‘There’s nobody else, of course there isn’t!’ Nadia said. ‘Eddie, I’m having a really great time with you.’
Eddie nodded. ‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve told you how I feel.’
‘So what now?’
‘So, let’s go home, and eat, and keep enjoying this.’
‘Even though you think you’d be happier with somebody else?’
Eddie looked at her. ‘I guess I just wanted some reassurance, is all,’ he said. ‘I’m falling for you, Nadia.’
Nadia took a breath. He was falling for her. She was enough. That felt good to hear. She needed him to fall for her. She needed to know for sure that she was enough. And she’d feel the same soon. Time. She just needed time.
‘So … we’re going to keep doing … this?’ she said.
‘If you want to,’ Eddie replied, and Nadia did. She really, truly, desperately wanted to feel as deeply as Eddie did. She wanted to fall for this good, good man. She wanted to make him happy. She wanted to be happy herself.
‘Let’s pay and go,’ she said, reaching for her bag. ‘I just need to find my card.’ She rooted around for her wallet, lost in the depths of her navy leather bag. She felt the edges of a plastic rectangle. ‘Got it,’ she said, triumphantly. She half wondered why her card wasn’t in her wallet and when she fished it out she saw why. It wasn’t her card. It was the card from that night – the one that said D E WEISSMAN. She’d forgotten she had that – his card from that night. She dropped it back into her bag like it was on fire, and Eddie said. ‘I can get it, babe. Ça va sans dire.’
‘Savva what?’ Nadia said.
‘Ça va sans dire. It’s French. It means, “it goes without saying”.’
‘I have literally never heard that used in conversation in my life.’
‘A lot of people haven’t. But don’t you think it sounds classy? Ça va sans dire …’
Nadia cocked her head at him. She thought it sounded pretentious, and suddenly, in that moment, everything about him bothered her. His stupid phrase and his stupid jacket and his stupid kindness and honesty.
‘But like,’ she said, pushing the issue, ‘if a lot of people don’t know what it means, why say it?’
‘Because I like it,’ he countered. The barman held out the card machine and Eddie tapped his card against it.
‘But, wouldn’t you rather be clear in your communication? It’s like you’re using it to be deliberately confusing. So that people ask you what it means and you get to tell them.’
Eddie laughed, nonplussed by her tone. ‘What’s wrong with that? I get to teach them something.’
‘But it’s showing off.’
‘It’s not.’ That’s all he said. It’s not. And typically, that’s why Nadia had respected him: Eddie knew who he was and what his values were, and wasn’t swayed by what other people thought. And just like that Nadia went from desperate to hope and to try with this man beside her, to angry. Irrationally angry. She knew, frustratingly, that she was better than this. She knew, in the blood pumping through her pissed-off veins, that she had let herself down because she should have been honest with him. Should have told him that she did think of somebody else, was holding a part of herself back. She had continued to see this man because she had been lonely, and on some level thought this was all she was worth – an almost. She was so mad at herself! She knew, she fucking knew, that it was better to be alone than with the wrong guy. And she had tried with Eddie. Even if she hadn’t explicitly known he was the wrong guy, in her gut she knew he wasn’t the right one. Two months was enough to know. It was inconvenient to acknowledge that, but it was true.
Outside, Eddie said, ‘What is wrong with you?’ and Nadia turned to him and said, ‘You’re right, aren’t you? This isn’t working.’
Eddie’s mouth opened and closed. ‘Literally I tried to break up with you for your sake five minutes ago and you got me to give it another chance, and now you’re breaking up with me?’
Nadia looked at him. She felt like a grade A bitch. She hadn’t meant to string him along. She hadn’t meant any of this. She felt ashamed, then – ashamed to have acted less than her best self. It was at that moment that a familiar shape caught her eye, and even though Eddie was stood before her wanting a response, she was distracted. It’s Gaby! she thought. She was so relieved to see her. She’d last seen her outside of work at their Bellanger brunch, weeks ago – and Gaby had only stayed an hour before having to dash off somewhere else. She’d been working across at MI6 on a project lately too, so hadn’t even been around at the office. Even if Nadia couldn’t communicate what was happening she’d feel stronger and braver just from a hug. Nadia hung back from calling her name, though. Something wasn’t right.
