‘I don’t mean to intrude, but I know you mentioned a while back that you two were hoping to start a family, and things were taking a little while longer than you hoped. I know how difficult that can be, Sloane. Have you tried acupuncture at all?’
Unless the acupuncturist penetrated me with something a lot larger and blunter than a needle, that was unlikely to make the blindest bit of difference, I thought.
‘Ah, not just yet,’ I replied. ‘We’re seeing what happens. Taking each day as it comes. And we’ve got all the time in the world. Once the house is finished, we can get right back to focusing on that side of things.’
Bianca stepped aside to let me lead the way down our narrow hallway, but before I could get a hand on the door to let myself out into blissful freedom, take my phone out of my bag and fabricate a work emergency that necessitated me getting back to our office in Soho, like, stat, she said, ‘Sloane?’
I turned around. With the door behind me and Bianca in front of me, the beady gaze of her brown eyes fixed on my face, there was nowhere to hide.
‘I’m saying this as a friend. As your friend, and Myles’s. Sex isn’t just for making babies. It’s the glue that holds a marriage together. And if you neglect the bedroom side of things, it makes it ever so much harder to deal with stress elsewhere in the relationship. Never mind the fact that it leaves a vacancy someone else could fill. For your own sake, don’t be that couple. Don’t be Sharon and Derek.’
The little wave of annoyance I’d felt earlier returned. I had better things to do. Like my actual job. Or, failing that, dusting.
‘Are you saying Myles is cheating on me? Because if he was, and you knew, I hope you’d tell me outright.’
Now it was Bianca who looked cornered.
‘No, no,’ she stammered. ‘Of course I’m not saying that.’
‘Good. Because he isn’t. I just remembered, I’m due in a conference call in forty-five minutes, so the wallpaper’s going to have to wait. Thanks so much for all your time and help; we’ll be in touch just as soon as we’ve reached some decisions.’
I leaned over and gave her a cursory air-kiss, feeling like I was signing off an email to a particularly persistent would-be client with an emoji to soften the ‘off you fuck, now’ message.
And then I opened the door and let myself out into the sunshine, leaving Bianca to do the same whenever she was ready.
Three
Myles and I met online. Yeah, I know. Like, duh. Doesn’t everyone these days? At the time, I’d been living in Brooklyn for three years, and it wasn’t exactly turning out to be the Sex and the City lifestyle I’d dreamed of. Well, there was plenty of city. Just not, you know, the other bit.
Up until then, my life had felt like a bit of a series of uprootings. There was the first one, when Dad’s work moved us away from Calgary, the Canadian city where I was born, to tiny Sparwood. Then, after the thing with Mom happened when I was eight, we moved again. And then, because Dad was a geologist working in the mining industry, we moved around some more. I went to four different primary schools and then to boarding school when I was twelve, because Dad was working away so much. I learned – I had to learn, fast – how to make friends, how to fit into a crowd, how to be just the right level of funny and sassy and taking-no-shit, without being perceived as a threat. And that skill stood me in good stead when I moved to Toronto for university, then to Vancouver for my first job, because by then I’d got used to moving around all over the place.
And then I uprooted myself again, moving to New York. I didn’t even have a job to go to; I wasn’t even following a guy. I just wanted a change, and to realise the image I had of myself as this freewheeling, about-to-be-successful career girl, who’d find a close-knit group of buddies, date hot guys and eventually settle down. Maybe. Or maybe not – maybe I’d be the woman who’s in her forties and lives in a sublimely chic apartment (maybe even in Paris; I speak decent French, albeit with a Canadian accent, and dreamed of living in Europe one day), cooks gourmet dinners for her closest friends on Friday nights, goes to the theatre a lot and doesn’t need a man.
I was prepared for all those scenarios. Friends, Sex and the City, Eat, Pray, Love, whatever. I was ready to embrace what my future held, with a kind of starry-eyed enthusiasm that makes me feel kind of sad for my younger self, looking back.
