Time Changes

Part Six

Alexis was glad of the wrap as she snuck out into the foyer, already the cold wind was catching her through the door, as she was wondering whether she needed a trip to her room for a thicker coat, she was suddenly warmed by an arm slinking around her shoulders.

“Are you going to be warm enough?" She didn’t’ need to look up to know who’s touch or voice was sending prickles of tension throughout her body.

She shrugged, full of bravado as she met his eyes, "it may be snowing, but I do have Carmichael blood in me!"

“Then let’s go see Stockholm!” With a laugh he led her out to a taxi.

The driver was a man proud of the City he lived in, and as they snaked through the streets they had a free tour of anything and everything that was worth seeing. Eventually the car stopped at a domed doorway and after paying the driver, Peter took her by the hand and dragged her inside.

“What is this place?” She asked eyes wide with wonder. The whole place was made of ice, the chairs, the bar, even the glasses. A woman handed them a thick insulated cape and rather inelegant gloves and boots. Moving deeper into the ice building, Peter leading her by a gloved hand, he explained he’d been to an ice bar like this a few years back, but as they were in proper snowy climes then it felt appropriate. They only sold vodka, in glasses carved into hunks of ice, and there were SO many colours, and flavours. There was only one thing they could do, perched at a table, on stools of ice; they threw repeated shots of vodka down their throats.

“I don’t think I’d have ventured here on my own!” She ventured as he ordered them a drink.

“Peach next?” Peter asked waggling his eyebrows, “or that wicked looking green one?”

“Are you trying to get me drunk Mr Marlow?”

He laughed, “not at all...but if a few vodkas stop you being angry with me, then it’s a bonus!”

Alexis studied him for a moment, “I have every right to be angry with you! You promised to dance with me at my birthday! But you didn’t, you didn’t turn up! That still makes me angry!”

Peter couldn’t believe she’d confronted this head on, they’d both avoided his behaviour building up to her sixteenth birthday, and the affect it had on her. “I had to go to Brussels, you knew that.”

Alexis shrugged, amazed that it didn’t hurt so much to talk about this, “you had to go THAT night, that exact moment?” When he shrugged she sighed, “I know I must have been annoying, some pesky kid hanging on your coattails, but I really needed you that night.”

Peter had not really considered the implications of him abandoning her that night, she’d been so desperate to show everyone that someone like him, older, mature would talk to her, dance with her...it was never meant to be more than that, though he was fighting his attraction to the young woman every day. Not being there was the safest option available to him, but he didn’t tell her himself, cowards way he knew.

Noting his silence, Alexis shook her head, “I’ve no idea why I agreed to this," her laugh was ironic as she finished her fourth shot, pineapple, sickly sweet with a kick that caused her to shudder. She never drank spirits, well not more than the odd shot of whisky.

Peter smiled at the slightly safer subject, "something about me being an absolute idiot last night? Wanting to make things up to you?"

Alexis laughed, "oh yes, I remember!"

He laughed too, "I promise not to do that again."

She couldn’t resist, so she reached up to cup his face, any tenderness in the gesture lost by the huge padded gloves, "the flirting, the insulting or the running away?"