by Holly Miller
Beyond the redbrick wall, the sky is suspended indigo, those last rich minutes before it fades to black and a galaxy of stars erupts above our heads. The space is warm, packed tight with bodies and humming with conversation, dappled with laughter.
“This is inspired,” I say, as Caleb lays out the picnic rug.
“Well, I was trying to think of how to persuade you to see me again. And an old friend of mine mentioned he was in this, so . . .” He spreads his hands to finish the sentence.
I laugh. “Yep, it was Shakespeare that swung it. Would definitely have turned you down otherwise.”
We share a loaded glance, and I wonder if he’s picturing last night, too—the minutes melting away as we kissed, that feeling of having stumbled across something special.
“That’s what I thought,” he says, deadpan.
“So, what part’s your friend playing?”
He flicks through a copy of the program. “Count Paris.”
“Oof.”
“What? Is that bad?”
I keep my face straight. “Couldn’t possibly say.”
He laughs and starts unpacking the food. “Knew there was a reason I should have paid attention in English. Speaking of which, you haven’t sent me your pages.”
I grimace a little. I’d been wavering over hitting send first thing this morning, before being flooded with self-doubt. “I know.”
He smiles. “I probably shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, I want to, I just . . . I might polish them up a bit first.”
He nods. “If you change your mind, it’s cool. Really. Right—are you hungry? Had to guess what you’d like.”
“Talk me through it.”
“Well, I am trying to impress you, so most of it’s posh. But I did throw in some Scotch eggs and cocktail sausages. Plus . . .” He lifts up a bag. “Couldn’t go without Scampi Fries.”
I shake my head. “This is amazing. You guessed so well.” I survey the feast of garlic-stuffed olives, vegetable samosas, four-cheese focaccia, smoked ham, and chicken salad spread out on the rug. “You succeeded—I’m seriously impressed.”
“Wasn’t sure what you’d want to drink, so I bought prosecco, and”—he examines the bottle—“rhubarb pressé.”
“I’ll go for some pressé, please.”
He takes the bottle and starts to unscrew the lid before hesitating, then swearing softly.
“What’s up?”
“Forgot glasses,” he says, laughing. “We’re going to have to swig from the bottle.”
“That might lower the tone,” I joke, nodding at the people surrounding us, who are all equipped with plastic champagne flutes.
“Okay,” he whispers. “We’ll have to wait till the lights go down.”
As if on cue, a drum strikes onstage, the lights in the garden fall, and a hush descends over the murmuring crowd. Moths flit through the air as the stage becomes illuminated.
An actor steps forward into the spotlight. “Two households, both alike in dignity,” he bellows. “In fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .”
Across the rug, Caleb reaches out, takes my hand, and squeezes it. “Okay, we’re safe. Swig away,” he whispers. And as I smile, I feel an overwhelming swell of relief that I decided to call him last week, rather than hold out for the memory of a man nearly ten years in my past.
* * *
—
Though today’s been warm—weather more suited to summer than late spring—neither of us was prepared for how sharply the air temperature would dip as the Capulets and Montagues’ feud wore on. By the time the actors are lined up onstage taking their bows, I am shivering and my teeth are chattering, despite drowning in the jumper Caleb draped over me during the half-time interval.
Caleb’s friend, who was playing the doomed Count Paris, was very good, but there’s a large crowd around him at the end, and we decide it’s too cold to wait to say hi.
“God, sorry,” Caleb says, once we’ve gathered up our things and have joined the queue to exit the walled garden. “Didn’t think it would be quite this Baltic.” We’re surrounded by people who clearly do this sort of thing all the time and have come prepared in layers, hats, and thick coats. My skirt and emergency jumper are clearly marking me out as a first-time outdoor-theater fan.
Once we’ve made it outside, we both hesitate. I’m pretty sure neither of us wants the night to end, but we’re still at that point of getting to know each other where we need to discuss what we’re going to do next.