Because what I wasn’t prepared for was the loneliness. Oh my God, the loneliness. The aching emptiness I felt every night when I got home from work and my apartment was empty because my roommates were out somewhere with friends they already had. And on the odd occasion when they did invite me along to something, there was so much talk of mutual acquaintances I didn’t know, or work gossip that meant nothing to me, or old rivalries from way back, that my old fitting-in skills deserted me.
But I didn’t let that get me down. Not that much, anyway. Oh, twenty-six-year-old Sloane, with your optimism and your confidence, what a gal you were. I decided that if I wasn’t going to have my own Joey and Chandler and Monica and the rest of them, I was going to date.
And not just date: I was going to date like a boss.
I got myself onto Tinder when Tinder had only just started to be a thing. I did speed dating, even though that was already becoming not a thing any more. I went to ballroom dancing classes and patisserie workshops and even tried rock climbing.
And – yeah, I’m cringing a bit – I began to fancy myself as a bit of a dating guru. I Instagrammed the fuck out of every aspect of my life. I started a blog and then a podcast called Sorry Not Sorry, in which I dispensed pearls of wisdom and shared anecdotes about my dating experiences, bigging up the funny parts and leaving out the bits that made me feel wretched, unloveable and ashamed. I built up quite a following, and – however mortifying most of those old posts seem today – I haven’t been able to bring myself to take them down.
Anyways, so, Myles was a Tinder date. I think he was the twentieth I’d been on that month. I was a seasoned online dater by that point: I was basically the Hound out of Game of Thrones, if dating was war, which it’s not unlike to be honest. I was a battle-scarred veteran. But, of course, it wasn’t a throne I was fighting for – it was love. More than anything, I wanted to find myself part of a team of two, heading hand in hand towards the future.
I had quite the system going. I spent five minutes lying in bed in my lonely room every morning, scrolling and swiping, sending witty one-liners to guys I liked the look of. Then, at lunchtime, I’d check my messages and likes, and block, block, block. Any one-word approach got a block. Anyone I’d exchanged messages with more than four times who wasn’t ready to meet up: on your way, motherfucker. Any dick pic: forget about it. And oh my word, there were a lot of those. Big ones, small ones, shaved ones, ones so surrounded by hair they looked like some shy woodland animal peering through the undergrowth. Circumcised ones, ones modestly enveloped in foreskins. A cock rainbow in every shade from pink to ebony. Sometimes, I swear, I felt like I’d seen every wang in all New York’s five boroughs and then some. I even dreamed about them sometimes – a kind of peen sequence, and not in a good way.
Anyway, in the evenings, once I’d finished what I thought of as the Bonfire of the Manhoods, I’d spend another half-hour replying properly to people whose messages I thought warranted it, engaging in a way that I hoped was eager, open, but never needy. And after three messages, if I thought someone seemed hot and smart and non-creepy, I’d suggest meeting for a coffee.
The response I received to that generally told me all I needed to know. Really busy with work right now, but I’d love to see some more photos of you. No chance in hell. Let me tell you all about my sexual fantasies. Tell your hand, loser. Travelling in Antarctica right now, but let’s stay in touch. #byefelicia.
I was ruthless and efficient and, like I say, I’d gotten pretty damn good at it.
And then I saw Myles’s pic, thought, okay, you’ll do, and swiped right almost automatically. But then I stopped and looked again, wondering why th
at one tiny movement of my finger on the screen had felt different from the others – more significant. His pic was fine – great, even. He had a cute kind of half-smile, revealing teeth that might not have been healthcare-plan perfect but at least hadn’t been knocked out in a fight. The clothes he wore were just the right balance between stylish and no-care. The backgrounds of two of his profile pics were recognisably London and Paris. Paris. I can still remember the little lurch of excitement I felt at that. Here was a man who’d travelled, who’d want to travel more, who I could explore the world with. Could this one be special? I wondered, barely daring to hope. But soon we were chatting, and he was funny and zany and didn’t send me even one pic of his junk. And when he responded to my message suggesting a coffee with, How about a cocktail instead? I threw caution to the wind and said okay.
