Fall from India Place (On Dublin Street #4)(30)
Author: Samantha Young

Her head jerked up from her bag and she frowned at me. “Is whit you?”

“Am I the reason you don’t want to speak up in class?”

She shrugged.

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not the others. It can’t be. You’ve seen them struggle, and you’ve witnessed how patient and kind the class is with one another. You yourself have shown patience. Kindness. So if they’re not the ones who make you uncomfortable, who make you afraid, is it me?”

“I’m no afraid,” she snapped.

I strode toward her and gently took the book out of her hands. Opening it up to the chapter we’d just been discussing, I handed it back to her. “Read the first two sentences out to me.”

Lorraine looked at me incredulously. However, I saw what she was so desperately trying to hide. I saw the fear.

She snatched the book out of my hands and pulled it toward her face. She swallowed. Hard. With painstaking care she began to read to me. Almost near the end, she faltered on a word. Glancing up at me warily, she flushed.

I kept my face perfectly blank. “Sound it out.”

The anger flashed in her eyes and yet she looked back at the page. “It’s no a word.” She frowned. “Fuh-ri-gid,” she said, pronouncing it almost like “frigate.”

“Do you remember the rules for hard and soft g’s? Usually, when g meets a, o, or u it’s a hard g. The guh sound. Like gap. But usually when it meets e, y, or an i, it’s a soft g. The juh sound.”

Lorraine stared at the word. “It’s an i. Fuh-ri-gid. Fuhrigid.” Her eyes scanned the sentence that preceded it and the tension melted out of her as she said, “Frigid.” She shrugged. “I always thought that word wis spelt wi a j.”

I took a step back from her. “That was well done.”

She ducked her head. “Aye, whitever.” Abruptly she grabbed her bag and brushed past me. “See ye next week.”

I stared after her in thought for a while after she left the room. Lorraine was definitely rough around the edges, lacking in good manners and social graces, but I couldn’t help but respect someone who pushed through despite her fears.

With my heart pounding and my stomach roiling with waves of nausea, I settled onto my window seat in the living room, staring out at the dark, glistening street. Pools of light glimmered here and there where streetlights glanced off puddles made from the recent rainfall. I clutched my phone in my hand and sucked in a deep breath.

Scrolling through my recent call list I found the number, and with Lorraine’s perseverance and Dad’s question at the forefront of my mind, I pressed the CALL button.

It rang three times before… “Hannah?” Marco answered, pleasant surprise in his deep voice.

“Hi,” I replied quietly, willing my heart to slow. “I…”

His voice was filled with a concern I remembered all too well as he asked, “Are you okay?”

I exhaled slowly. “I’ve decided I do want to know why you left me that night.”

He was quiet for a moment and I was just about to break the silence when he said, “I want to ask why the sudden change of heart, but I’m not going to in case I scare you off. I’m glad you called, but I’d rather discuss it in person. Would that be okay with you?”

“If I say no you’re only going to turn up at my next dental appointment, right?”

He laughed quietly, a seriously delicious sound that made my scalp tingle. “Whatever it takes.”

“I still can’t believe you came to my book group,” I muttered.

“It got you to call me, didn’t it?”

“Tread carefully, Mr. D’Alessandro,” I warned.

He chuckled. “Fine. I’ll be good… if you invite me over to your place tomorrow night to talk.”

Trepidation shot through me at the thought of us being alone in my flat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Hannah, what we have to discuss is personal. What I have to tell you is personal and I don’t particularly feel comfortable with the stranger behind us in a café listening in.”

I processed that, and unfortunately had to admit that he was right. I didn’t want a stranger listening in on us either. “Fine,” I grumbled, giving him my address. “Six o’clock.”

“Does it include dinner?” he asked hopefully, a boyish cheekiness in the question that surprised me.

“We’ll see.” I hung up without saying good-bye.

I felt much too hot all over and suddenly restless as adrenaline pumped through my body. I hadn’t felt this awake in a long, long time.

School was a blur. I was so preoccupied with the thought of Marco being at my place that night that I don’t even know how I got through the lessons. Somehow I made it, and with my stomach a jumpy, jittery mess, I hurried home after work and began preparing dinner. I didn’t know what to cook because I didn’t want Marco to think I was trying to impress him, but I also didn’t want to poison him with something he was allergic to.

I’d settled on pasta and salad. Surely you couldn’t go wrong with pasta and salad.

It went against the manners of being a good hostess (which my mother had ingrained in me from the age of three) not to dress the table when I was having someone over for dinner, but I also didn’t want Marco to think this was something it wasn’t.

Who was I kidding? I didn’t even know what this was.

I changed from my work clothes into a pair of well-worn jeans and a long-sleeved thermal top. Twisting my hair up into a messy bun, I looked in the mirror and nodded, pleased with my reflection. The jeans made my arse look great, the top was form-fitting and made my boobs look good, but overall the outfit said “I’m just hanging at home and I could give a shit what you think about me.”

“Perfect.”

I spun around, marching out of my bedroom toward the kitchen, and my door buzzer sounded, drawing me to a halt.

I was going to throw up. I was going to upchuck all over my nice hardwood floors.

“Deep breaths,” I coached myself, turning back toward the door.

“Hello?” I asked upon lifting the receiver.

“It’s Marco.”

Yup, definitely going to upchuck. I pressed the entrance door key, letting him into the building.

With blood rushing in my ears, I attempted to prepare myself to see him again, and drew on my powers of indifference. Opening my door, I listened to his footsteps as he climbed the stairs to my flat.