Our Stop

by Laura Jane Williams

  It’s like the gym, but for flirting, Grant Garby had written, and Daniel was starting to see why his book had sold so many copies. It wasn’t radical. It was a really well-reasoned argument for putting yourself out there in a way that was natural and well-meaning.

  Daniel held his chin high, almost demented in his quest for eye contact as he walked to the burrito place. It wasn’t until he held the eye of other people that he realized, once again, how often he didn’t. And it was incredible, the effect that it had on people. He could see women – and he didn’t discriminate between younger or older, conventionally attractive to him or not – respond immediately to him. Nobody shied away or accused him of being a pervert or chased him off, waving their handbag at his head. It felt friendly. He wasn’t being sleazy or gross, just friendly. The way these women smiled back at him made Daniel feel like the most popular guy in London. There was a bravery to seeing people, but a bravery to letting himself be seen too. Making eye contact was like taking up space in the world, and to take up space he had to believe he was worth the space. He’d never thought of himself as shy, but the eye-contact thing was making him feel confident, and he definitely hadn’t felt that way for a while.

  Fine. Chapter six. You were right, Daniel texted to Lorenzo.

  Yes mate!!!! Lorenzo pinged back. Have you done the ‘asking advice’ bit yet? It fucking works every time!

  Then, after a second, Lorenzo also said: If you need emergency condoms because of this, my side table near my bed is always packed with them. Extra-large tho.

  Daniel knew what Lorenzo was talking about – about the advice, not the condoms. Daniel could source his own condoms, should he need any. Which wasn’t the point of today. Today was just about exploring this confident feeling. He liked it. He liked how confidence felt.

  The book suggested that the way to move from a smile to talking to a stranger was best practised in a queue at a café. The book said to ask the person behind you a question, like which cupcake flavour to pick, because you couldn’t decide – thus opening up the floodgates of possible conversation.

  It’s an invitation to get talking, the book decreed, with no obligation to keep going on either part. If you turn to the man behind you and say, ‘Would you get the lemon or the chocolate? I can’t decide,’ he can answer the question and that’s it. Or, he can answer the question and you can use it as a way to rank muffin flavours, or the merits of frosting. Initiating conversation doesn’t mean you are proposing marriage, it simply means you are a person capable of chit-chat, of connecting. And if it doesn’t work, that’s not because you aren’t worthy: it’s because the other person didn’t want to chat. That’s all. So try again.

  The book also said chit-chat was a great time to introduce some light teasing too. If he answers blueberry, don’t be afraid to tell him, ‘Oh, it would never work out between us! Who chooses blueberry when chocolate is on offer?’ It plants the seed that there could be an ‘us’, and challenges him to act, if he is interested. Suddenly he might declare, ‘Well hey! Don’t write me off that easily!’ and then, before you know it, he’s asking for your phone number.

  Daniel wasn’t sure about the mind games behind that, but he was willing to try, since even simple eye contact had made him feel more prepared for coming face to face with Nadia. He stood in line for his burrito behind two women in suits, presumably from one of the offices near his own. It was about a half square mile of offices, including, somewhere, Nadia’s.

  Daniel scrutinized the board. A burrito was a burrito, so there weren’t many options to have to choose from. He’d have to pick between meat or veggie mince, or perhaps ask for an extra side of sour cream.

  The queue pushed forward. There was one bloke in front of the women, and it would quickly be their turn. He had to say something soon, else he’d lose his chance, and then what? He’d rejoin the back of the queue so he could work up his courage with somebody else? No. That was weird. The book said this was all supposed to be super natural, super chill. Whatever, man. It’s all good.

  He ended up leaning towards the women in front of him and saying, ‘So what do you think, ladies? Avocado or extra avocado?’

  They didn’t hear him, and carried on talking. The taller woman said to her shorter companion, ‘You see, that’s why you have to get them heeled before you wear them. It’s like high-heel insurance.’

  ‘That’s so smart,’ the other woman said. ‘I shouldn’t cut corners.’

  Daniel coughed a little, involuntarily.

