by Marina Ford
Unfortunately, it was the sort of place that served things like calf liver sautéed in onions—what the living hell is that anyway?—and it was the sort of place that, despite alleging to be Italian, did not serve pizza. Harry seemed to have no trouble picking out his own dinner at a glance and spent the bulk of his menu time examining the wine options.
“What’s an osso buco?” I asked him.
“It says right there,” he said. “Veal shank. It’s a Milanese dish, usually served in a sauce of white wine and broth.”
Smart-arse.
“Why is the only meat here veal?” I asked.
“This one’s got sausage in it.” He pointed to a place on my menu.
“Ah, I sort of skipped over that one, since it says ‘rape’. Didn’t want any of that.”
He laughed. “It’s a type of broccoli.”
I picked that since it was the only dish on the menu that didn’t have veal in it or wasn’t vegetarian, which would have been worse.
“What’s your problem with veal?” he asked. “You don’t like it?”
“Never tried it.”
“You don’t like trying anything new?”
“At the moment, no,” I said. “At the moment I’m trying to focus on the fact that since you’re talking to me, you’re not actually a giant ham.”
He thought this was vastly amusing, like a man who’d never starved a Joe Kaminski before.
The food came and, though it was tasty enough, it was not nearly enough for me. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful though, so I said it was great, and he believed me.
Throughout the meal we chatted as before, and he never mentioned Kieran once. In my imagination, I’d hoped there’d be some signal, some sign he’d send me to let me know he was available and interested, but he did nothing of the kind. He asked me a million questions about the installation I was showing at the Independent Artist Fair in the Rag Factory, which made me conclude that perhaps the whole meal was meant as a sort of job interview—perhaps he had another client who might use my services. But if that was it, he never mentioned a client or a job offer.
I was conscious of a feeling of disappointment.
When we’d finished the main meal, desserts, and drinks, he insisted on paying. Outside, there was a moment’s pause, as we were slowly coming towards a goodbye. We let each other know which way we were going, and then he suddenly hugged me and blurted out, “Let’s do that again some time.”
Startled, I returned the hug and said, “Okay.”
It felt odd and abrupt. I wished he wouldn’t go. Having waited for this date—if one could call it that—with anticipation for days, I was quite keen to take him home with me. But he’d already turned away and walked up the street.
Still hungry and with my head in a whirl, I headed into town. There was a marketplace, quite close to the restaurant, which during the night was empty of stalls and instead full of revellers. There was a pub or two on the way, which I thought I might investigate once I found a chippy or some other takeaway place that was open till late.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a burger and kebab place. Besides me, there were two young women there, both of them giggly. I ordered a large donner kebab and some chips. I sat down in the red plastic seats near the window and waited for my order. My foot was tapping. I couldn’t fix on a single, coherent thought. I needed a distraction. I asked the girls, who were dressed skimpily enough to suggest they were going somewhere fun, what they were up to this evening.
“We’re doing a pub crawl,” the blonde told me.
“Sweet,” I said. “Is it for a challenge or something?”
The blonde looked at me like I was daft. The redheaded one liked me, I thought, because she was laughing at pretty much everything I said.
“You should come with us! Meet our mates. We’re doing a pub quiz later. Are you clever?”
I shrugged. “I can do a pub quiz. Or at least I can drink while you do a pub quiz.”
The redhead found this hilarious. The blonde told me how many pub quizzes she’d won in the past. We were in agreement that, putting our minds together, there was no way anybody could beat us.
We went out of the takeaway place together, and I immediately bit into my kebab, because holy shit was I hungry. We made it barely three steps out of the place, with the redhead complaining about her pinching shoe, when I stopped short and the girls did as well. I was standing, my cheeks packed with donner kebab, in front Harry.
He was as startled to see me, as I was him. I don’t know why, but immediately, like a bloody child, I put the kebab behind my back.
“H-Harry,” I said, spitting lettuce. This tickled my new friends to no end. Harry, when I first saw him, had seemed pale and miserable, but now his mouth was twitching and his eyes had that attractive glint of amusement in them.
“Hungry, were we?” he asked.
“Er, no!” I said. “It’s, er . . .” I swallowed hard and tried to think of a reason why I should be out on the street with a kebab behind my back.
“Kebab-tasting competition?” I ventured. The girls toppled over each other in laughter.
Harry smiled. “I see. And, er, are these the judges?” He nodded at the girls.
“No, that’s . . . Emma and Bev. We’re going to do a pub crawl.”
There was a moment’s pause while he looked at me in a strange, assessing way.
“All right, then,” he said, breaking the silence. “Have fun.”
He waved at the girls and then went on past me. Feeling like a right twat, I ran after him.
“Sorry about that,” I said, catching up with him. Showing the kebab in my hand, I said, “I didn’t mean to— It’s just— I was famished.”
He smiled. “That’s all right. I’m sorry about the restaurant; I thought they’d have a larger menu.”
“No, it was a lovely restaurant, honestly. It’s me. I hadn’t eaten all day, because—” I stopped, my face warming, and cleared my throat. “I didn’t have the time. So I was ravenous coming in, and then I didn’t want to behave like a complete peasant ordering everything on the menu and—”
“It’s all right,” he said mildly. “You don’t have to keep apologising; I’m not cross.”
