Page 11 of The Last Casterglass
She let out a hard huff of something that sounded almost like laughter before she gave a little shrug. “Yes, I suppose it is,” she said, after a pause that made Oliver wonder.
“Do you love them in the same way?” he asked. “Your family and the place itself?”
“We weren’t talking about me,” she replied, and somehow that felt like the end of the conversation. They didn’t talk any more after that, anyway. Seph continued staring out the window and Oliver could not think of another line of conversation innocuous enough without it sounding either feeble or forced.
Still, the silence that ensued the rest of the way to Broughtonalmostfelt companionable, Oliver decided as he parked on the high street near the village bakery. It hadn’t been tense, at least. Well, nottootense. He’d already realised getting to know Seph was going to be challenging, so he didn’t feel particularly discouraged by her guarded answers. He was intrigued more than anything else, but also determined. A habit he had that had occasionally been to his own detriment, to be sure.Stop being such a try-hard, Oliver. Why do you have to impress people so much? Are you so scared they won’t like you?
In the quiet of the car, he could hear his cousin’s jeering voice before he made himself silence it.
“Right,” he told Seph with a smile. “Time for a coffee.”
*
She was makinga mess of this, Seph knew full well. Oliver asking all those nosy questions…! It made her feel itchy inside, and she’d had to fight an urge to squirm in her seat all the way from Casterglass. Loving people and places…well, she certainly knew how much her parents loved Casterglass, but she hadn’t wanted to get into it with Oliver. She’d either sound pathetic or bitter, and maybe she was both, but she could do her best not to seem it. Mentally she shook her head. Good grief, but she was hopeless. He was going to be seriously regretting asking her out for a coffee. She was seriously regretting it, already. Well, Seph amended as they headed into the bakery, sort of.
Because, she realised, as uncomfortable as Oliver’s well-intentioned questions made her, there had been something invigorating about them, too. About someone trying to get to know her. Understand her. Yes, that was scary, very scary, but wasn’t it what she’d wanted all along? For someone to care enough to ask? To listen?
“So what will we be having?” Oliver asked as they came up to the counter. “Latte, cappuccino, or a skinny soy double espresso with a shot of sugar-free vanilla?”
She rolled her eyes. “As if.”
“What?” He widened his eyes innocently. “That’s what I’m having.”
She let out a surprised guffaw of laughter, making her blush and Oliver grin. “You are not.”
“Well…I might settle for a straight Americano, but you know, they probably don’t have sugar-free vanilla, anyway.”
“Actually, we do.” The lady behind the counter was smiling at them in a teasing way that made Seph think she believed them to be on a date. Instead of prickling at such a notion, however, she found herself relaxing into it. Why not let the lady think that? Anyway, maybe it was true. Sort of. A very little bit.
“I’ll have a double-shot latte, please,” she said firmly, and Oliver ordered an Americano before insisting on buying an enormous slice of Victoria sponge and a flapjack nearly the size of an electronic tablet as well.
“You can’t have coffee without cake,” he stated, as if it were a law written in stone, and they took their cups and plates to a table in the corner, by the window overlooking the street.
“So.” He plunged right in, giving her a direct look as he speared a large forkful of cake. “Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.”
Seph nearly choked on her latte. That, she thought, was a horrifying prospect. “What…!”
He shrugged as he chewed and then swallowed his bite of cake. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing. No deep secrets if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head slowly, reluctant to part with any information even as she searched for some innocuous fact to offer him.
“I’ll go first, if you like,” he said. “I came down with chicken pox three times.”
“What!” She shook her head again. “That’s impossible.”
“Nope. Doctors confirmed it. Very rare, but it happened. All mild cases, fortunately. Fairly inconvenient, though. The last time I was nineteen. Spots all over my face. Awkward.”
She smiled a little at that. “Hmm.” She could, Seph thought, probably find a similarly innocent anecdote about childhood diseases or the like, if she tried. “I missed three months of school,” she finally told him, “because I came down with the measles.”
“The measles!” Oliver looked surprised. “You weren’t vaccinated?”
Maybe not so innocuous, then, Seph realised with a lurch of alarm. She’d forgotten about the whole vaccination thing. “No, I didn’t have any vaccinations until I was twelve.”
“None? Why not?”
She took a sip of her coffee, her gaze sliding away. Oliver’s mum had dumped him on his uncle’s doorstep, she reminded herself, and he’d seemed surprisingly blasé about it. So she could be the same about this. “My parents forgot, actually. About them.”About me.
Oliver’s forehead furrowed. “Forgot?”