At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

Una, and Jamie and I had kinda been shoved together and forced to be friends. In the end, I didn’t try to poison myself and went out with them instead. There was a group of about ten of us, all leering, cocky little bastards, the lot of ’em. We went to this nightclub in town, the one with the big gold sign. You know it?’ he asked looking up.

I nodded and then scrunched up my nose. ‘I went there once when I was eighteen.’

He continued. ‘So, I’m in this club and hating every moment of it. The lights were too bright, the music was deafening and the people – sweet Jesus. I need to tell my mammy to stop praying for the youth of today because she’s fighting a losing battle on that one. But, anyway, Jamie sends this girl my way. She couldn’t have been older than twenty and had left the house without ninety per cent of her clothes. I didn’t want to talk to her, doubt I could even hear a word she said over the noise, but I held out my hand and said hi. This girl grabbed my hand and put it straight on her boob then she just pulled me in and kissed me.’

A twang in my chest. The feeling of curdled ice cream got a little stronger.

‘I try to push her away but she’s on me like a limpet,’ he carries on. ‘So, in the end I just roll with it. Try to pretend it’s Abi. But it wasn’t like any kisses I’d ever had with Abi. Kisses with someone you love are emotional, intimate – you know this – but that kiss was like … it was purely about sex and her trying to check if I still had tonsils with her tongue. I eventually got her off of me and went to the bathroom where I ended up gettin’ so frustrated with myself that I punched the reflection of myself in the mirror and cut up my hand.’ He flashed his hand to me and, once again, I saw the hairline scars that I’d noticed on that first day I’d met him, running over his knuckles like fractals of ice. ‘I wrapped my hand up in toilet paper and went out to find Jamie to tell him I’d better take myself out before I was kicked out and what did I find?’

‘I dread to think what you’d find in there.’

‘I find Jamie in the smoking area with some girl pressed up against the wall.’ He gritted his teeth together and shook his head. ‘There I was, attempting to forget that my wife was dead by attempting to have a “good time” and there was Jamie, making a fool of his own wife by stickin’ it wherever would take it.’

‘Oh my God. What did you do?’ I asked, shocked.

‘I started screamin’ at him. His pupils were the size of golf balls and he kept tellin’ me to calm down. Needless to say, I didn’t.

‘He ended up lampin’ me round the head when I said that he needed to show Una some respect and tell her. So, I punched him right back. It looked ten times worse than it was because of the blood from the mirror, but they threw me out anyway and I never spoke to Jamie again after that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And that is the story of the only person who has been anywhere near me, since Abi and also about how I earned a lifetime ban from that club.’

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment or two.

‘I didn’t know you were a felon,’ I jested to try and ease the tension.

‘I resigned myself to the monk’s way of life after that. Hell, I’m not even sure if everything still works down there.’

Would you like me to check? I thought and then instantly started chastising myself.

‘I didn’t think it would happen again.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Feelin’ things for someone. I thought all of that was done with …’ he turned and looked me directly in the eyes ‘… until you threw a sandwich at me.’

A pregnant pause. A flickering of eyelids, unsure whether to look away or not.

‘You know, I’ve heard this before,’ I said, just to fill the aching silence. ‘Most men do find me irresistible, especially the way I eat like a starving bloodhound. It’s kind of like a fetish.’

‘That’s it!’ He held up a finger in the air between us. ‘That’s what yer looked like at dinner.’

We both chuckled.

‘Nell,’ Charlie uttered quietly and I looked up. Before my brain had time to even compute the fact that his finger was under my chin and his face was moving closer, he already had his lips pressed to mine and I was holding a startled breath in my chest.

His lips were warm and soft, a stark contrast to the stubble that grated against my face as his lips moved over mine. Gentle knuckles moved along the line of my jaw, his fingers unfurling and sliding into my hair as he pulled me closer to him. My blood thundered through my ears, blocking out the sounds of my heavy breaths, the smack of lip upon lip.

Was this wrong? Should this be happening now, after he’d just told me about Abi? Or was that the last bit of withheld information, the final obstacle to overcome, before allowing himself to do this?

I had never really settled on a decision as to whether I believed in any sort of afterlife, but if there was one and ghosts were real, what would Abi have to say about this?

I had no idea what she looked like but I could imagine her there, a faceless blur in my periphery staring daggers at me while I made out with her husband.

Well, seems as though it IS all still in working order down there, she’d be saying, or something equally as snarky.

I think that our minds must have had the same thought at the same time,