Gaby was holding somebody’s hand behind her, and Nadia saw Emma come into view. They were out without her. Why would they be out without her? Instinctively Nadia took a step back into the doorway of the bar.
‘What are you doing?’ said Eddie, to which her only reply was, ‘Sssssshhhhhh!’
From under the awning of the restaurant, she watched her work best friend and in-real-life best friend, a heavy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. They’ve ditched me, she thought. They’ve ditched me to hang out without me. Nadia felt humiliated – and also totally infantilized. She’d felt weird about them chatting with each other and how they knew things about each other more and more, as well as, well, not exactly ganging up on her, but definitely forming an allegiance together, acting like their own two-person army without her. Emma had outright lied to her earlier, saying she had a date. Nadia felt betrayed. And yet, she was mesmerized by watching what unfolded.
Gaby pulled Emma’s hand behind her, and spun around so that the two women were facing each other. Their noses pressed against one another. Wow, Nadia thought. They’re wasted. But it was only 6 p.m. Were they really drunk? And then they kissed. Not politely, or like friends, but full-on hands-in-each-other’s-hair open-mouthed snogged. Emma pulled away and laughed with her head tipped back, and Gaby put a hand on the back of her neck and sort of ruffled her, smiling.
‘Fuck,’ Nadia said, out loud. ‘They’re not drunk – they’re in love.’
Eddie crouched down next to her. ‘Isn’t that—’
‘Yeah,’ Nadia said, watching them walk down the street until they disappeared, holding on to each other the whole time.
‘Fuck me,’ said Nadia, bewildered.
‘You didn’t know?’ Eddie said.
Nadia stood back up, all the way, glancing one last time in the direction her two friends had gone. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.
Eddie nodded, concerned. ‘Do you want a drink? One for the road?’
Nadia looked at him. This man, who even after she had picked a fight and been rude and mean, even after she had effectively wasted two months of his life, making out like she could love him when she’d known all along, if she was going to be really honest, that she wouldn’t – even if she tried really hard! – was, as ever, upholding the very tenets of gentlemanly behaviour that would make him the perfect catch for somebody else.
‘You’re going to find the biggest, most brilliant love, you know,’ she said to him.
‘Thanks,’ he said, sadly. ‘I hope so.’
‘You are. You’re a wonderful man, and I’m sorry if I’ve left you worse than I found you.’
Eddie looked up at the darkening sky. ‘I think I’m going to take a walk,’ he said. ‘Are you going to be okay?’
‘About us? I will be.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘About my best friends secretly … what? Dating? Did it look like love to you? I don’t even know. I guess this is why they’ve both fallen off the radar lately.’
‘As long as they’re happy, right?’ Eddie said.
‘Well, yes,’ Nadia said. ‘But it’s easier to be happier for people when you know what’s going on.’
Eddie smiled. ‘Can I kiss you on the cheek?’ he said.
Nadia offered up one side of her
face, and Eddie said, ‘All the best, Nadia. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
Nadia watched him turn away, in the opposite direction to the one Emma and Gaby had taken, and said in return, ‘All the best, Eddie.’
She watched him amble down the road, his hands in his pockets and his overnight bag slung over his shoulder, and once he’d disappeared Nadia looked back towards where her friends had been. She’d been left in one direction, and left in the other, and as evening fell and the temperature dropped, she stood, all alone, not knowing where to head next.
38
Daniel
Daniel stood in the line that snaked around the field, wrapped up in his winter coat for the first time this season. The early days of November meant winter was officially on the way. He blew into his cupped hands and rubbed them together for warmth, and pulled his navy cashmere scarf a little higher up his neck.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I reckon there must be three hundred people in front of us, you know.’
Jeremy rolled his eyes, hitting him on the shoulder playfully. ‘Ah mate, calm down – we’ll be in there soon enough. Drink your juice.’
Daniel shook his empty can at him, signalling that he already had.
