The Boy With The Hopeless Dreams

Chapter Twenty

I slept well that night, better than I had for a while, and awoke to the sound of someone snoring gently right next to my head.  Shocked, I fell out of the comfortable bed I was in, banging my head on the bedside table. The bed intruder woke up with a snort and I realised that it was Sam. Laughing at my idiocy, I crawled back under the duvet and kissed Sam on the nose.  His eyes went crossed as he watched me. I giggled at his face, cringing at my girliness.

“Cute,” he said quietly, sleep lacing his voice. I rested my forehead against his, breathing in as he breathed out. 

“Shut up.”
“Make me,” he dared. I shut him up by kissing him softly, pulling away after a few seconds.  I slid out of bed, watching him smile as I did and realised I’d fallen asleep in Sam’s t-shirt and a pair of underwear. I hastily pulled the top down, trying to make it cover more.  Sam was sat there chuckling at my discomfort until he got out of bed and moved to the wardrobe. This gave me time to rush past him to grab my bag without him seeing too much. 

I hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and my favourite jumper.  When I poked my head through the jumper, Sam was just pulling his top off. I couldn’t help but stare.  For someone, who apparently didn’t work out that much his body was ridiculous.  He caught me watching and laughed.

“Like what you see, Banbury?” he teased.

“Not really,” I answered. “I’ve seen much better.”  Smiling, he hugged me close to him and kissed the top of my head.

“You must be blind then.”

“Oh no,” I countered. “Quite the opposite, I think you’ll find. I had my glasses on. But rather than tell you about my night of passion with Zac Efron, let’s get breakfast.”

His laughter followed me as I walked to the kitchen and began to make us both a bowl of cereal. 

“I haven’t forgotten about the bag by the way,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I saw his body stiffen out of the corner of my eye.

“Just forget about it, Lily.” His voice was harsher than normal. “It’s nothing anymore. I’ll sort it.”

I spun around.
“No, Sam,” I said equally as harshly. “You won’t. What you’ll do is get yourself into more trouble.  You’ll put yourself firmly back on everyone’s radar. You’ll get caught up or actually caught and everything will go wrong.  Please, let me do it.”

There was a silence more pronounced than any I’ve ever experienced.  Sam looked torn, half furious, and half devastatingly sad.

“I will not let you put yourself in the position where you could get hurt,” he said, quietly. “That’s happened too many times already.”

“It’s only happened once-”

“Once too many.”

There was another pause in the conversation, during which I wiped my eyes and turned around, not being able to look at Sam any more. I half expected him to wrap his arms around my waist but I heard him walk back to his bedroom instead.  I steadied my shaking hands and picked up my bowl, heading to the table in between the kitchen and living room. I ate quickly and hurriedly washed up.

Entering the bathroom, I heard Thomas’ door open and the sounds of him having his breakfast drifted through the crack in the door as I brushed my teeth.  I fully closed the door and slid the lock and, crouching down, I opened the cupboard and pushed everything aside to reveal a bag-sized gap.  My heart started pounding. Did this mean he’d already delivered it? Or had he hidden it somewhere else? I searched the whole bathroom including the cistern of the toilet: not the most pleasant of experiences.  It was nowhere to be found.  I could only hope that it was somewhere else in the flat.