“Oh, okay.”
I realised, for the first time, that he hadn’t gone home after our dinner either. Intrigued, I asked, “So, where are you heading?”
“I fancied a walk.”
I thought I saw, or perhaps I hoped I saw, something lurking in the depths of his silver eyes. It was like he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t.
“Want company?” I asked.
He seemed pleased I’d asked. I held up my finger and rushed back to Emma and Bev, who’d been watching us with great interest.
“So . . .” Emma began, “who’s Mr. Darcy over there?”
“What?” I laughed, a little embarrassed.
“Oh my God, he’s blushing,” Bev teased. “How cute! Oi! Handsome!” she cried at Harry. “You want a piece of this?” She and Bev collapsed into giggles when Harry frowned at them, bemused. Amidst their hoots of laughter, Emma said to me, “Sh-sh-sh, we’re helping.”
“Thank you and please stop,” I said.
“Go to him,” Emma urged in a loud, conspiratorial whisper.
“Make beautiful babies,” Bev gave us her blessing. They stumbled away together, into the night.
When I returned to Harry’s side, he seemed more amused than annoyed.
“Harvard alumni reunion?” he asked, dryly.
“Shut up,” I said, laughing.
We set off together, he with his hands in his pockets. I with a wilting kebab in mine. We walked in an ambling pace.
“So . . .” I began, hoping to distract him from the girls’ performance. “You’re not keen to get back to your sister?”
“Not really,” he said. “It’s a strange time. You don’t get used to being suddenly single again easily. You find yourself with all this freedom—nobody to tell where
you’re going or what time you’ll be home. It should feel freeing, but actually it’s depressing.”
I nodded as though I had any idea what that was like.
“Do you know what I mean?” he asked.
It felt like he was asking me more than just whether I understood him.
“Not really,” I said. “But I can imagine.”
“You feel guilty about things you shouldn’t feel guilty about. You want things you feel bad for wanting. You do things you didn’t think you wanted to do, and experience things you didn’t know you’d like.” He glanced sideways at me as he said it. I hoped he meant me.
“You’ll get used to it,” I suggested.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Joe,” he said, after a small pause. “And I felt guilty for that as well.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew what was coming. Regret. He would tell me that our night together had been a mistake. A one-off. A freak occurrence in his well-ordered life. He would ask me to understand.
My kebab was cooling in the night air and my appetite for it died entirely, so I chucked it in the nearest bin. My hands were greasy and sticky. Harry stopped in front of me and, ever the gentleman, took out a clean tissue and wiped my hands for me.
“I had fun that night,” he said, quietly, his head bent, his eyes fixed on our hands, as he carefully dabbed my palm. The street was entirely empty, and in the darkness of the evening, this felt private and intimate.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, my throat a little tight.
“And I suppose,” he sounded cautious, “I suppose I wanted to maybe do it again.”
I stopped myself from picking him up and running home with him.
“Sure! Where do you want to go?” I said coolly.
He laughed. “Er, no, that’s not—that’s not what I wanted to say. Hear me out.” He scrunched the tissue and binned it.
“I know this is probably nothing to you,” he said. “You probably hook up with people all the time. And I know rebound is a thing, and everybody knows about it, and it’s probably the most natural thing in the world for me to do at this point. But I have to be honest with you: I’m probably not the sort of guy who can do that. I get attached.”
“That’s cool,” I said with a grin. He could get attached to me all he liked. I could be the eucalyptus tree to his koala. I’m attachment’s enthusiastic amateur.
He smiled and gently shook his head. “I just want you to know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
He looked at me in a way that made my mouth go dry.
“I mean,” he said, his eyes flicking down to my mouth and back, “that night was . . . that was something. For me, at least. I’m not usually like that. I didn’t know it was possible to—to do that with someone I barely knew. I felt like I’d known you for years. Like I knew you better than some people I had known for years. It was a very—” His breath caught, and he dropped his gaze to the ground, where he kicked lightly at the paving slab. “It was an intense experience for me.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Was it?” He sounded surprised.
“I was there that night, remember?”
The miserable air he’d carried with him when I met him outside the kebab shop lifted entirely, and his smile was bright and happy. We walked on. I realised we were going in the direction of a Tube station. The subject of taking the Tube somewhere, together, was looming before us, closer with every step. I didn’t want to be pushy. I did, however, want to get him out of that suit.
Finally he asked, “So, would you like to . . . go somewhere?”
I slid my hands down his back, pulling him to me, our bodies melded together, all friction coming from our tight embrace alone. I felt him coming against my skin, shudderingly against my abdomen—he was hot, cheeks blazing, eyes glowing.
When he leaned back, bee-stung lips and flushed cheeks, he brushed his hair back before reaching down to stroke me, slowly, deliberately.
“Look at you,” he said, his eyes caressing my face. I’d forgotten how good he was with his hands.