One cocktail turned into three. I was as intoxicated by his British accent as I was by the booze, and his looks didn’t do any harm at all. I was charmed by the way he pronounced ‘water’ and ‘vermouth’, and enchanted by his giddy excitement about being in New York, where I normally felt like an outsider but, in contrast to him, was a native. The way his denim-blue eyes crinkled and narrowed when he laughed made me melt inside.
So when I asked what had brought him to the Big Apple, and how long he was staying, his answer made me feel punched in the gut.
‘I’m here on a three-month gig. I’m about to be promoted to partner at the firm I work for in London, and this project is make or break. I want it to succeed because, yeah, I want to do my best for our client and the business, but more than that – I want this to be the springboard that’ll let me set up my own practice.’
‘Which would be based…?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Well, in London,’ he said. ‘But also, the world. There’s so much potential everywhere. The firm I work for now has clients in Singapore, Australia, the UAE – as well as here and in Europe, of course. So right now I’m here, and part of being here is meeting people. People like you.’
And he looked right into my eyes and smiled a smile I’ll never forget.
But there was the London thing. The three-month thing. The fucking-off-all-over-the-world thing. But I liked that. I loved the idea of being part of a global couple – that Paris apartment still figured largely in my dreams – and when I thought about London, I was like, well, why not? I mean, Big Ben, the Queen, fish and chips with mushy peas (whatever those were) – what wasn’t to like?
So we went on a second date. And, that time, we slept together. And it was amazing. Blissfully, spontaneously, meltingly amazing. The time after was, too, and the time after that (and the time after that). And before I knew it, we were an item – until we weren’t.
‘Sloane, sweetheart,’ Myles said one night, after we’d shagged (he called it that, so I’d learned to, too, and the word never failed to make me giggle), ‘I’m gutted, but I’m not going to be able to see you next week. You know I said how I want to get my own firm off the ground? I’ve been approached by a potential backer in London, who’s asked for a meeting on Wednesday. I feel like such a snake, but I’ve got to go for it. If things work out, I’ll have to jump ship – and fast.’
‘So what does that mean?’ I asked, my hard-as-nails dating persona slipping away from me as fast as our sweat dried on my skin.
‘It means that, after tonight, I might not be back. And you and I should make a plan about what to do if that ends up being the case.’
And so we did. We lay together that night in the tiny, hot room in my apartment, eating take-out noodles, and we talked and talked. And we ended up figuring out that, if things with Myles’s job went as he hoped, I’d come out to London. I’d come, and, if that was what it took for me to stay, I’d marry him.
‘I mean it, Sloane,’ he said, smiling down at me over a bowl of ramen in a way that was as intense as it was tender. ‘Will you? Will you marry me, if that means we can be together always?’
Put like that, there was no way I was going to say no – and I didn’t. Less than six months later, we were married, quietly, in a registry office in south London. My dad came out from Canada with my stepmother to be one of our witnesses, and Myles’s mother was the second. Afterwards, we went for drinks in a local pub, because neither of us could afford a big reception – I hadn’t found a job yet and every spare cent Myles had was being ploughed into getting his business off the ground.
It was quite the whirlwind romance. And now, I felt as if I was courting my husband all over again.
Having weekly date nights had been my suggestion, obviously. These things generally were: over the years, we’d fallen into a bit of a pattern, one in which most of the admin, from booking holidays to emptying the dishwasher, fell to me, because otherwise it just wouldn’t get done.
I resented it sometimes – okay, I resented it often. But if the choice was between taking a load of laundry out of the washing machine and moving it over to the tumble dryer while I rushed to get ready for work, or doing it when I got home, late and knackered but not as late as Myles or as knackered as he claimed to be, or having a massive row about it – well, what was five minutes of my time versus a happy marriage?
So, yeah, it was me who’d said – spooked, I guess, by Bianca’s words of warning – that we needed to make more time for us, and Myles had happily agreed.
And here I was, at eight o’clock on a Thursday night, when to be quite honest I’d rather have been getting into my pyjamas and flopping on the couch to watch The Handmaid’s Tale on catch-up, stepping out of the shower and going through to the bedroom, still wrapped in my towel, to decide what to wear.