“Fancy coming back to mine?” Caleb asks, slipping an arm around my shoulders. I like the feeling of being held close by him, of our bodies pressed together, of his warm, unflinching frame.
I look up at him and smile. “Sounds good.”
We walk briskly back in the direction of his cottage, hand in hand. He didn’t say anything as he wrapped his fingers around mine, and I didn’t pass comment. It felt the most natural thing in the world for him to do.
The night sky is lustrous with stars now, the coastal air sharp and salt-filled. Above the rows of rooftops, the moon hangs low, like a candlewax disk stamped into the blackness.
“So, shall we mark it out of ten?” Caleb asks, as we pass the town’s little art gallery, a display of seascapes illuminated in its window.
“The play or the date?” I say, then catch myself. I mean, this was a date, wasn’t it?
Caleb doesn’t appear to pick up on this split second of self-doubt. “Let’s go with the play. Not sure I’m quite up to being scored yet.”
“Of course. Sorry. Okay—I’m giving it a firm nine. You?”
“I’m going with . . . seven.”
“Seven?”
“Sorry. But I do like my plays to have a happy ending.”
“Even the Shakespearean tragedies?”
He laughs, then winks. “See, I always just thought it was a love story.”
* * *
—
In his kitchen back at the cottage, Caleb offers me a nightcap, and when I decline, says, “Do you mind me asking . . . ?”
“Booze just doesn’t really . . . agree with me.”
“So, do you drink at all, or . . . ?”
I shake my head. “Not anymore.”
He nods, apparently entirely unfazed by this. “Well, I can offer you an impressive array of hot drinks.”
“You can?”
He rubs his chin. “Yeah, I seem to collect—don’t you do this?—random boxes of herbal teas, about five different types of coffee . . . I’ve got hot chocolate, and Horlicks, and . . .” He starts rummaging in a cupboard.
“Coffee’s fine,” I say with a laugh.
So he makes us both coffee, and while the water’s boiling I wander back into the living room and over to a row of photos on one of the walls, all bearing Caleb’s penciled signature on their mounts. There’s a windswept vista of the dunes at the far end of Shoreley beach; a deer midleap above a five-bar gate; a shot of a bride and groom on their wedding day with the flare of a setting sun behind them; a black-and-white shot of an older woman laughing, who looks strangely familiar.
I feel him at my shoulder, watching me looking.
“These are insanely good,” I say, feeling almost intimidated by his talent.
“Thank you,” he says modestly. He is standing delectably close. I can smell the scent of his washing powder, the faint trace of aftershave lingering on his skin. “That was my stepsister’s wedding day. And that last one’s my mum.”
“She’s beautiful,” I say, realizing now why she’d looked familiar.
Caleb heads back into the kitchen to finish making the coffee. I move over to two more framed pictures on the mantelpiece above the wood burner. One is of Caleb standing on a bridge with two other men about his age and an older man and woman. In the other, he’s sitting around a dinner tabl
e with his mum, his stepsister, another younger woman, and a younger lad.
He appears at my shoulder again, hands me a mug. “My parents divorced when I was ten, so I have about a million stepsiblings.” His smile as he says this doesn’t quite reach his eyes, in a way that reminds me of Jools whenever she talks about her family.
I sit down on the sofa, tuck my legs up beneath me. “Do you get on?”
Caleb draws the curtains, then passes me a blanket before switching on an ancient-looking lamp that flickers and fizzes in protest.
“We do,” he says, sitting down next to me. “It’s more that . . . I don’t know. I was an only child, but my parents have both had new families for getting on twenty years now. So I sometimes wonder . . . where I fit in. If that makes sense.”
It does, and I feel a sting of sadness for him. “Do they live close?”
He shakes his head. “Dad’s in Devon, Mum’s in Newcastle. Like, as far from each other as they could possibly be. And me, come to that.” He smiles. “How about your folks?”
“Oh,” I say, with an irrational onrush of guilt, which I get whenever I talk to anyone whose family background isn’t entirely happy. “Well, my parents are sort of . . . this crazy fairy tale.”
