At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

for the others. I flung all of the caps at the bin, managing to get one of them in, the others clanging to the floor as the doorbell rang a second time. I tutted, grabbing the bottles as I went to answer the door myself.

I stepped out of the kitchen, the cool bottles chinking in my hands, just in time to see that Charlie was standing at the door, the Yale lock already unlatched in his hand. I glanced through the frosted window pane and the bottom fell out of my stomach as I recognised the silhouette of the person on the other side.

‘Charlie, no,’ I whisper-shouted and moved towards him at what felt like quarter speed. But he didn’t hear me and before I could move more than three steps, the door was open and the two men were staring at each other awkwardly.

I heard a small whimper leave my throat. There was no hiding. I was in plain view, so I slapped on a smile and pretended that this wasn’t going to be the world’s most awkward encounter. ‘Joel. Hi.’ I forced my feet to move towards him, even though my body was urging me to turn and run in the opposite direction. I’d be able to scale the back fence if I really needed to, right?

‘Hi,’ Joel said, his voice small, shocked. He looked from me to Charlie and then to the box sitting in his hands.

There was a moment of crippling, writhing silence where not one single member of our Mexican stand-off had any idea what to do.

Eventually Charlie outstretched his hand in Joel’s direction.

‘Hi, I’m Charlie Stone,’ he said with a hastily slapped-on cheerfulness that I had seen so many times, but only this time did I see through it. Joel looked down at his hand as if he suspected it rigged with explosives, before taking it and shaking it firmly.

‘Joel. Oni.’

I don’t know why they were being so formal, acting like this was a job interview.

‘Nice t’meet yer,’ Charlie uttered.

‘You too,’ Joel mumbled unconvincingly before looking at me with boiling eyes. ‘Erm …’ He dithered in that aggressively awkward way that he always did and stepped forward, holding the box out to me. From here I could already see the pitiful array of things inside. An old toothbrush, the bristles way past the point of usability, a rechargeable camera battery for a camera I no longer owned, some out-of-date blush, in a garishly bright pink, from about five years ago, and a strategically placed photograph of the two of us at a family barbecue with his parents. This was by far the weakest of the boxes he’d presented to me. He must have been running out of things to fill them with by now. ‘I don’t know if you still need any of it, but I thought you’d want them all the same.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, handing Charlie the beers and taking the box from Joel.

Joel’s hand brushed mine, accidentally on purpose, as I took it from him. I placed the box down in the hallway, successfully hiding the wave of nostalgia that crashed over me like a tsunami when I looked at the photograph of us that sat in the box. I remembered that day well; it was one of my favourite memories with Joel.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked, turning back to him.

‘Fine. Fine. I’m fine.’ He looked from Charlie to me, wounded. ‘Thriving, one might say.’

We both frowned at his strange choice of words and obvious lie.

Don’t do it, I said to myself inside my head. Don’t you dare say it, Nell. Keep your mouth shut and do not let those words in your brain come out of your mouth. ‘You can come in if you like.’ I hated myself!

Please refuse. Please, please refuse.

‘No, I don’t think that would be good for anyone involved.’ He looked up at Charlie, jealousy-fuelled hatred all over his face.

‘Okay, well thank you,’ I said. ‘For the box.’

‘You’re welcome. Enjoy your evening,’ he said through gritted teeth, gave Charlie one last long stare, turned and walked away.

As I watched his figure disappear, the one that had once caused me to pulse with excitement whenever I saw it coming towards me, I felt a deep chasm of sadness open up inside me. How easy it actually was for inseparable people to separate, for lovers to drift to strangers, before becoming nothing at all.

I sat on the sofa beside Ned, with Charlie sitting on a mound of scatter cushions on the floor, his shoulder leaning against my leg as he watched the film with wide, interested eyes.

Needless to say, I didn’t pay much attention. It’s hard to do so when you find out that the man you have a crush on had planned to kill himself less than a month earlier.

The thought of him not being here, of me never knowing him, was too upsetting for me to even contemplate and that only added to the fear that whatever had overwhelmed him twice before, may well overwhelm him again.

It wasn’t until the second half of the film until I felt his fingertips snake under the hem of my jeans. He didn’t venture far, but the heat of his skin on mine, no matter how little skin that was, made me forget how to breathe. His fingers moved in circles, etching rings of goose bumps on my flesh, and I wondered how it might be to feel those goose bumps elsewhere, to have them cover me from head to toe.

It was almost half ten before Charlie and I found ourselves stood on either side of the open front door, the frigid air seeping in and raising the hairs on my legs that I probably needed to start doing something about.

‘Thank you,’ he said, his hands shoved into his pockets against the cold and, I suspected, out of nerves. He was fully exposed to me now, his pains an open wound for me to see and all I wanted to