Our Stop

by Laura Jane Williams

  8

  Nadia

  ‘I am going to fucking kill you,’ Nadia said in a voice note to her best friend. ‘I can’t believe you sent that! You total …’ Words failed her. She could not believe that Emma had sent in an email to Missed Connections on her behalf. ‘This hangover cannot process this. You’ve made me sound … cheap! And like I’m some sort of sexy temptress! What the fuck is the thing about the biting? Nobody has made that joke since the nineties, and even then it was always someone’s pervy uncle. I said it ironically, but you’ve not bloody used it ironically. Oh god. If I get approached by some weirdo seventy-year-old who looks like Piers Morgan and has his hands down his pants, I will actually kill you. I just threatened to kill you, but I need you to know I will actually slaughter you.’

  Nadia was an hour late for work, and in a foul mood. She’d been on time for work once this week, on Monday, but had forgotten to set her alarm twice after that. Last night she’d had a cocktail after work with her team, and then met her old colleague Naomi for dinner and they had talked so late that she was basically asleep by the time she fell into bed at midnight – again forgetting to set an alarm. That meant she’d woken up this Thursday morning with a start, had to rush to shower, and hadn’t had time to fully assess if her outfit actually looked like an outfit or was mismatched in a way she couldn’t pass off as cool. She’d have to start The New Routine to Change My Life again tomorrow. Or maybe on Monday.

  ‘Don’t act like you’re mad!’ said Emma, when she eventually called back in response to the scathing voice note. ‘It’s a cute advert. I did you a favour! And I promise I didn’t do it when we were drunk. I saved it in drafts and only sent it yesterday, when I was sure it was a good one.’

  ‘It’s not a good one! It’s awful!’ said Nadia, determined to give her a hard time for doing it without her permission. I don’t bite?! What was Emma thinking?

  ‘No! It is a good one! I 200 per cent know in my bones he will approach you. You’d be talking to him right now if you’d been on time for work! That’s how good it is!’

  Nadia had a weird twinge in her tummy at the thought of it – that if she had gone into the office on time, on her regular train, she could be talking to her future right now. But her future could wait twenty-four hours. Couldn’t it? She could use today to build her courage. Suddenly she was less angry and more excited.

  After talking to Emma, Nadia picked up the paper again, open on the page with Missed Connections on. She took a breath and reread it, carefully unpicking it sentence by sentence.

  It’s creepy that you’re watching me when you could be saying hello, but maybe you’re trying to be romantic.

  Okay, well. That bit was actually okay, if she was totally honest. It was a sort of warning that he had better not be an actual creep, stalking her or something. She could deal with that. The line between big romantic gesture from a stranger and weird stalking was, actually, pretty fine, and probably rested on how handsome and well-adjusted the author of the letters was. Nadia had once read a Twitter thread about a girl whose date had known to come to the back door of her house, not the front, and brought a bouquet of lilies for her, because he knew she liked lilies. The woman said she’d never told him to use the back door, and that her favourite flowers had never come up in conversation; and to some it might have seemed like she was overreacting, but this woman said she knew in her stomach something wasn’t right. Two weeks later, the guy was arrested for masturbating onto her car bonnet at three o’clock in the morning.

  I just want you to know that I won’t bite until at least the third date, so don’t be shy. Bloody hell. That bit really was awful. Horrid, horrid, horrid. I won’t bite until at least the third date? Emma was insane for including that. It was provocative in all the wrong ways. If Nadia had written it, she would have said something like … well. She wasn’t actually sure, off the top of her head. That’s why she’d delayed writing her own response – it was tough to get the tone right! But just because she hadn’t got around to it herself didn’t mean she wouldn’t have done it in the end. Probably. Maybe.

  Hmmm. Nadia started to acknowledge the edges of a feeling that maybe Emma had done her a favour. Would she have ever decided on the ‘perfect’ response? Maybe it was like Pilates: you could put off doing it, or you could just go and get it over with and admit the flood of endorphins felt incredible after.

  If you think I’m devastatingly cute then be brave with it: kind, romantic and bold? That’s my love language.

