Exclusive Fifth Chapter of It Felt Like A Kiss by Sarra Manning

Chapter 5

Ellie jerked, because that simple, incidental touch, a hand on her arm just below her elbow to guide her, steady her, still her, sent tingles racing through her.

Not tingles – that was ridiculous – but it was as if her skin had just sat there, covering her arm, not really doing much and now it felt fully alive for the first time. All it had needed was the right kind of touch to wake it from a long slumber.

So, so weird, but then the last twenty-four hours had been one hellish event after another, so it was no wonder that Ellie was so overwrought. ‘Careful!’ a voice said. A deep pleasant voice that Ellie didn’t recognize but which still sounded familiar. ‘It’s dangerous to text and walk at the same time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ellie said, looking up from her phone, which she’d been staring at without even seeing it, into a kind, clever face and a smile that she’d have wanted to get to know better if she hadn’t still been aware of Lara and Rose just outside her line of vision. She shook her head slightly so she could focus on his hand, which hadn’t left her arm and, oh, it was on the move, cupping her elbow.

‘We’re causing a jam.’ The man with the tingling fingertips gave Ellie another devastating smile as he steered her to the right so they were standing against a fence and not blocking any major thoroughfares. ‘That’s better.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said again. ‘I’m not normally quite so feeble-minded.’

‘Not feeble-minded,’ he demurred, and he was smiling again, showing two rows of beautifully even, beautifully white teeth. ‘It’s so easy to get distracted. Yesterday I had to take a work call and I found myself deep in something called the Field of Avalon. It took hours to retrace my steps.’

‘Oh, so are you camping, then?’ Ellie asked, because he was wearing navy-blue chino shorts that ended just above the knee, with a short-sleeved blue and white checked shirt and dark blue Converses. He looked box fresh, not as if he’d spent the night in a tent.

‘God, no! I can’t imagine anything worse than that. I’m staying in a bed and breakfast a few miles away and taxiing on and off site. I’d rather have a decent night’s sleep in a proper bed than collect cool points and insect bites,’ he said a little defensively, but he was in luck because Ellie was one of the few people at Glastonbury who wouldn’t think ill of someone with the good sense to stay somewhere that had hot and cold running water.

‘I stayed in a B and B last year,’ she told him. ‘It was great, but my friends threatened to disown me. This year I’m staying in a luxury yurt.’

He was wearing shades but now he lifted them up to reveal blue eyes. ‘I’ve heard all sorts of stories about the luxury yurts,’ he said, and Ellie thought that he might just be flirting with her.

Not that she was going to flirt back because she already had a boyfriend. But she didn’t want to think about Richey right now, not when all she wanted to think about was the man in front of her and how the colour of his eyes reminded her of the deep, deep peacock blue of her favourite Mac eyeshadow, which had been discontinued a couple of years ago. ‘Stories about proper beds and duvets? And really soft rugs?’

‘Is there an en suite?’ he asked eagerly.

Ellie shook her head. ‘No, but there are luxury bathroom facilities and twenty-four-hour security so I forbear.’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ he said, and Ellie wanted to keep him talking, to stay here with him for just a little longer, and also she liked the shapes his mouth made as he spoke. It was only looking. There was no harm in looking.

Think of something to say. Keep him here. Something funny and interesting and cool. ‘I put my wellies on because I was sure it was going to rain and now my feet are getting horribly moist,’ Ellie said, and it was the single worst thing she’d ever said to anyone. Even worse than the time when Tess had introduced Ellie to her new boyfriend and Ellie had laughed uproariously and said, ‘Yeah, right. New gay best friend, more like,’ and actually Alastair had been as straight as they come, though Ellie and Lola still had their doubts. Or the time that Ari had asked her to be honest and Ellie had said that the new song she’d been working on for nearly a month sounded like a really shit version of ‘Agadoo’.

It was as bad as that.

But this man, this beautiful man, looked down at Ellie’s green Hunters, then back at her face and smiled. ‘But if it does rain, at least your feet will be dry. Well, dry and moist.’

‘And I think the luxury yurt is rainproof,’ Ellie said, because she was destined to spout utter crap for the duration of this conversation. There was nothing she could do about it and he was going to walk away any minute now and she didn’t even know why the thought of him walking away made her feel panicky and bereft but she touched his arm and she felt that brushfire tingle again – in her fingertips and in her heart, and even in the insistent pulse between her legs.