  ‘What do you think?’ he tried again, making his voice a little louder this time. ‘Avocado,’ he said, even louder, ‘or extra avocado?’

  One of the women turned around and looked from Daniel to the extra space beside him. It looked like he was talking to himself.

  ‘Oh,’ said Daniel realizing. ‘No, I …’

  The woman turned back around. Daniel stared at the back of her head.

  ‘DO YOU THINK I SHOULD GET EXTRA AVOCADO?’ he bellowed, at which both women turned around.

  The women looked at each other, the penny dropping that he was talking to them.

  ‘Or … just a … normal amount?’ Daniel squeaked, his palms suddenly sweaty and his face colouring purple.

  Slowly, her eyes darting confusedly from side to side, the taller woman said, ‘Well, do you really like avocado?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get extra then,’ she said, to which Daniel issued a sort of pffffffft noise between his lips.

  ‘Extra avocado? Wow. I could never date you, then,’ he said, before he even really knew what he was saying.

  ‘Excuse me?’ the taller woman said. Daniel’s mouth flapped open and closed like in Finding Nemo. ‘Date me? I’m three feet taller than you and about six times as hot. A date isn’t really on the cards, is it?’

  Daniel just stood there, wishing desperately that he could simply turn on his heel and run, forever, until he reached Greenland.

  ‘What an arsehole,’ the shorter woman said, shaking her head and steering the elbow of her friend so they both turned back around, before stepping forward to give their order.

  Daniel cast his gaze around him, humiliated, figuring out if anyone had witnessed what had happened. He didn’t mean to say that – to be unhinged that way. He panicked! It was his first time trying out the advice! It had all nose-dived! A teenager sat by the window eating his food looked away quickly as Daniel turned his head. His shoulders were shaking slightly, like he was laughing at him. Daniel lowered his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at the women as they left. The shorter woman barged into his shoulder as they passed. Daniel let her.

  ‘What can I get you?’ the man behind the counter said.

  ‘Meat burrito,’ Daniel replied, quietly. ‘Extra avocado. Thanks.’

  ‘Hey, is this yours?’ Percy said, as Daniel walked back through into the office. He was holding up a copy of Get Your Guys!

  Daniel stuttered slightly. ‘Mine? No. No way. Absolutely not.’

  Percy looked confused. ‘It’s just it was in with your things in the meeting room,’ he said. ‘Meredith found it.’

  ‘Meredith found it,’ Daniel repeated.

  Percy smirked.

  ‘No idea who it belongs to,’ Daniel said, striding past Percy’s desk and towards his own. ‘None at all.’

  ‘Sure,’ Percy said. ‘Well, I’ll leave it in my out-tray in case you change your mind,’ he added.

  Daniel scrunched up his face. ‘I won’t,’ he said, accidentally giving the game away. ‘It’s shit.’

  He silently lamented that he hadn’t just stuck to what he knew worked: writing notes in the newspaper. He was much slicker in writing than in faux-flirting. He sat down at his desk, pulled up the submission box for Missed Connections, and began to type.

  10

  Nadia

  Over the weekend Nadia had checked the Missed Connections part of the paper, both days, desperate to see if Train Guy had written back. She was about 75
per cent convinced that what Emma had written was too gauche, too provocative, too … much, to warrant a response from him. And yet, still she hoped.

  Even though she’d not quite made the 7.30 again on Friday, she’d still held out hope that Train Guy would be in her carriage today. She let herself get really carried away, waiting the whole ride for somebody to make eye contact, to smile, to invite conversation because, yes, he had put the advert in the paper, and yes, it was about her, and why didn’t they bunk off work together – here, today, now?

  Over the weekend she’d bolstered her confidence and by Sunday night found herself wondering if – one full week on from his first advert – tomorrow she’d meet her man. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been looking forward to Monday morning again until it was 9 p.m. on Sunday night without a hint of the Sunday Night Scaries settling in. Whereas normally she’d feel a sinking feeling deepening in her stomach as the evening wore on, this weekend she’d been positively giddy at bedtime looming ever closer, knowing that the closer bedtime was, the closer Monday morning was.

