How We Fell In Love - sample chapter
I often wonder, looking back on the moment we met, if it had been one of those love at first sight things. I'd always thought it a silly notion. Lust at first sight had been my usual way of experiencing things. In fact, for the first ten years of my adult life, I don't think love—not of the kind that flows from the heart, at least—had played any part in my day-to-day life. I was the kind of guy who went through men at the sort of rate that gets you a reputation. Not that anything anyone said ever bothered me—I was too cocky to let things like that get me down. Besides, I was sure it was jealousy, pure and simple.
One night, in a moment of drunken hedonism, I told this guy I was with (don't ask me what his name was) to describe what he saw in me. The guy was a bit of a bookworm I think, if I'm remembering it correctly. Not the type I usually go for, but he had a certain something, and I decided it'd be interesting if the foreplay involved a delve into linguistics, of sorts, to see if he'd be able to find different—better—words to express how good my physique was. He didn't. He used the same words that others had used in the past. I had the classic V-shape, thin at the waist and broad across the shoulders. Always dressed to impress, my shirt was just tight enough so that you could make out the ripples of my muscular arms and my trousers were fitted perfectly to show of my pert little bubble bottom. Yeah, if you hadn't guessed, I can be pretty vain. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a body like this, but it's worth it, even if you have to hear the same old clichés from the guy's who are drooling over you.
But bookworm guy redeemed himself when describing my face. Hours spent at the gym and watching what you eat can turn any body into the desired shape, but when it comes to the face, it's all genetics. I'd been blessed there, the latest in a long line of good-looking descendants. He told me that my face was chiselled like a work of art, as though DaVinci or Michelangelo had put me together themselves. Nice, right? He said they'd found the sweet spot between cute and manly; rugged and soft; cheeky and respectable. My skin was a glowing, soft caramel tan, my eyes the colour of a clear summer sky and just as warm and inviting, my mouth shapely and kissable and my teeth when I smiled were a dazzling block of white. My hair was dark, not quite black, styled neatly with a hint of bed head, an almost palpable demand to have fingers run through it.
I expect most other people would have thought that overkill, that this guy was really, really trying to impress me into bed, but we were almost there anyway and, like I said, I'm one of those hideous vanity-obsessed creatures. So obviously, yeah, it worked a charm on me! He was one of those rare guys who got to have a second ride.
So with all that in mind, it's hard to believe that when I met Tim it was love at first sight.
He had his back to me you see. He turned round moments later and the impression was not good, sorry. But that first meeting, before his face ruined it, I experienced something unusual. My heart skipped a beat.
I should pause for a second at this point and say something to allay your fears that I'm a horrible person. Tim's face doesn't ruin anything, not now. That's when you know that love is involved, isn't it? When the things that you once thought were ugly become the most beautiful things in the world. Love does that. It washes away all the false trappings and lets you see the reality of a person. It shines over everything about that person and lets you see their true beauty.
But at that point, I wasn't there yet. Not at all. At that moment, it was nothing more than the possibility of there being a cute guy at work.
That was my first day in a new job. I'd recently turned 25 and something about it, the whole quarter century thing, made me think that it was time to settle into a career. I'd got the qualifications for a career in Marketing, but had been too busy enjoying the baser things in life to bother doing anything with them. Now I realised that I'd be able to do both—have a career and still have lots of uncomplicated fun.
I'm sure my new boss, Dawn—a homely woman in her early thirties who stood shoulder height to most people and was wider than most of them too—was professional enough to have chosen to hire me entirely on my skills, but I couldn't help notice during the interview the same thing that I'd noticed in the two other interviews I'd had earlier in the week, for other jobs, that there seemed to be a lot of giggling and flickering of eyelashes coming my way. As Dawn showed me around on my first day, I noted that the level of aesthetic appeal in this company was not especially high at all, so it's only natural (considering the type of person I am, remember) to think that I'd also gotten the job to add a bit of spice to company's sex appeal.
The small team of designers—there were, in fact, only two of them—was the last office that Dawn showed me. They'd be the ones that I'd be working the most with, and by that point I'd have been happy to settle for anyone who just looked plain, as there had literally been no-one to light any sort of spark.
The head designer, Kieran, was in a meeting, leaving his assistant on his own. As we opened the door to their office, the sight that greeted us was of this young man—Tim was 23 when we met—enjoying the solitude by flailing his arms around to the stirring slice of folk music that was emitting from his computer. I really feel that Dawn ought to have knocked before entering the room, but as she was also their boss too, I guess that she didn't have to. It might have saved poor Tim the embarrassment of hearing her cough discreetly, jerking him back into the real world, the world that contained two people who had just witnessed him getting lost in the music. Dawn's expression seemed to suggest that this was not the first time she'd had the pleasure of experiencing this moment. For me, it was impossibly cute. My mind leapt into action, possibilities and scenarios, of a certain kind of course, bouncing around in my head. Then he spun round in his chair and looked at us with mortified eyes and a burning, red face and disappointment set in.