He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, a short back and sides topped off with a riotous mass of curls. God, if they had children, they’d have the curliest hair in the world, Ellie thought, even though she had never been one of those sad, sad girls who imagined their wedding dresses and table decorations and the names of their four children seconds after being introduced to a man. She really wasn’t. He wasn’t even her type. He was tall enough that Ellie could wear heels, but he was thin. Too thin. Skinny. She liked her men with some heft. And in so many other ways he also wasn’t her type because it was obvious from their shared loathing of tents and their neat, freshly pressed appearance that maybe they were too alike. Opposites attracted and all that and Ellie preferred her boyfriends to take more of a walk on the wild side so she didn’t have to, though that approach didn’t seem to be working out so well for her. Anyway, she hadn‘t even been introduced to this man, so why was her hand still on his arm because it felt like it belonged there?

It didn’t. She stopped touching him and folded her hands behind her back where they couldn’t get into any trouble. No wonder he was eyeing her with a look of disbelief too; then she saw his lips twist.

‘It’s not just my imagination, is it?’ he asked Ellie, leaning closer as his voice was in danger of being drowned out by a heavy bassline suddenly emanating from the stage nearest to them. She could feel his breath caressing the side of her face. It felt a lot like being kissed and she shivered. ‘This isn’t just a line, I swear, but I feel like I’ve known you before.’

He didn’t say ‘met’, like they’d been at the same party or got their morning latte from the same coffee shop, but ‘known’, like there was a connection between them. Like he felt it too.

‘It’s odd, isn’t it? Did you get the tingles?’

It was an audacious thing to ask, but Ellie had to know. He held up his hand, glanced at his fingertips, then nodded. ‘All the way down my spine.’

Ellie smiled uncertainly and he smiled back. She had the strangest feeling, another strange feeling to go with all the other strange feelings she’d had in the last five minutes, that he was going to kiss her because he was leaning in again, staring at her mouth. Ellie could feel her body straining towards him even though they weren’t even touching any more. She also felt short of breath, light-headed but—

‘Babe! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you still mad at me?’ Someone grabbed her around the waist. Ellie’s first reaction was to squeak, which she did, because the person who’d grabbed her round the waist was pulling her back against his bare and clammy chest and trying to nuzzle her neck.

‘Get off me,’ she hissed at Richey, at least she hoped it was Richey and not some loved-up random. Richey! For all of ninety seconds she’d forgotten about him while she talked to a complete stranger who felt a lot like a kindred spirit. Now Ellie flushed with guilt and embarrassment, and had to use her elbows to extricate herself as Richey clung even tighter.

‘Oh, don’t be like that, babe,’ he slurred in her ear. ‘We’re at a festival. You really need to chill out.’

Ellie couldn’t be sure, because Richey now had his tongue in her left ear, but she thought she heard the other man snort. She succeeded in wriggling out of Richey’s hold and allowed herself to shoot him one positively malevolent look before she turned her attention back to the fantasy father of her imaginary curly-haired children and tried to mitigate the circumstances.

‘Well, nice bumping into you,’ she said. ‘I guess I’ll . . . um, see you around.’ He opened his mouth, probably to say something equally noncommittal or demand to know why she’d asked him about the tingles when she already had a boyfriend, but Richey was pushing Ellie aside so he could step up to the other man.

‘Who are you anyway?’ he asked belligerently when there was no need to be aggressive, even though the other man was looking at Richey, stripped to the waist and sweating exceedingly, with distaste. ‘Are you bothering my girlfriend?’

‘Oh my God. Shut up!’ Ellie grabbed hold of Richey’s arm, which was as sweaty as the rest of him, and tried to tug him away. It was like trying to move a forklift truck without the aid of a forklift truck. Ellie caught a whiff of the stale ethanol fumes oozing from Richey’s pores as if he’d fallen into a vat of vodka after he’d left her last night. He kept working his jaw too, even when he wasn’t opening his mouth to say ridiculous things, and she was going to have it out with him at Glastonbury, whether she wanted to or not. Despite what Tess and Lola might have thought, she had bad-boyfriend limits and Richey had pushed hers to breaking point. ‘Go and stand over there,’ she ordered, pointing at a nearby bottle refill point. ‘Please.’

‘It’s fucking rude to come on to someone else’s girlfriend,’ Richey told the other man, as though Ellie hadn’t even spoken. Then Richey jabbed his finger at his chest. The man stared down at it but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking because he’d put his sunglasses back on. ‘Not when I’m standing right in front of you.’