The group of them – Daniel and Jeremy and Sabrina, as well as Sam and Rashida, were queuing for a Romeo + Juliet-themed immersive cinema event at a covered parking lot near White City. Under their coats, which they’d stored in lockers inside, everyone was in costume according to a character they’d been assigned, and for four hours they’d roam through a set designed to look just like the film, interacting with actors who milled about in amongst guests, acting out scenes from the movie and making everyone feel like they too were part of the imagined world.
Eventually they’d settle down to watch the film surrounded by thousands of tea-lights, snuggled under blankets. Daniel had been to the Blade Runner immersive event last year, run by the same company, and it had blown his mind. He was beyond pumped to be back. He had high expectations for the night – despite the massive queue to get in.
‘Here,’ Jeremy’s partner Sabrina said. ‘Have another gin in a tin.’ She handed him an M&S can, which he accepted gratefully.
‘Gin in a tin,’ Daniel said. ‘Who knew?’
‘We did!’ chorused Rashida and Sabrina, clinking their cans against one another, laughing. It was nice how great they got on together, chatting away as much to each other as to the other men in the group. The uni WAGS had become friends in their own right.
‘Pissheads,’ admonished Sam, smiling.
Daniel had accepted his fate, lately – mostly hanging out with either Romeo after work or the couples from uni when he could. He didn’t see much of Lorenzo, really, save for the odd five-minute toast-eating session before work, where their chat was full of the effort of keeping it light. He was mostly a permanent gooseberry, the forever third wheel. Every woman he knew had offered to introduce him to somebody (even his mother!), but Daniel had decided to take a break from dating after just three days on Guardian Soulmates, where he’d been confronted with women who specified the height of their preferred guy in their bios, or had a list of personality requirements so long that Daniel went cross-eyed even trying to get through them all.
Must have own house, own car, own friendship group and be able to deal with a confident woman who knows her place in the world, said one. I wanna have kids, not date them!!!! said another. He’d flicked through Michelle Obama’s autobiography when it came out, and seen the bits about how she’d met Barack, and how he arrived to her fully formed, knowing who he was. Daniel kind of understood what these women meant: they all wanted their Barack too. A man who wasn’t looking for a woman to mother them, Daniel supposed, who wouldn’t feel emasculated by a woman with her own money and life. He got that. Daniel appreciated a strong woman – his mother was one – and knew what it took in what was still a man’s world to achieve great things and have a voice … but in a relationship he wanted a partner, somebody to build something with, not somebody who’d built her own thing and be mad that he didn’t have his. From what he knew about a Barack and Michelle kind of love, it meant something soft and gentle behind closed doors.
But none of these bios specified that, in private, relationships were made up of everyday gestures of kindness and respect, and until Daniel had met somebody who felt like an exhale, who knew that it wasn’t an assault on her feminism to make a cup of tea for them both, who would cheer for him like he pledged to cheer for her – well, he was good being part of his friends’ relationships. He was finishing off his six-month contract at Converge, tying up the loose ends, and wasn’t far off being able to exchange on a two-bed flat in Stamford Hill that he’d found, using the money from his dad’s life insurance for the deposit. His mother had insisted he take it. She didn’t need it, she said. Maybe he’d date again in the new year. Probably he would. He knew he had to show up for love, for love to find him. But right now he was tired. After his dad, and the confusion with Nadia and the paper, he needed time to regroup.
‘Nearly there!’ said Rashida, as they inched to the entrance after almost forty-five minutes.
‘Are we ready?’ said Sam, and the two couples and Daniel gathered by the final door through to where they’d spend their evening.
‘Ready,’ said Daniel, bringing up the rear.
They pushed through the door into the tented area of the park, so grand that it took their collective breaths away.
‘This way, dear friends, and with but haste,’ a woman in a black wig and tassel bra said. ‘Let us but meet my uncle, who will tell you everything.’
Daniel loved it. At the Blade Runner event, they’d made it rain from the ceiling of an airport hangar and before the movie all the characters had hung from the ceiling upside down, doing a fight sequence. Stuff like this was why he loved London. Big-scale, massive, stupidly impressive events on a random weekday night. And yeah, it cost a hundred quid a ticket, but goddamn, there was a Ferris wheel – a Ferris wheel inside!! – and an old stage shaped just like the one in the film.