It wasn’t a massive date, obviously. It was a work night, Myles had texted apologetically that he was held up at the office after being on site all day and would only be able to meet at nine, and we were only going for pizza up the road.
But still.
I pulled on a pair of lace-topped hold-up stockings, a black and red lace bra and matching pants, a full, knee-length black skirt printed with red poppies, and a tight black T-shirt, then stepped into a pair of pointy kitten-heeled mules. My style had always been a bit retro, a bit rockabilly, and now it was suddenly back in fashion, which I wasn’t sure whether to find gratifying or annoying. Though at least it meant I could shop in the high street, rather than relying on thrift stores and Etsy.
I did my face, hurriedly, sweeping on my signature black winged eyeliner and red lipstick, glad that I’d managed to sneak off at lunchtime to get my eyelash extensions topped up, so there was no need to add mascara. It had rained earlier, making my hair frizz like crazy, but I had no time to put it in rollers, so I scraped it back into a knot, securing it with a vintage enamelled clasp.
Then I hurried down the bare wooden staircase and out, ignoring the chaos of the house behind me.
I was ten minutes late but, even so, I arrived at the restaurant before Myles. It was warm enough to sit outside, and still light, so I settled myself at a table for two in the courtyard garden. I checked my phone but there was no message from him, so I guessed he was on his way. I ordered a carafe of red wine, and the waiter brought it over with two glasses, a bowl of olives and some breadsticks.
I glanced at the menu, sipped my wine and ate three olives, then told myself I’d better stop and leave some for Myles. Sitting there alone at our table for two, I started to feel horribly self-conscious. I imagined people looking at me, feeling sorry for the woman who’d been stood up, whispering to each other, speculating about whether I’d give up and leave or front it out and eat alone.
Don’t be ridiculous, Sloane, I told myself. No one’s looking at you. No one’s judging.
But still, it felt as if they were. I twisted my engagement ring on my finger – it was a plain band of nine-carat gold set with a cubic zirconia instead of a real diamond, all Myles had been able to afford at the time. He’d promised me an eternity ring, a full circle of diamonds, but I’d said we should wait and get it when we had the birth of our f
irst child to celebrate.
Remembering that brought the familiar twist of misery to my gut. I gulped more of my drink and checked my phone again, but there was nothing.
I’d finished the wine and the olives and was about to ask for the bill and go home when he arrived.
‘My sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Three-quarters of an hour late – that’s unforgivable. But I got a call from a client that couldn’t wait – he’s travelling in the States and I guess he forgot the time difference – and then there were delays on the Jubilee line and I had to wait ages for a train. How are you? You must be starving.’
I wasn’t, really, any more. But he’d ordered a bottle of wine and must have been hungry himself, so I scanned the menu and picked out a salad and an aubergine dish that I didn’t really want.
‘I’ll have the mussels, and the quattro formaggio pizza, please,’ Myles said.
And then, the business of apologies and orders out of the way, we looked at each other across the red-checked tablecloth. We were as awkward as people on a first date that wasn’t going well or – worse – like one of those couples you see in restaurants who clearly had their last meaningful conversation round about Christmas 2012 and now just stare morosely at each other across the table while they shovel spag bol down their necks.
I rummaged around in my mind, trying to think what I could talk about that wasn’t the progress of our house renovation (none that I’d been able to see; the builders had turned up first thing, had a coffee and then vanished off on another job), the importance of us having sex that night because of where I was in my menstrual cycle (ace passion-killer right there), or the hints Bianca had dropped that if I didn’t keep Myles in a frenzy of erotic desire, I’d only have myself to blame if he looked elsewhere (not even going there).
I tried to remember what we’d talked about when we were dating. Movies we’d seen, books we’d read, our lives before we’d known each other, our hopes and dreams. We must have talked about all that stuff, and more – I could remember us sitting for hours and hours in bars and restaurants long after our plates and glasses had been bussed, until the staff finished clearing up and turned the lights up in a not-so-subtle invitation for us to get the hell out of there.
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 3