  Nadia fantasized that they would get off the train – on the morning they met – head to the river, and walk alongside the water. It was that funny kind of early-morning light in July – the sort that shines a certain way, highlighting problematic female moustaches and chin hairs – so the two of them would probably find a shady spot, where the sun could come from behind Nadia and give her a sort of halo that he’d find seductive and disarming, and would make her look biblical, in a way, and less like a woman transitioning into a werewolf because the moon was full. Nadia knew that one way to get any two women impassionedly bonded was to casually mention a sudden necessity to tweeze a thick, wiry chin hair – where did it suddenly come from? What made it hide in plain sight until one day a foot-long black twig could poke any bystanders in the eye? It was one of the many mysteries of being female.

  As they strolled on their imaginary date, Nadia would be tempted to bring up her horrible ex, to plead with Train Guy not to hurt her like he had done, to not make her anything less than herself, but before she could he’d say something funny and she’d laugh, and her laugh would make him laugh more, and she’d forget. Oh, how he’d make her forget.

  On this Monday morning, though, the fantasy shifted, because there it was. He had written back:

  Coffee Spill Girl: So what, you don’t like big romantic gestures? I thought you might appreciate the time it takes to craft an advert witty enough to get chosen for publication … (although, I see that in writing back you’re more of a romantic than you’re letting on ) Anyway, I’ve got dark hair, my mother thinks I’m ‘quite handsome, but must shave properly’, and am always in the last carriage, because it’s the least crowded. I promise to say hi in person if you do. From Train Guy x

  Nadia smiled, instantly looking up to see if anybody was trying to get her attention. It was a great note – he was flirting! He wasn’t afraid of her! Well, of Emma, anyway. He’d seen the humour in what Emma had sent in and was showing her that he knew how to spar a little too. That was super-hot to Nadia. She loved a little verbal rough-and-tumble.

  Her eyes roved around the carriage, waiting for the moment that would change everything. Maybe this really would be the morning they bunked off, that they took that walk.

  It seemed more crowded than usual. The reason Nadia had resolved in the first place to get up earlier and get to the station for the 7.30 tube was that it didn’t usually get properly busy until after eight. How was she supposed to figure out who the author was when everyone was shoulder-to-shoulder, crammed in like beans in a can?

  She scanned the faces she could see.

  What would Emma tell me to do? she asked herself. Emma would tell her to swallow her pride and be brave. That’s why they were friends, after all – Emma brought out that side of Nadia.

  Right, Nadia thought to herself. Brave.

  Nadia pushed back her shoulders and inhaled and lifted her face so that it faced the carriage, fully. She decided to stand up from where she’d taken the last empty seat, and move towards the doors. The guy said he was normally beside the doors, so that’s where she’d go.

  Her heart beat so hard in her chest that she thought it might launch out of her body and fall at her feet.

  Hmmm, she thought, blood pulsing in her ears. Somebody had already slid in under her – before she’d barely finished standing – to steal her seat. She looked left and right. But does he mean the far single door at either end, or the big middle doors? She decided on the big middle doors. Nadia folded the paper as she walked, swaying into people’s armpits, but hoping that in keeping it under her arm, the page turned out at the Missed Connections page, it might act as a bit of a sign. A good omen.

  Two men nearby could fit the description of ‘dark hair, handsome if shaved’. Holding onto the poles above her head for balance, Nadia peered through the suspended arms, and as a few people trickled out at Moorgate she found the room to manoeuvre next to one of the men. He was tall, and broad, and actually probably didn’t need to shave in order to be handsome. He had the sort of aesthetic that wouldn’t go amiss on the BBC at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, the sort of look of a man who knew how to live in the Amazon for three years with only a pocket knife and a piece of string, or who would look good in a bobble hat with snow in his eyelashes, somewhere in the Arctic, saying soothing things about penguins.