Now everyone had taken off their coats it was easier to see who was who: the Montagues all got shipped off to the other side of the space, dressed in blue, and Daniel and his mates were in florals of black and red, for Capulets – Daniel himself was in a black leather waistcoat with nothing underneath, and black jeans.
‘Fuck me,’ Jeremy said. ‘All right, Iron Man?’
Daniel looked down at himself.
‘No wonder you were cold!’ said Sabrina. ‘You’re half-naked!’
Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘To be honest, if I had guns like that, I’d have them on show too,’ he said. ‘You’ve been working out, bro!’
Daniel felt himself blush. Admittedly, it was a bit of an extrovert outfit, but he was embarrassed that all his friends were looking at him.
‘I mean,’ he said shyly, ‘I’ve been at the gym a bit.’ Rashida put an arm around him to save him from the others, saying, ‘You look great, babe. Come on.’
They were led into another room, where everyone had to put on a mask they had brought along before being allowed inside a full-scale replica of the masked ball from the movie – right down to the aquarium where Leonardo DiCaprio met Claire Danes, peering at each other through ten inches of salted water and several slender yellow fish. Daniel loitered by it, wondering what it would be like to see the love of his life through the water, on the other side. He believed love would come. One day. Eventually.
The group spent a few hours meandering around the sites, bearing witness to a rap battle between houses, and a choreographed fight break out near the stage, where later a gospel choir would stand in a semicircle and sing ‘Everybody’s Free’ and not even Jeremy would crack a joke, they’d all just stand in impressed awe.
‘Shall we go and find a spot for the film?’ one of them said, eventually, and the group agreed they’d better go and figure out where to sit, since the screening would start soon.
&nb
sp; ‘Okay, you guys get set up here,’ Daniel said, after they’d picked their spot, ‘and I’ll go get snacks? What does everyone want?’
‘Look at those posh buggers,’ Jeremy said, not registering Daniel had said anything, but instead nodding his head over to the VIP area. ‘Posh bastards with their bean bags and blankets.’
Daniel turned to where he was looking and took in the atmosphere: he didn’t mind that he wasn’t VIP, over in the roped-off area. He knew those tickets were almost double what he’d paid. There was room for everybody, and there was a camaraderie in the air.
For a moment he watched a couple very obviously on a date smooth out their blanket and take off their shoes. The guy looked weirdly familiar to Daniel. He was tall, and very smiley, with bright red hair. Daniel watched as the man presented his date with a giant pair of woolly socks, and the girl tipped her head back, laughing. The man whispered something in her ear, putting his arm around her shoulder to do so, and the action took Daniel right back to the morning after he was supposed to have met with Nadia, when she was on the train with her boyfriend. The guy had the same ease with his body, the same comfortableness with intimacy and physical touch. And then the penny dropped: it was him! That was the boyfriend! The image of him listing off their weekend plans into Nadia’s neck as he sat with a hand on her leg was seared in Daniel’s mind. He was sure this was the same guy. Totally positive. The two of them arranged their snacks and drinks to the left and right of themselves and then snuggled down underneath a second blanket, wearing their socks, chatting together as if there was nobody else around.
‘Couple of lovebirds over there, huh?’ said Sabrina.
Daniel came to. ‘Huh? Oh. Yeah. Actually, I think I know him.’
‘Are you going to go say hello?’ Sabrina asked.
Daniel shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t know him that well,’ he said. Daniel didn’t actually know him at all. But. If he was right – and he was pretty convinced he was – if that was Nadia’s boyfriend, then he certainly wasn’t with Nadia. So, had they broken up? Daniel wasn’t sure if that mattered. The only thing he had promised himself – and Romeo – was that if he saw her, he’d speak to her. But he hadn’t seen her. She hadn’t been on his train, or on the platform, or bustling through the crowds of other commuters. It was like she’d vanished. He hadn’t thought about her for a few weeks, actually. He had even stopped reading the paper, because all he did was flick straight to the Missed Connections section, half hoping she’d written to him. She never had, of course, because why would she? His brain started to spiral, the way it had before: had it even been her writing back? What had he been thinking with all that nonsense? It was mortifying. He must have just been a bit brain-addled after his dad, clinging on to the weirdest things.
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