Cherry Coloured - Alex Turner

29. Film of Her

Her hand was shaking in his. A subtle, quivering tremble that accompanied the squeezing grip her fingers had around his own. The smile made up of pursed lips and tight cheeks couldn't hide her as well as she hoped it would.

"I promise, you don't need to be nervous," Alex said as they departed the safety of the side of his car and began walking up to the front door.

  "I'm not nervous," Maeve dismissed but simultaneously squeezed his hand tighter as their shoes met the battered surface of the welcome mat.

"Of course not," he said with a smile in her direction. His free index finger pressed into the doorbell and through the heavy front door they could hear it echo inside the house. Maeve inhaled a deep breath through her nose and subconsciously squeezed Alex's hand even more. She barely noticed that he kissed her hairline to calm her down, her entire focus devout on playing out every possible scenario so that she wouldn't have the chance to mess up.

Almost as if someone had pulled the film of her memory out from her head and streaked white paint over the following events, Maeve couldn't so much as remember the door opening and greeting Alex's parents and found herself sitting on a settee in the warm lit living room before she even had the chance to process what was going on. Alex sat next to her, close but not too close and handed her a glass of wine and that's when Maeve realised she'd been sat in the house for a good ten minutes and had barely said a word. Alex was talking to his father, who was sitting on an armchair to her left, about something or other, and his mother was busy handing out drinks and assuring them supper was only twenty minutes away.

"Thank you," she heard herself say when Alex carefully left the glass in her hand. Red wine. Shit, she thought to herself but sipped anyway when his family raised all their glasses as a toast for the night.

"So Maeve!" Her skin shrank and ran cold the moment those words made their way out of Alex's mother's lips. Maeve remembered her from the bookstore and wondered if she recognised her too. "Alex tells us you're a dancer!"

She almost choked on the tart wine halfway down her throat. Alex knew not to look at her because without a doubt, she was going to shoot him a furious, unbelievable glance that he didn't want to be responsible for. It had been a very laborious effort to convince her to meet his family. On many occasions he thought of giving up but eventually, Maeve caved and agreed on the sole reason that she could see just how much it meant to him. In saying that, she was reluctant all the while and it took every bit of love she had for him to put on a happy face when Alex eagerly came around to pick her up that night.

She wouldn't go until he'd told her that he had told his parents that she was his only partner. There was no contender and thus, a pretender Maeve would not have to be. It helped in reassuring her that they weren't going to greet her with glares and comparisons, the title of 'the other woman', but it didn't fix everything. For a while after she was mildly upset that he would lie to his parents when in reality, he didn't even have the courage to actually make her his sole partner. Vienna was still in the picture and Maeve lived enough of a lie already.

  "They're over the moon to be meeting you," he had assured her. It was in Maeve's nature to be cynical.

Although Alex knew it would have been easier just to tell her he and Vienna had called it quits, he continued to refrain from enlightening her upon the matter. It wasn't an option. Easier, he believed, for one to forgive secrecy than to forgive heartbreak. What Maeve didn't know couldn't possibly hurt her, the selective truth was her best chance. It ate him up to hide so much from her; but it wasn't enough to coax it to come spilling out of his lips.

With a stiff swallow, she suppressed a cough and put her glass down on the small mahogany coffee table before her. "Not really," she said meekly and flashed a look at Alex. It annoyed her that he was looking at her so reassuringly.