by Neal Doran
I didn’t reply to Delphine’s text. On the list of people I’d been a bastard to over the past twenty-four hours, the person I’d not shown enough sympathy for over her obnoxious boyfriend was not really near the top. Then for the next few days I sat in my flat and went back over the things I’d done in the past few weeks — the bits I was ashamed of, embarrassed about, and sometimes even proud of. Angus called a couple of times, but I didn’t speak to him either. He just left increasingly anxious messages, torn between anger at what I’d done to Rob, and concern that, full of remorse, I might be planning to get in a hot bath with a plugged-in toaster. There was an unspoken desire to get more detail on what was undeniably the best piece of gossip from our group in the past decade in there too, so I felt as if he was coping without my input.
When I finally went back to the office I ignored or snarled at everyone around me, particularly the people who in all innocence came up to me and said how lovely it had been to meet my girlfriend at Jamie’s place, and how nice she had seemed. They got an even shorter response than the people who pointed out that last week hadn’t my black eye been on the other side? As if I were faking an injury for effect, but had applied the green and black eye make-up to the wrong eye that morning.
Work did at least bring a bit of normality back to life — aside from the times word got out that ‘Tyson’ Taylor was to go and hide in the stationery cupboard because there were reputable clients on the office floor. The guys had been good though; knowing I was bothered about something, and suspecting there was a woman at the centre of it, they’d been very sympathetic — particularly Delphine.
‘This black eye?’ I said. ‘The second one we’re talking about? Not the one I got resisting a citizen’s arrest before grassing up my date? I got a text from her the other day, by the way. From what she said if she goes down for nicking that Gap top I might need to consider witness protection.’
‘I still can’t quite believe that. You’re so bad but you act so nice! “Toujours le tranquille”, as we say in French.’
‘Right. And that means?’
‘It’s always the quiet ones.’
‘Bad dates and serial killers, that’s us.’
‘But the second eye?’
‘Yes, well, I’ve been keeping it to myself. Something I’m even less proud of.’
‘Really?’
Delphine leaned in closer towards me. Her elbow on the bar with her head resting on her hand, she looked up at me with big dilated pupils turning those blue eyes almost black.
‘You know Hannah, my friend from the party?’
‘Her.’
It was amazing how with a syllable and a slight shift in head angle Delphine was able to transform local climactic conditions from getting quite hot to decidedly frosty.
‘Yeah, well, you know she’s married to my best friend?’
‘Right?’
‘Former best friend, really. Well, it was him.’
‘You took your best friend’s wife as a lover?’
Delphine said lover as ‘lovairr’ and looked impressed, as if my personal circumstances were putting me in with a chance of becoming an honorary French citizen.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t quite like that. But we fell out. Neither of us was behaving very well.’
‘Something like this happened to my bruzzer. Have you all kissed and made up?’
‘Not exactly, no. Hannah went away for a while and I haven’t been in touch with Rob so I have no clue how he’s doing.’
‘Oh, he is fine.’
‘I’d like to think that for him, but I don’t know if he will be.’
‘No, no. He’s fine. I spoke to ‘im.’
I leaned back and looked at her.
‘You spoke to ‘eem? I mean him?’
‘He called me a few days ago to go for a drink. I said no.’
‘Because he was marri—’
‘Because he sounded a bit desperate. And was not a very good kisser.’
‘You’d kissed him?’
‘He kissed me. In the pub when the two of you were supposed to be going to the cinema? But it’s OK, I’d let him. I was just feeling a little down the night we met, not like my usual self. I told Alex, and we had a fight about it, and I felt better.’
‘Where is Alex anyway?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve had enough of him now. I told him I would be busy this week, and he has been calling, and texting and asking am I OK, and is there anything he can do, and what is wrong? He is such a little boy.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realise. Sorry to hear that.’
‘I tried to tell you before, but you’ve been so…angry and distant.’
I shrugged my eyebrows, acknowledging my bad-boy reputation.
‘With this fighting, and all these women chasing you, I’ve not even had the chance to tell you about the dream I ‘ad about you last week.’
‘No, I didn’t know about—’
She leaned forward and whispered something in my ear, her breath sending a shiver down my spine. She moved her head back slightly from my ear so she could look straight into my eyes from close range and watch my reaction with a salacious grin, before moving back in to quietly detail the apparently satisfying conclusion to our dream encounter.
‘Wasn’t that wicked, no?’
I tried to rearrange my features so I didn’t look like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I looked like a nonchalant rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.
‘Yes, that really s…sounds like something,’ I stuttered, ‘especially considering in real life I’m not the least bit ambidextrous. And never even been horse-riding, so wouldn’t usually have access to that…equipment.’
She took a sip of her drink, and openly assessed me, her tongue gently moving over her lips, savouring the wine.
I sat there and tried to remember what relaxed people sitting at tables did with their hands.
‘Shall we go for another drink?’ she asked.
‘Hff, school night, best get home…’ I said, scrunching up my face to hide my fear.
‘I was zinking of a drink at my home.’
In case I didn’t get what she meant, Delphine underlined her intentions with a foot slowly slid up my calf.
