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Privacy and cookie detailsShe promised her best friend he would never sit at her table again. Now she wants him beside her.
Adela promised her best friend to keep Oswin out. Three years after her friend's death, he arrives for supper with a chair.
Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 20m
SteamyIntense chemistry. Sensual intimacy.Heat guideYearning · Tender
Grief, Death of a friend/former partner, Serious illness (non-graphic references)
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Dear Maeve,
I promised my best friend that Oswin would never sit at my table again. On Saturday he arrived carrying a chair, and I discovered there are disadvantages to being taken literally.
Adela Peverell has spent three Septembers setting a place for her closest friend, Sennen, who will never come to supper again. She makes Sennen's favourite pudding, keeps the old circle together and remembers the promise she made when Oswin Trevan broke Sennen's heart: he would never sit at her table again. Then Sennen's mother invites him without telling Adela. He arrives carrying a chair. Oswin remembers something everyone else has missed: Adela doesn't like the pudding. He notices where she has left herself to sit. Before the other guests arrive, she finds herself holding his hand longer than a splinter requires. When she asks where he would choose to sit, his answer is beside her. In a coastal town full of shared memories, wanting him has consequences beyond a rearranged table. Rhoswen, Sennen's mother, is still one of the people Adela loves most. Oswin has a life of his own and no wish to be a visitor she has to explain away. Adela knows how to make room for everybody else. She is less certain what she can ask for without losing someone she wants to keep.
Sennen has been dead for three years. The promise is older than that. He left her, she was miserable, and I made a furious voice message do the work of being a loyal friend. I have had four years to remember every word of it.
Her mother invited him to the supper without telling me. I had made Sennen’s favourite pears, set out her blue glass and left myself the bad stool. He noticed the stool. Then he remembered that I don’t like ginger. Everyone has been praising those pears for years, Maeve. I had almost forgotten I was allowed to dislike them.
There was a splinter in his hand. I took it out and kept holding on after it was gone. I mend upholstery for a living; I know when a repair is finished.
We laughed at supper. About Sennen, with the people who miss her. Afterwards he washed the plates because he’d used them, and went home when I asked. I gave him my number again before he left.
I’ve asked him to walk with me. Just us, with nothing that needs carrying. His answer was three words, and I have found an unreasonable number of occasions to read them.
Rhoswen and I still have our Sunday walks. I love hearing something about her daughter that I hadn’t known, having someone to tell when I remember a thing nobody else would understand. I don’t want to lose that.
I also don’t want to spend Tuesday explaining why I’ve asked him, as though wanting his company were a mistake I could correct if I chose the right sentence. He asked to sit beside me. I keep thinking about how little room that took, and how much it changed.
From The Empty Place Beside Me
Read this if you want the promise between them to be personal, and the friendship at stake to matter.
Read this if you want desire to complicate a friendship the heroine cannot simply leave behind.
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