The man took a step back, brushed his shirt with the back of his hand and allowed himself a little grimace. ‘I was helping your, er, “girlfriend”,’ he made the word
sound like it should have sarcastic quote marks around it. ‘She was texting and walking. Nearly fell over, didn’t you?’

Ellie nodded and nodded like a little nodding dog on a windy day. ‘Right. That’s exactly what he was doing,’ she agreed as she grabbed hold of Richey’s wrist again for a second attempt to pull him away, but he side-stepped out of her grasp so he could throw an arm around the shoulders of the man, who stiffened like an angry cat. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Richey said. ‘Way out of line. Been caning it a bit hard, you know.’

Ellie shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare with her hand as she peered up at Richey’s face. Then she reached out and lifted up his huge mirrored aviator shades. As she suspected, his pupils were pinned, his face pale. She knew exactly what that meant, and it had nothing to do with falling into a vat of vodka.

‘You promised me,’ she said, wagging her finger accusingly. ‘You promised.’

Richey ignored her in favour of pulling the man’s stiff body a little closer. ‘You in the music biz, then?’ he asked as the man pulled away, his mouth set in a grim, for - bidding line. ‘Do you want to buy some charlie?’

‘No, he absolutely does not,’ said an icy voice from behind them. Ellie whipped round to see a woman standing there. Richey took a step back so the woman could slide her arm round the man’s waist and they exchanged a look. If they weren’t both wearing sunglasses, then Ellie would have sworn it was less of a look and more of an eyeroll. ‘Darling, I was wondering what was taking you so long.’

Of course they were together, because men like him – handsome and charming – weren’t going to be flying solo. And of course he’d be with a woman who was lithe and slender, with the kind of naturally shiny, sleek hair that Ellie aspired to but could never achieve – not even with a £150 Brazilian blowdry every three months – and who was wearing a draped top and blindingly white jeans. Snowy white jeans at a festival trumped a white broderie anglaise dress, which had now crumpled in the heat, every time.

Compared to her, Ellie was just a grubby, hungover girl in a wilted white frock and wellies. She was something less, a lot less, especially when she was accessorising with a boyfriend who was nothing but trouble.

‘I got held up,’ the perfect boyfriend was saying, except he wasn’t a boy. He was in his mid-thirties, but this wasn’t about his age. It was about the way he held himself and the way he looked, and the air of capability and control that he possessed. He was a man in a way that Richey would never be. Even if he lived to be a hundred – which was unlikely, given his lifestyle – Richey would always be a boy, a Jack-the-lad, a one-way ticket to heartbreak. ‘Shall we find somewhere quiet to have a cold drink? Well, somewhere quiet-ish anyway.’ He turned to Ellie even as his arm settled round his girlfriend’s shoulders. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

‘It was nice to meet you too,’ Ellie said because it had been, until Richey had rocked up and ruined everything. Though there wasn’t much to ruin if he already had a girlfriend and Ellie had Richey, who now slung his arm round her shoulder like a dead weight.

‘Babe,’ he said, ruffling her hair with a hot hand. ‘Babe, let’s go somewhere quiet too so we can fuck.’

Ellie went from always giving even her most challenging boyfriends the benefit of the doubt and never having the guts to dump them, to putting her hands on Richey’s perspiration-soaked chest and pushing him hard. Pushing him away from the man she’d had a weird, tingling moment with and his supercilious, absolutely perfect girlfriend, who were the last people she’d ever want to have a ringside seat to her utter humiliation dealt out by her lying, drug-taking, drug-dealing boyfriend.

‘How could you?’ she shouted at Richey, who looked more bemused than anything else. ‘No! No! NO! This is not something I can work with. This is an absolute deal-breaker. I shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of crap! We are finished. I never want to see you again!’

She couldn’t even risk looking at Mr What If or his girlfriend. Who knew what he thought of Ellie now? She’d become one of his stories, an anecdote, a ‘this time I went to Glastonbury and met this insane girl and her drug addled boyfriend’.

‘Babe!’ Richey spluttered. ‘Babe! Babe! Don’t be so fucking uptight, babe.’

There were no words, so Ellie settled for shoving Richey so hard that he cannoned into the golden couple and she could start running, stumbling through the crowds, almost falling over her wellies in her determination to get as far away from him as humanly possible.

That's all I've got, guys!

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