His face was long, he had a bulbous nose and thin lips. His hair was blond and sensible. There were no boxes ticked at all. I wonder how differently things might have gone if I'd been able to put all that to one side sooner? Would we have got together quicker if I'd been able to recall the flash of something beneath the surface—the unique and adorable little creature, the energetic puppy in a world of tired old working dogs—that had intrigued me so immeasurably?
Dawn, bless her, simply ploughed headlong into the introductions as though nothing were out of the ordinary in the slightest, though the way that Tim muttered incoherently and refused to make eye contact with me suggested that he was never able to move on quite so efficiently. However, he seemed okay with the news that I, Josh Johnson, was the new Marketing Manager and so would therefore be working closely with him.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I settled into the job and started to properly get stuck into it. At the same time, there'd been a noticeable reduction in the number of one night stands I'd had, but I just put it down to work, my thoughts being on that and all the changes I wanted to make and all the ideas I'd had for where to take things. Also, I'd slept with this guy who'd said he was 21 but he turned out to only have been seventeen and it threw me a little. I have this rule that I'll only sleep with guys who are in the same age bracket as me. I was in my twenties, so I only slept with other men who were also in their twenties.
I know now that I was just making excuses. Those two things probably did influence my sex life, but it was something else, more prominent—though at that point I wasn't able to see it yet—that was causing the change in me.
The second time that I spoke to Tim was as we passed each other in the corridor. I offered him a friendly hello, to which he responded with a kind of reverse nod and a mumbled 'sup, figuring that that was the cool thing to do. I asked how he was, if his day was going alright and he scuttled off, his head hung low, having told me, as briefly as possible, that things were alright. What a strange thing he is, I thought.
Kieran, on the other hand, was much more chatty. He was 29 years old, erred towards schlubby and was insistent on his continued attempts to gr
ow what might, one day, be considered a beard. But he would at least look at me and engage me in conversation.
The room they shared was quite small. Tim's desk faced the wall, opposite the door, whilst Kieran's was over to the right, at the far end of the room, facing down it. To this day, I've never ascertained exactly why it's laid out like that, but I've come to the conclusion that it afforded Tim the opportunity, by staring at the wall, to pretend that he was there on his own.
I was sat with Kieran one day, working on a project, when it occurred to me that we'd talked nothing but shop. By that point I was getting on with both of them quite well, but knew next to nothing about them. Tim told me, when we'd finally got together, that the only thing he knew about me at that point was that I had the most fascinating voice. It has a musical quality to it, he said—soft and luscious, spoken with crisp diction. I love how he sees things like that. He asked me if I'd noticed the lack of tapping on his keyboard that day, but I hadn't. I'd been too wrapped up in work to spot it and he'd been too transfixed by my voice to do any work.
The lack of chit-chat or gossiping made me wonder if Tim and Kieran were always like this, the kind of people who just got on with their work. If they weren't then obviously there was a problem, and the problem was undoubtedly me. Had I been so fixated on work and making an impression there that I'd become the humourless manager? The intimidating kind to whom no-one can warm? Was I still the outsider intruding on things, stepping on toes and ruining the good thing they'd previously had? I certainly didn't want that to happen. I wanted to be one of the team, the regular Joe with whom everyone gets along and can have a laugh with. I decided to take an early lunch and that afterwards, I would have to put the effort in and see if we couldn't all just take the next step to being more than just colleagues.
I wouldn't admit to myself back then that I was interested in Tim. I feel sure that my desire to talk to him and Kieran about non-work related things had little to do with how I was coming across to them but more to do with wanting to know how Tim's mind worked. It was the start of me finding him intriguing.
If I'd have recognised my true reasons for wanting to get away from work conversations, I might not have spent all of the lunch break trying to figure out how best to approach it. I'd have done what I always do, no matter if I'm in the pub or at a nightclub or even in a supermarket. I'd just sidle up to someone and chat, no need to overthink things. It was easy. Most people had an opinion, good or bad, on pretty much anything. I could pick any subject out of thin air and begin a conversation, delving deep into it should the topic take hold, or springing off at a tangent if the initial response is unfavourable.
But everything I considered came with a red flag and I couldn't understand why. I was constantly contradicting myself. If I talked about music, would that remind Tim of when we first met and cause him to clam up? If I chatted about video games, would that come across as too obvious, reducing them both to a condescending stereotype? They both had a geeky air to them, which is why I dismissed the topic of sports too. I didn't want to seem clever by deliberately going against type. I toyed with the idea of bringing up the subject of movies and television, but couldn't narrow either of them down to any particular genre. If I chose Reality TV, would that make them think that I thought they were dumb? Would they think that I thought they were snobs if I chose some foreign language film to talk about?
What on earth was wrong with me?
I figured that my need to be the cool guy, the trendy manager, was what was making things difficult. I was blinded by the truth.
In the end, upon returning to their office, I went with the obvious.
"So," I said, "how long have you both been working here?"
As soon as I said it, I realised that it was the most natural thing to ask and the perfect way of leading onto more interesting things. I'd been over thinking things instead of letting my natural abilities take charge.
"Too long," said Kieran, with a laugh. "Seven years next month, I think. I came here straight after Uni."