  Hmmm. That bit was nice. Nadia could deal with that. It sort of stated her values and she liked declaring out loud that kindness was key. Kindness without being wet. Kindness that meant he knew to let other people off the tube before he got on, and that if he came to the pub and Emma was there he’d let her rant on a bit and then tell her she was absolutely right, no matter what she was ranting about. That was something else her old boss Katherine had told her: that when her husband was still just her boyfriend, he’d been out with her friends and listened sympathetically to a break-up story that went on and on. Katherine had thanked him afterwards for listening, for being as good a friend to her BFF as Katherine tried to be.

  ‘If she’s important to you, then I want her to be important to me,’ he’d explained to her.

  Katherine said that was when she knew she wanted to marry him. Nadia had loved hearing that story. She loved knowing when men had been good and caring. She carried around a mental storybook of all the tales the women in her life had told her, that she opened in her mind when she felt herself begin to go down the all-men-are-the-same path. They weren’t. The good ones existed. Maybe not all of them were good, but perhaps Emma had been right when she said one in fifty was good. Katherine and Naomi had both won in those odds. Nadia forced herself to believe that she could too.

  If she had to score the ad out of ten she’d begrudgingly give it an eight and a half. Emma lost a point for the biting thing – Nadia wouldn’t ever forgive that. But. Maybe, possibly, potentially it could have taken Nadia weeks to do it herself, and so at least something was out there.

  She allowed herself a little smile.

  He could be reading it right now, she thought to herself. He could be thinking of me as I am thinking of him.

  The idea of it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt oddly comforting.

  What would he say in return?

  9

  Daniel

  ‘I really am going to have to ask you to piss off,’ Daniel said to Lorenzo as he poured boiling water into his favourite Arsenal mug. ‘I am not reading a dating guide. Absolutely not.’

  He manoeuvred around his flatmate to the fridge, pulling out the plastic carton of milk and doing a double take as he realized that it was weirdly light. He looked at it, pointedly, sighing dramatically.

  ‘Lorenzo, did you put an empty milk carton back into the fridge?’

  Lorenzo looked from the carton to Daniel’s raised eyebrows.

  ‘It’s an emergency stash day,’ Lorenzo said with a shrug, opening the drawer where they kept the single-portion pots of UHT milk that they made a game of stealing from hotels and buffet breakfasts. Daniel wasn’t sure how it had begun, but there was now a specific drawer for them, for these long-life UHT milks, which had more recently come to involve UHT milk sachets too.

  ‘There’s a trend for them,’ Lorenzo had acknowledged knowingly once, as he returned from a weekend wedding in Edinburgh with ten sachets. ‘The sachets are much easier to open. More environmentally friendly too.’

  Some weeks they didn’t buy proper milk at all, living off the UHT drawer. What was weirder was that Daniel and Lorenzo didn’t even really talk about it. It was just a thing that they did. No milk in the fridge? Time for the milk drawer, then. It normally happened at the end of the week, on a Friday, so at least today they were consistent with their milk-buying inconsistencies.

  By way of a mild apology it was an easy-open sachet that Lorenzo handed over now. Daniel took it, shaking h
is head. It felt like there was a ‘Joey and Chandler’ dynamic between them sometimes – and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

  ‘I’m just saying, have a glance at it,’ Lorenzo said, taking a milk sachet for himself and ripping it open with his teeth. He drank it down, on its own, in one gulp.

  ‘It’s for girls!’ Daniel said. ‘Presumably girls who want to pick up boys! I don’t want to pick up boys!’ He held his tea by the rim of the mug, deciding it was too hot and switching it to the other hand to hold by the handle. ‘If I was a girl picking up boys it looks like a mighty fine book, but as I am not, I shall proceed on my own, book-free,’ he said, adding defensively, ‘I don’t need a book to tell me how to chat a woman up.’

  Lorenzo picked up the copy of Get Your Guys! from the table where he’d left it out for Daniel the night before.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Lorenzo intoned, ‘is that everyone at work was equally as sceptical as you, except the woman who commissioned it. And one by one, she passed it out to the 5 girls on the staff and, one by one, they all had stories about trying what –’ he glanced down at the front cover to remind himself of the author’s name ‘– Grant Garby says, and now most of them are engaged.’