  Nadia steadied herself. He was gorgeous. Like, properly gorgeous. Was this her guy? She took in his pressed shirt and dark suit and shiny shoes. He was super corporate-looking – she wouldn’t normally go in for a guy who looked like he had a housekeeper who did his ironing – but that was no reason to totally dismiss someone. She racked her brain for something to say, for a witty and kind opening line – the kind that he’d incorporate into his speech when they married, and everyone would agree, ‘Oh! That’s so Nadia! Of course he loved her right from the start!’

  The man shifted his gaze and looked in her direction, half smiling. Nadia realized she’d been staring. She grinned manically back, and then saw the glint of gold above his head, where he was holding onto the pole. Third finger. Left hand. He was married.

  Nadia looked away.

  Not him, she thought, pressing down the thought that a) she was disappointed, and that b) his marriage was inconvenient, but not wholly problematic.

  Yes, it bloody is, she coached herself, internally. Stop self-sabotaging. No more married men – not what after happened with John. She fleetingly let herself feel the heartache of when she’d fallen in love with her boss at twenty-two. Nothing had ever happened, but they worked enough late nights together that it could have done, if they’d been different kinds of people. Last she’d heard, he’d ended up telling his wife that he hadn’t been happy for years, and that he’d had affairs with several co-workers – and apparently he now lived in Portsmouth as a part-time single dad who wrote a weekly Modern Masculinity column for the Guardian and ran fishing retreats for men looking to get in touch with their emotions. She hoped he was happier now. She really had been fond of him – but then, of course, so had many of the women in her old office.

  Nadia started to let her mind drift into a spiral of shame-talk, berating herself for not having standards higher than Is Not Already Married, when she remembered she had spotted two men in the carriage. Two possibilities. So if it wasn’t the married man – where was the other?

  There.

  He’d moved across to a seat the other side of the glass partition, and was reading the paper.

  That’s him! Nadia thought, staring at the top of his head. I can feel it, that’s him!

  He was younger than the other guy, and his beard wasn’t expertly manicured like Married Man, but a bit more scraggly and unkempt. She could see what his mother meant by how a bit of a tidy-up would nudge him a few points higher on the Handsome Scale. He looked a bit student-y still, despite definitely being closer to thirty than twenty-one.

  He wore suit trousers with New Balance
trainers, and a shirt that was open at the neck, no tie. He didn’t look corporate so much as maybe designery, like he was less likely to work at a finance firm and more like he worked in media. Nadia couldn’t think which media companies were at London Bridge – weren’t most of them in Leicester Square, or Soho? Not that that mattered. She’d find out all that, if she rose to his challenge and said hi in person.

  Nadia wove through the bodies in the middle of the carriage and approached where he sat, positioning herself so that she faced the glass partition, and could easily lean across and speak to him without scaring him.

  ‘Your mother is right,’ she settled on, bowing down so that her voice landed squarely in his ear, in a way she thought was suitably sexy and provocative. ‘You would be handsome after a shave.’

  She thought she sounded flirtatious and that it was fun to allude to the self-effacing joke he’d made at his own expense. She imagined he’d look up and he’d concede that his mother was a clever woman, and then Nadia could say something about how attractive it was that he respected his family that way. Or something. She hadn’t figured out the details – all of this was new, and a tiny bit scary. She hadn’t wanted to overthink it. So that’s why she’d just said it. Said the first thing that came to her. Your mother is right.

  The guy looked up. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, his brow knitted together in confusion.

  Ah, shit. She had led with the wrong thing. She tried to back-pedal.

  Nadia forced a giggle. ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant … Your mother is obviously certifiably mad.’

  The man’s eyebrows shot up now, from above his nose to below his hairline.

  ‘Well, maybe not certifiably mad,’ Nadia countered, feeling hot at her neck. ‘No, just, you know, she probably means well. Mothers, hey! Ha!’

  Oh god, oh god, oh god, she thought to herself. You are fucking this up, royally!

  ‘You’re very handsome,’ she continued. ‘Probably even more so with the beard.’ Her words tumbled out over each other in a nervous pile-up. ‘And very romantic. Well done. You are handsome and romantic. That’s … the … jackpot! Handsome and romantic is the jackpot!’