“God, I like looking at you,” he sighed, as he bent down to kiss my neck. His arm was working, his fingers tight around me, gliding smoothly in rhythm with my hips. I tilted my head back. He remembered me well. He remembered where I was sensitive, where everything felt like hot, burning, tingling sensation.
“Harry . . .”
He found my lips with his. Long, lingering kisses turned into deep, passionate ones. When my breathing fell in with the rhythm of his pulls, he went down to his knees and began to kiss and then lick me, sucking me into his mouth. It was all too much. I came with a cry, saw white, my eyes rolled back in my head, and it was a while before I could catch my breath and remembered where I was.
He was in my arms again, kissing my shoulder, embracing me by the waist, running his hands over my body. When I was with him again, he sought out my eyes, as if checking if I was still ok with this, checking for regrets.
Our limbs worn and soft as jelly, our hearts relaxing slowly into a normal rhythm again, half-sleepy, we lay in my bed, his head on my chest, my fingers in his hair. They use words like crush or smitten when they talk of this feeling, but I felt curiously light and full, like a balloon.
He wasn’t asleep; his fingers were brushing over the sprinkling of hair on my chest.
When he spoke, it was in a low, thoughtful murmur. “Do you think it’s true that we take breakups so hard not because we mourn the person we’re losing, but because we mourn what we thought our life was going to be?”
That brought me down to earth.
“Probably,” I said, after a moment.
He sighed. “I wish I could go back in time and never have met him.”
Ah yes. Him. Harry hadn’t mentioned him all evening. Yet Kieran lurked behind every corner.
“Then you’d be a totally different person,” I said. “And I—” I stopped myself.
He glanced up at me, a question in his eyes.
I like you, I wanted to say. No, I wanted to say more. I like you a lot. You smell good and your smile makes me go warm inside, and—
“Why is there a picture of you here dressed as a dog?” he asked me, frowning.
I twisted my neck to see the pictures I’d stuck on the wall over my bed and found the one of me dressed as an Alsatian puppy. “Oh, there was a convention.”
“A convention?” His voice trembled.
“They call themselves furries, and I’d just met this bloke in this pub, right, and he told me about going and so me and a few mates decided to go along too and check it out.”
“You seem to be, er, enjoying yourself . . .”
“They were nice people,” I said, defensively. “My owner and I exchange Christmas cards every year.”
“Owner?” He laughed.
“What? He said I made a cute puppy.”
“And that’s all it took?”
I grinned at him. “I’m easy to please.”
“Clearly.”
I flipped him over onto his back while he laughed. We didn’t talk again that night.
Six Months Before the Big Day
Things to avoid when proposing to the love of your life:
Don’t plan anything elaborate. Just. Don’t. You’ll want to. You’ll want the whole of the world to bathe in your success. It’s a bad idea.
Remember that there’s a reason why nobody entrusts you with planning anything.
Make no radical changes to your appearance. Things your lover won’t want to see: you grinning like a maniac through fifty layers of makeup and bursting out of a skintight full-body leather costume. Things your lover will want to see: You. Just you.
As best you can, try to remain clothed. At all times.
We arrive in our hotel late. The flight was delayed, and then, for some unfathomable reason, a rainstorm meant that there were no cabs to drive us into the city, so we end up taking a bus. Harry doesn’t have a problem with this. He still texts his coll
eagues, his friends, tries to cheer me up by pointing out of the window at the passenger of a car driving next to us, who is eating cereal out of a bowl. But when I see the hotel itself, I really do cheer up. I want this trip to be perfect, and taking a stinky bus isn’t part of any vision of perfection anybody’s ever had. The hotel is beautiful, though, and at last, my plans are back on track.
Harry asks for our keys at the reception while I look through the brochures, hoping to find something touristy for Harry to do while I try to arrange everything for the big moment tomorrow evening.
“Come on, sunshine,” he murmurs near my ear when he’s done. “I’m too knackered to go and see the castle right now.”
“Oh yes, of course.” I take one of the bags off him and follow him to the lifts.
When we reach our room, I am even more pleased. I’d rung the hotel in advance to ask for one of their better suites—as good a one as I could afford—and now Harry’s reaction is priceless.
“Holy shit!” he says, when he switches on the light. “Joe, this must be some mistake.”
“Nah, it’s all right. The gallery has a deal with the hotel.”
“Really?”
“What?” I laugh, dropping our bags next to the built-in wardrobe. “Stick with me and you’ll live the high life, baby.”
He raises a dubious eyebrow. “That old man’s garage last time . . .”
“Was a one-off!” I say, defensively.
“And that cholera-infested water foundry?”
“That’s a historical landmark. And did you get cholera? No.”
He throws me a laughing look and then switches on the bathroom lights to do his usual hotel room inspection.
“Besides,” I remind him as I throw myself on the biggest bed I’ve ever seen, “you didn’t complain when I got us balcony seats for Ian McKellan’s King Lear. Or backstage passes for The Killers after I had to make up those posters for them.”
Harry just shakes his head in amused exasperation and walks over to the window. I get out of bed to switch off the light, so he can see a panorama of Dublin at night. I am, if I may say so myself, a genius. Everybody knows cityscapes at night are romantic.