“Yeah?”
I sip my coffee. “Yeah, they met on holiday when they were twenty, fell pregnant with my sister, and have been stupidly in love ever since.”
He smiles. “Nice. What’s their secret?”
“I guess . . . they always saw themselves as soulmates.”
His smile falters slightly. “My dad used to say that about every woman he met after my mum.” I catch the faintest of eye rolls as he speaks.
I wrinkle my nose in sympathy. “That must have been weird.”
“Let’s just say, it definitely killed that old-fashioned idea of the fates aligning, love being written in the stars . . . that sort of thing.” His smile returns. “Must have been nice for you though, to see living proof of the real deal.” To his credit, he says this without a shred of cynicism.
“Are you and your dad close now?”
He sips his coffee. “To my shame, yes. I’ve always kind of idolized him.” He laughs. “Really wish I didn’t, actually. He’s just . . . infuriatingly cool.”
“What does he do?”
“Wildlife cameraman. You know, for documentaries and stuff. So, yeah—I basically just wanted to be him, my whole life.”
“That’s where you got your wanderlust?”
He nods. “I guess after Helen and I broke up, I was like . . . Yes. That’s what I need to do next.”
I feel my chest clench with trepidation. “So . . . will that be . . . soon?”
He holds my gaze for a moment or two, then releases a breath. “No. I mean . . . no. It’s not like I’m taking off next week, or anything. I’ve got nothing planned, not yet.”
I force myself to smile, but inside, I’m catastrophizing. Of course someone as lovely as Caleb wouldn’t just turn up in my life, catch-free. Men like him don’t actually exist. Of course he’s about to up and leave for the other side of the world—that’s why he’s more than happy to rent. He doesn’t want to put down roots. And maybe for that reason he’s not interested in starting anything serious, romantically speaking, either.
“You mentioned you went away, after uni?” Caleb says.
“Um, not for long. Just three months.”
Eyes eager, he leans forward and asks me more, but it’s hard to match his enthusiasm when I talk about it, and eventually his questions peter out.
“I had to cut the trip short,” I conclude, lamely.
He nods. “How come?”
“Oh, you know. Just . . . wasn’t meant to be.”
He doesn’t know, of course, but thankfully he doesn’t probe any further, and then we sit in silence for a little while, finishing our coffees. I feel horribly guilty suddenly—like I’ve spoiled the night by ending on such a low note. But then he sets down his mug before turning to brush the hair from my face. “Warmed up yet?”
I smile, shake my head. “Nope. Not yet.”
“Well, maybe I can help with that,” he whispers, leaning forward to kiss me.
“I mean, I’m literally freezing,” I whisper back, as his lips move to my neck. On the wall, our shadows loom large in the lamplight.
This time, as we kiss, I venture a hand beneath his T-shirt, running my fingers over his skin, skimming his ribs, the ridges of his muscles.
Please don’t go anywhere, I think, as he groans softly. This has barely even started, but already I don’t want it to end.
Go
Sunday night, forty-eight hours after my date at the restaurant with Max.
We’re in bed, trying to muster up the energy to order in some sushi, which basically sums up exactly how decadent this weekend has been. We’ve left the flat just once since our date, popping out yesterday morning for sustenance, which essentially involved shoving half of Waitrose into a trolley. Now we’re nose-to-nose on the mattress, a breeze from the open window stroking my hot, bare shoulders, the gossamer kiss of pillows against my face.
Max’s bedroom is pale and clean, high-ceilinged with sash windows. Lots of light. The iron bed frame is set against a rugged wall of exposed brickwork and piled with white bed linen the texture of marshmallows. There’s just a smattering of other items in here—a cornflower-colored rug on the floorboards, mounted speaker in one corner, blond-wood chest of drawers, and full-length mirror propped near the window. I keep catching myself glancing around, trying to spot things I recognize, little trinkets from our past, but there is nothing.