Tim looked at the wall, his mouth open slightly, eyes puzzled. "Two years, I think. Is it?" He turned and looked at Kieran. "Or is it three?"
"It's two," said Kieran. "How can you not know that it's only been two years?"
"Does it feel like longer?" I said.
"No, I just couldn't remember."
"Is he always this forgetful?" I looked at Kieran and flashed a cheeky smile. Important to come across as jokey.
"No, to be fair, he's usually pretty on the ball. He's just being odd today." Tim raised his eyebrows. "In a nice way of course."
"I'm just tired," said Tim. "That's all."
I asked where Kieran went to university, though he'd barely finished telling me before I then asked the same to Tim.
"I didn't," he said. He must've figured what the silence after that statement meant as he quickly clarified. "I could've got in, I just didn't want to go. Not my kind of scene."
I saw his face blossom with the heat of embarrassment. His subconscious seemed to be doing everything it could to make him sound like a weirdo. I laughed after he said that it wasn't his kind of scene. He might as well have said that he hated people.
"Besides," he said, "I wanted to get out and start earning some money, help my mum out with things."
'Ah, ok," I said. "So is this your first job then or did you do something else before coming here?"
"I spent a year working at a fast food place," he said, looking at the wall again. "Then my mum got me a job where she worked, doing admin stuff, filing and boring stuff like that. Then I came here."
I've since reassured Tim that it wasn't the case, but he's still convinced that he couldn't have made himself sound any duller if he'd tried.
At that point, he'd had three jobs in his life, the first two being mundane and uninspiring ones and the current one he'd seemingly just wandered into. No inclination of a desire for a career. He simply needed money. That's what he'd seemed to be telling me.
He'd decided to take his lunch at that point, fairly bolting out of the room, pausing only to ask if either of us wanted anything from the supermarket, an offer which Kieran and I both declined.
I probed Kieran for information about Tim as soon as he'd gone, asking him what he knew about the odd young thing he shared an office with.
"You know," he said, "now that I think about it, a know very little about him. It's kind of strange, but I see myself as some sort of father figure to him." He laughed at the bizarreness of what he'd said. "I know I'm only six years older than him, but he's so much younger than his age, so I can't help but feel like he just needs some guidance, someone to help get him on the right path. There's a really great person in there, I'm sure of it."
"So how come you don't do it then?"
"No time," said Kieran. "I've a baby on the way so all my attention is on the wife."
"Congratulations," I said. "When's it due."
"Oh, not for another five months, but there's tons of stuff to organise. No, what Tim needs is a girlfriend."
I paid no attention to the disappointment I suddenly felt. I didn't even know why I'd felt such a thing. After all, it was only Tim.
"There's little chance of him getting one though," said Kieran. "Not if he won't put himself out there."
"Maybe he just isn't ready for anything?" I said.
"I guess not. Shame though. He's nice and funny and smarter than he makes out. He'd be a great boyfriend." Kieran laughed. "If that doesn't sound weird?"
I told him that it didn't and that I knew what he'd meant. I'd never come across such a person before, but it was my understanding that there genuinely were people out there who didn't suddenly come to life at fifteen, like I had, and grab hold of every opportunity.
The lunch break seemed to have done Tim the world of good. He was much more chatty and open when he came back. Whilst he'd been wandering the aisles the supermarket, he'd told himself to stop what he was doing; stop being the kind of person who w
asn't interesting or attractive. He had to be the kind of person who stood out from the crowd, the one whose every word people hung onto. I'd had that effect on him, apparently.
After listening for a while to what Tim was saying, Kieran used a moments pause as an opportunity to pose a question.
"Are you ill?" he said.
Talk had turned to holidays and Tim, who, it transpired, had never once gone away anywhere, had declared his intention to go on an adventure holiday later in the year. I said little about it, those kind of holiday's not being my preferred type—holidays were for lazing around in the sun—and I noted that Kieran remained relatively silent too, listening intently as Tim kept adding layers to what could only be lies.
"What do you mean?"
"All this," said Kieran. "Since when do you do holidays?"
"Just because I've never been on one, doesn't mean I haven't thought about it."
"No, I get that, but you've literally never mentioned it, ever. And seriously? A year back-packing?"
Tim claimed that he had been all set to spend a year travelling before he settled down and found a job, and that it was only a lack of funds which had stopped him. He'd fully intended to save up his earnings from that job at the fast food place so that he could make good on his promise to see the world. Tim only realised afterwards that this completely contradicted his earlier claim that his decision to go straight into work rather than go to university was so that he'd be able to help his mother out financially. Fortunately for him, neither myself nor Kieran had picked up on it at the time, or we'd have ribbed him mercilessly for it.
"It was just one of those dumb ideas you have," said Tim. "I realised the stupidity of it soon enough, that's why I never mentioned it."
Kieran shrugged it off, told Tim that he had no idea what was going on in that head of his and then said no more about it.
It seemed that I had been blind to what was going on as well. How else could you explain that I hadn't noticed what was, looking back on it, so glaringly obvious? Tim had been trying to impress me. I can usually spot such tricks from a mile away.
The Movie Star's Secret Page 14