Thoughtfully rubbing the knee I’d banged when I jumped six inches off my stool, I realised that after months of daydreaming about this situation, it was happening. Admittedly I was not taking the lead as much as I usually did when imagining it, but still… After months of trying too hard, of being instantly responsive to her emails and sensitive to her moods, I discovered all I’d needed to do all along was get behind on my correspondence and be on the wrong end of a very brief fist fight.
For the first time in my life I managed to get the waiter’s attention for the bill at the first attempt. We sat and looked at each other while we waited. It actually felt as if she were undressing me with her eyes. I sucked my stomach in, and took a couple of big swigs of my near-full glass of wine.
Which was just as well, as it meant there wasn’t much left in the glass when I told her thanks, but I’d be passing on her offer, and she threw the last of its contents in my face.
Back home in time for the second half of Sex and the City on the comedy channel, I ordered a takeaway — what the tapas lacked in substance it made up for in price — poured the last of a three-day-old bottle of wine, and fired up the laptop. Which was not a euphemism. A few minutes of booting up later, and after a few clicks through my new Internet homepage with its remembered username and remembered passwords, I was checking in online, with soullyforyou.com. Before I could even check online statuses I got a message.
SuperDan82: Late for you tonight.
FunnyGal483: Hot date, of course. What’s happening?
SuperDan82: You’ve missed three nipples, and five life-sapping puns.
FunnyGal483: Has Carrie mentioned she’s a writer yet?
SuperDan82: She’s a writer?!?!
FunnyGal4
83: She made a passing reference once in an episode, easily missed.
SuperDan82: So. This hot date?
FunnyGal483: You know it was supposed to be an office gathering of the hopeless and unloved? Turned out to be just the two of us.
There was a pause in the communication.
SuperDan82: Really?
FunnyGal483: Really. But nothing happened. Well, someone got a drink thrown over them. But aside from that nothing happened. You don’t think I’m too foolish saving myself for the right person do you?
SuperDan82: From personal experience I’d say you’d be a fool not to.
FunnyGal483: And how is life with you Mr 82?
SuperDan82: Well, you know how I mentioned I’d gone to a Buddhist retreat in Bali to get away from life and find myself?
FunnyGal483: It was the latest of your list of desperately elaborate excuses not to ask me for coffee…
SuperDan82: Well anyway, I’ve had a look around, and it turns out I’m not here. Also it rains a lot, and you can’t move for students.
FunnyGal483: I hear that about Indonesia. So what now?
SuperDan82: I don’t know. Still a lot of things to work out, but I think I’m going to have to get on with normal life to do it.
FunnyGal483: Does that mean you’re planning to ask me to meet up with you some time soon?
SuperDan82: I dunno…one of the great things we have here is that we can be anybody we want and not worry about the reality.
FunnyGal483: Is that your way of telling me you’re not as good-looking as you appear in your picture?
SuperDan82: I’d say in that case the reality is better.
FunnyGal483: Oh really?
SuperDan82: Yep. And may I say the picture you’ve FINALLY put up of yourself looks stunning.
FunnyGal483: Why thank you.
SuperDan82: Has anyone ever told you you bear a striking resemblance to Sienna Miller in a perfume ad? Maybe it’s just the big bottle of Hugo Boss you’re rubbing against your face.
FunyGal483: Didn’t have time for a shower that morning…
SuperDan82: You’re all class. I’ve been thinking, though, why do we keep watching these old shows?
FunnyGal483: I dunno. Habit? Nostalgia? Frequent nudity and strong language from the start?
SuperDan82: I think maybe it’s escape to somewhere where any personal crisis can ultimately be solved in around 40 minutes. Real life messes aren’t that easily cleaned up.
FunnyGal483: Maybe not. But when you step out there in the real world and let yourself get messed up, you discover that life can be even better than television.
SuperDan82: Hmm. Maybe we’ll see about that…
There was a buzz on the intercom as the pizza guy arrived with my double pepperoni.
FunnyGal483: Hang on, the burglar’s forgotten his keys again.
I buzzed the outer door, and sifted through my loose change for a tip as the door knocked and a muffled voice said, ‘Pizza.’
I opened the door. She was there, wearing a student woolly hat and with a smile that made my heart leap and several other internal organs somersault. I watched her, my hands shaking. She looked beautiful. The hand she was holding her phone in was wobbling too as she grinned and showed me the chat we’d just been having online. She slipped it in her coat. I didn’t know what to say, or do — especially as there was a fourteen-inch Domino’s between us.
Slack-jawed, I stood at the door while she told me she wasn’t sure what she was doing, but that she had to try doing it anyway. That there could be no guarantees things would work out and there’d be difficult times ahead. That someone still entangled in a bad marriage was a dangerous person to be with. And seeing as she’d bolted once, she could do it again. But despite all of that she hoped what I said on the train platform was true, and that soon we could start making up for lost time.
At least, that was what I read into the intense flickering eye contact between us as we stood there silently.
What she actually said — eventually — with eyes glossed with tears, nose crinkled in amusement and a cute dimple from her big smile was, ‘Anyone order a spicy hot one?’
I pulled her through the door, and into my arms.
The pizza might’ve got a bit squashed by the time we got to eating it.
CARINA™
ISBN: 978 1 472 04452 5
Dan Taylor is Giving Up on Women
Copyright © Neal Doran 2013
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