  ‘But,’ Daniel said, closing his eyes as if very, very tired. ‘They are women. Hitting on men.’

  Lorenzo shook his head. ‘Well, you see, I thought I should take a look at it, you know, as research, and it is my job to PR books, even if I wasn’t PR-ing this one. Know the market and all that. And he’s fucking genius. Grant Garby. He has this whole YouTube series and everything. It’s been a slow grower, but since it came out and word has spread, he’s sold like, one hundred thousand copies. Chicks swear by him, but he reckons blokes should be reading his stuff too.’

  Daniel finished his tea and put the empty mug in the sink, where it would live for two days until he’d finally cave in over his dishwasher stand-off with Lorenzo and empty it himself, thus making room for a kitchen full of dirty crockery and the whole cycle could start over again.

  ‘Why do you need help hitting on women? It’s literally the only thing you’re good at.’

  ‘Rude,’ said Lorenzo, only half insulted. ‘And, my friend, this is what makes me so clever: continual practice.’

  ‘Continual practice.’

  ‘Continual practice. Christians don’t go to church once, and then say they’re Christian forever. They go to church every Sunday, to keep practising their religion. I’m no Casanova because I got lucky with girls a few times – I’m called The Closer because I practise the skills needed to be The Closer.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ said Daniel, looking at his watch. ‘Nobody calls you The Closer.’

  ‘I call myself The Closer.’

  ‘I repeat: that’s disgusting.’

  Lorenzo moved to block Daniel’s exit from their shared kitchen. ‘Listen to me. I fucking care about you, man. I care that this works out for you. Okay? And I’m telling you – read the book.’

  Daniel made eye contact with his friend, who instantly, in a fit of embarrassment at being so candid, looked away and moved aside. Theirs wasn’t an easy relationship, but Lorenzo had definitely stepped up after Daniel’s dad had died, and he figured that’s what he was getting at: that Lorenzo wanted Daniel to have something work out in his favour. Lorenzo was caring in the only way Lorenzo knew how.

  Daniel took the book.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll look at it.’

  Lorenzo clapped his hands, thrilled to have charmed yet another person into bending to his will. Daniel wondered if that’s where he’d learned to do it – from the book.

  ‘Chapter six, buddy – that’s the one. I double dare you to try it.’

  ‘Chapter six,’ Daniel said. ‘Fine.’

  As he travelled to work, Daniel felt like there was a huge spotlight on his backpack illuminating the fact he had a dating guide in his possession. He’d be mortified to be caught with it, and worried one wrong move could see his bag slip from his shoulder and its contents splay out for the judgement of everyone else on the underground. What if she saw it? Nadia? His paranoia was so great that he’d almost managed to convince himself that The Dating Guide police were going to search every carriage, demanding anyone with a dating guide on them step forward. He had visions of having to declare to everyone, including Nadia, that he had a hardback copy of Get Your Guys! and he’d never be able to get on the tube again. He’d got the guide to help with Nadia, but if she saw he had it he would lose her before it had even begun, he was certain.

  He was relieved that she wasn’t actually on the train today.

  ‘My man, how’s it going today?’ Romeo asked him, as he slipped through the glass doors of his office tower.

  ‘I HAVE A DATING GUIDE!’ Daniel declared, desperate for somebody – anybody – to know. He couldn’t carry the guilt. He needed to be absolved.

  ‘Good for you!’ said Romeo, totally unfazed by Daniel’s non sequitur. That was the thing about Romeo: he was just happy to be alive, and happy that everyone else was alive too.

  Daniel fumbled around in his bag, pulling it out for Romeo to see. ‘It’s called Get Your Guys!’ he said, panicked. ‘Lorenzo forced me to take it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Romeo, taking it. ‘Have you got to chapter six? My sister read this and said chapter six changed her life.’

  ‘Chapter six? No, no, I haven’t read chapter six. I haven’t read any of it!’ Daniel shook his head. ‘I don’t need to read a dating guide!’