The flat is calm and peaceful, like we’re in a village rather than London, with windows so well glazed you can’t really hear much traffic. Occasionally there is the muted thump of feet above our heads, but it’s nothing like sitting in the living room in Tooting, where even the light crossing of a room upstairs resembles a stampede. Max told me last night he chose this flat partly for the neighbors, doing extensive research on them before he signed the contract.
“Is that legal?” I laughed.
“You think journalists have to dig for a living, try doing what I do. You wouldn’t believe the things I find out about people.”
I reach out now to touch his face. His skin is bright and damp with exertion. “You know, the night I saw you in Shoreley . . . I’d just started chatting to this guy, in the pub.”
He props himself up onto one elbow, raises an eyebrow. “Chatting chatting?”
I smile and shrug. “Kind of. But then I saw you out the window, and I just . . . abandoned him at the bar. Anyway, he wrote his number on a beer mat and put it in my coat pocket. I found it last week.”
Max laughs. “Wow. And you say I’m smooth?”
“I know. Who’d have thought you’d have competition on that front?”
“So, are you going to call him?”
I found the beer mat while I was packing up the last of my things for the move, and it fell out of my coat pocket. I turned it over in my hands and smiled, then placed it gently into the box of stuff that would be staying in Tash’s loft.
I feign deliberation. “Yeah, maybe. Just to hedge my bets, you know.”
“Oh, absolutely. Very wise.”
I shuffle forward on the mattress and kiss him—a kiss that’s long and full and intense, so he can be in no doubt at all I’m just teasing.
“In all seriousness,” I whisper, “you should know, I don’t make a habit of this.”
His eyes crease at the corners, a tiny spray of crow’s-feet. “Of what?”
My heart is cartwheeling in my chest. “Sleeping with guys on the first date.”
“First date.” He pretends to think about this. “But isn’t this technically like . . . our four-hundredth date, or something?”
I smile. It’s what
I wanted him to say. “Maybe.”
Beneath the covers, he runs a hand across my hip. “It doesn’t count, Luce. We’re exes.” Then he catches my eye, rolls onto his back. “That came out wrong. What I mean is, it’s you and me. We’re past all that.”
“Yeah. We can just skip straight to the good stuff.”
“Exactly.”
“Pick up where we left off.”
He rolls back toward me, fixing me with smoke-gray eyes. “Yep.”
But . . . where was that? I mean, where did we leave off?
I’ve been burning to ask him since Friday night. Since our kiss, and that spark that turned into dynamite right there on his sofa. Since yesterday morning, when we returned from the shops with coffees from the Italian deli that ended up going cold and untasted in the kitchen. Since yesterday afternoon, when he eventually left the bed and invited me into the shower. I’ve spent the past forty-eight hours in a kind of daze, suspended in dreamy disbelief, but so far I’ve been unable to break the spell by saying the words I’m saying now.
“Why . . . did you end it, Max?” I whisper. The question’s almost too hard to ask.
His gaze tracks back and forth across my face, like he’s trying to pin down the right answer. “I had to,” he says, eventually.
I trace a shape against his left pectoral with a single finger. His skin is still beach-brown, muscles undulating beneath it, his body—nearly a decade on—seemingly an even better version of how it was before. He’s always been a runner, into sport, but now his physique looks more attended-to, like he might lift a few weights from time to time, too. I feel briefly self-conscious, wonder whether he’s been comparing the me of today to the girl he loved back then.
I don’t think I’ve changed, much. I haven’t got the ballerina physique of my sister, or Jools’s natural beauty—but when I compare myself to old photos, I don’t see a lot of difference, except maybe an easing of the youth from my face.
“Were you . . . scared of the commitment?” Our plan had been to move to London after graduating, and we’d already talked about finding a place there together, until a conversation with his friend Rob made me think I’d got that wrong. We argued about it one afternoon—about whether he was going to live with me, or with Rob and his other friend Dean—just a week before he broke things off. So I convinced myself that was why—but he kept saying it wasn’t.
