these are highly secret, special biscuits, but Pamela told me to offer you one.”
Pamela had also had some choice words to say about our level of flirting, but I wasn’t going to repeat them to Tristan. They could basically be summed up as “stop flirting and kiss the man already”. At first, I had attempted to deny there was even any flirting going on, but Pamela had asked me if I thought she’d been born yesterday. I’d begrudgingly given her an overview of everything in strict confidence, leaving out some of the more salacious details like the lolly sucking. She’d given me a withering look and gone back to work, muttering something about men being daft under her breath. Frankly, she was probably right.
I still wasn’t quite sure why I wasn’t throwing myself at Tristan.
I mean, I was but just a lot more subtly than usual. Normally, if things were taking this long, I’d have gotten bored by now.
The whole situation was throwing me for a loop, and I still had no idea which way was up.
“Special, secret biscuits?” Tristan asked, giving me one of his charming smiles as he strolled towards my desk. “Do I have to swear a blood oath to be allowed one?”
“Not today but only because blood is messy, and I don’t fancy cleaning it up.” I opened the tin of biscuits that sat on my desk and shook them at him. “Just promise me you won’t tell anyone else. Especially not the assholes up in sales.”
“I promise,” said Tristan, crossing his heart before taking a triple chocolate cookie off the top. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome. Tea?”
“Tea.”
I stood up and headed for the kitchenette. “Would you like tea, Pamela?”
“I will never say no to tea,” she said. She’d spent the afternoon trying to co-ordinate the payment and delivery of some new brochures, which Hayden, our designer, had ordered. Except he hadn’t told anyone he’d ordered them and then pissed off yesterday for a long weekend, leaving Pamela to pick up the pieces.
“Poor Pamela is a little stressed this afternoon,” I said to Tristan, who stood in the doorway nibbling his cookie. I filled the kettle and relayed the whole brochure saga to him while he sighed and rolled his eyes.
“That sounds like Hayden. I’ve not worked with him much, but I get the feeling he forgets things. Or he does things he and Holly have agreed on and then doesn’t tell anyone else about them.”
“How helpful,” I said sarcastically, pulling out some teabags and our mugs. I flitted between drinking tea and coffee depending on both my mood and the time of day. Usually it was coffee in the morning and when I needed a pick me up and tea in the afternoons and when I was stressed. There was no problem on earth that couldn’t be solved with a nice cup of tea. “Not like we needed that information at all. This is why I hate people.”
Tristan laughed. “You? Hate people?”
“Yes, I am very spiteful and vindictive when I feel like it. Once, when I was at primary school, one of the kids in my class stole my gel pens because they were ‘for girls’, and she didn’t think I should have them. When I complained, I was told I needed to share because that was the polite thing to do. Plus, I was a boy, and playground rules meant I couldn’t hit her. So I waited until playtime, told the teacher I felt sick so I could stay in, and took all the ink cartridges out of the gel pens in her pencil case and hid them in my sister’s lunchbox.”
“That is both petty and vindictive,” Tristan said, looking almost impressed. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” I grinned and began to pour the boiling water. “Well, I mean the girl cried and complained that I’d stolen her gel pens, but she couldn’t prove it was me. And they were my pens in the first place. Nobody messes with me and gets away with it. I mean, one of Richard’s ex-girlfriends is permanently enshrined in one of my drag routines because of what happened at the family dinner he brought her too.”
“Ohhh, was that the pasta fight?” Tristan asked. “I heard about that. Richard was pissed. I’d tried to warn him though. MLMs are a scam, and some of the people who sell that stuff are… well… devoted to a scary level of intensity.”
“That’s an incredibly polite way to put it.” I laughed, scooping the tea bags out of the mugs with a spoon and dumping them into the bin before I began to doctor my tea and Pamela’s. “Personally, I’d have said she was batshit. We kept telling her we weren’t interested in whatever fake aloe supplement shit she was trying to extol, but she wouldn’t listen. And then she cornered Finn.” I shook my head to myself and smiled as the memory resurfaced. “Rookie mistake there.”
Oscar, the oldest of Mimbles’s children and the one below Richard, was incredibly overprotective of Finn. We all were to some degree, but Oscar seemed to view his baby brother as some sort of helpless kitten. When said MLM girlfriend had cornered Finn, Oscar’s warning lights went off, and the ensuing conversation ended with him dumping pasta salad all over her. Then it all went downhill from there. I think the only reason there weren’t fisticuffs on the lawn was because Richard knew Oscar would hand his ass to him on a plate within ten seconds.
Tristan hummed. “I remember Richard talking it through with me afterwards. He did admit that maybe he shouldn’t have brought her to meet you, and that maybe she wasn’t the right girl for him.”
“He admitted that? How gracious of him. Still didn’t stop him from dating more terrible women.” I waved at the milk and sugar. “How do you take your tea?”
“Oh, a little milk and three sugars please. Do you want me to do it?”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’re right though. About your brother. I think after that it was the Maldives holiday woman who was still married, then the one who wanted them to get matching tattoos after two weeks.”
“You know, my brother’s dating adventures make my own life look very tame in comparison.”
“You mean nobody’s tried to throw you a surprise wedding before?” Tristan asked with a wry smile as I handed him his mug.
“Sadly not.”
There was a pause for a moment. “Do you think you’d ever want to?”
“Want to what?” I asked. I got the feeling I knew what he was asking—having gotten quite good at following random conversation jumps thanks to Lewis’s ability to go from Point A to Point J without any stops in between—but I wanted to be sure.
“Get married.” Tristan’s voice was very quiet, and he seemed to be looking into the bottom of his mug like there was something interesting stuck there.
“Perhaps. It depends really. I mean, part of me thinks marriage is a very heteronormative institution that is largely outdated, but then again, it might be nice.” The cynic in me had never liked the idea of marriage, but the romantic in me liked it a great deal. I vacillated between the two depending on my general life situation. But Tristan wasn’t asking for my TED Talk on my views on marriage. He was asking because he wanted to get married one day. At least that’s what I assumed. Otherwise, why would he ask. I made a mental note to revisit the conversation at some point in the future. “I think if I met the right person I would. I think I’d do a lot of things I wouldn’t always consider for that person.”
Tristan seemed to relax slightly. I picked up my mug and shot him my cheekiest grin. “Besides, I’d quite like a day where everything revolved around me and there was a cake bigger than my head.”
“It would have to be a very big cake then,” he said, catching my eye.
“You cheeky bastard!” I laughed. “That’s savage, Mr. Rose. I never knew you had it in you.”
As I’d predicted, there were hidden depths to Tristan—deep wells full of secrets and sass that nobody had taken the time to explore. He intrigued me like a puzzle box I couldn’t work out how to solve. I wanted to, though, because underneath the quiet, proper exterior was a man who never seemed to let the world see who he really was. Who’d been put in a little box and had stayed there.
I wanted to help him break free.
Even if that just involved singing ABBA songs loudly once in a while.
“So,” I said, sipping my tea, “any exciting plans for this weekend?”