  Romeo shrugged, thumbing through it. ‘Well then, what harm can it do?’ he said, not unreasonably. ‘If you don’t need it, why are you freaking out about having it?’

  Daniel scowled. ‘I have to go,’ he said, taking the guide and slipping it into his bag again. He leaned into Romeo and lowered his voice.

  ‘Tell nobody,’ he said, walking off.

  Waiting to find somebody you like to flirt with is like waiting to go on stage to learn your lines, chapter six told him. Daniel had sat at his desk for ten minutes before asking Percy to book him a meeting room – the most private meeting room, in the corner, where nobody would walk by its glass front on the way to somewhere else. That’s where he sat now, nursing the guide. The introduction had explained that it was a book meant for heterosexual women, but that in actual fact Grant Garby worked with men as well, because at the root of all connection is humanness, and we are all human.

  Except for Lorenzo, Daniel thought darkly, which in turn made him feel guilty.

  Chapter six was basically a long list of tips on how to flirt, and what’s more, how to flirt with strangers. Daniel was engrossed, in spite of himself.

  When you haven’t dated in a while, it can become easy to think that there is a dearth of men out there to date, the book said. But opportunity to make friends out of strangers is everywhere – you just have to have the nerve to talk to them.

  The first tip was simple: make eye contact. Daniel weighed this up. Catching the eye of people was actually quite a bold thing to do: typically, Daniel would keep his head down and get to where he was going, barely conscious of who might be around him on the way. Wasn’t that … normal?

  Okay. I can do that, Daniel thought to himself. Eye contact. Easy.

  He slipped the book onto the chair beside him, piling some papers he’d brought with him on top of it, and flipped the sign on the meeting door to ‘occupied’.

  He headed for the staff kitchen at the far end of his floor. The book was right – his instinct was to keep his eyes fixed on his shoes as he walked, or maybe firmly ahead, on his destination. The book had asked how friendly this must make him seem, or how approachable. Valid point, Daniel reflected. Okay. He got to the kitchen, pretended to look for something for a minute, decided on getting a glass of water, and then turned on his heel, heading back towards the meeting room – but this time at a slower pace. He forced himself to let his eyes roam, which felt vulnerable and exposing. But then his gaze met Meredith’s, a perky t
hirty-something who had a similar role to him, but on a different team.

  Gah! thought Daniel, looking away quickly. Eye contact!

  The book had said to smile, to not be afraid to acknowledge the other person, and maybe say hello. That in itself wasn’t a radical idea – essentially Grant Garby was advocating politeness – but it felt exposing. Like holding up a sign that said ‘Single and Looking’, which was a turn-off, wasn’t it? Daniel kept walking. He sneaked a glance over his shoulder, but Meredith had gone. At least she wasn’t staring after him, thinking what a freak he was.

  Okay, the next person I make eye contact with I will smile at, Daniel coached himself. He looked up to Percy staring at him. Daniel smiled broadly.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Percy said.

  ‘I am … smiling,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Why are you walking up and down the office like you’ve only just realized you’ve got legs?’

  ‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m not, erm … I’ll …’

  Percy looked at him, trying to understand what Daniel wasn’t saying. Meredith walked past them both then, and coyly said, ‘Hey Daniel,’ as she went by.

  ‘Hey,’ said Daniel, to the back of her head. She turned around and looked at him over her shoulder, and then she was gone.

  Percy looked at Daniel and back to Meredith.

  ‘Weird,’ he said, under his breath, moving to answer a ringing phone.

  Daniel went for his lunchtime walk to the market with the sole purpose of Making Eye Contact. He’d not even done it properly with Meredith – he’d forgotten to smile! – but she’d made a point of seeking him out to say hello later. Daniel understood the idea behind it now – if he could practise being brave around women, when it came to finally talking with Nadia he could be more sure he wouldn’t screw it up. Making eye contact and smiling at strangers – and, chapter six said, finding the courage to make chit-chat with strangers too – was all a way of building the Flirting Muscle, so that it was strong for the person who might go on to mean something.