The First Time We Met: An utterly heart-warming and unforgettable love story

by Jo Lovett

  ‘No. I’m not. I’m saying that you’re clearly an amazing, loving, caring dad but that circumstances are against you and that maybe there’s something you can do about that. Maybe you can walk away from your job. For your sanity and happiness. Make some kind of fundamental change in your life.’ She’d repeated some of the comments his mother had made in her letter but she’d gone a lot further than his mother had. They were both completely right, in theory. Except, in practice, it just wasn’t possible. Apart from anything else, he was too busy to think, at all, ever. Change required thought, energy, time. He had none of those commodities. He was just going to have to carry on the way he was, screwing up his kids’ lives.

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Sam knew that his voice sounded hard and angry. Damn right. He was suddenly furious with life and furious that they were having this conversation. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast and he realised that he’d made fists with his hands.

  ‘I don’t think I am.’ What was she? On a death mission?

  ‘I thought I was paying you for speech therapy, not life therapy.’ As Sam spoke, Izzy flinched, almost as though he’d raised a hand to her. Understandable. He’d been a complete asshole. Two nasty comments for the price of one.

  He could apologise. Or he could not apologise. He picked up his drink and took a large slug. Yep, apparently he was going to go with not apologising. The drink tasted very bitter.

  ‘Sorry.’ Izzy stood up, almost falling over on top of him as she did so, because of her haste. Those ridiculous, cute heels. And what the hell was wrong with him, noticing now how beautifully that dress clung to her body and wondering if that was the edge of a black lace bra that he saw? ‘Here’s your jacket. Thank you. I need to get going. Thanks for a lovely evening.’

  ‘How are you getting home?’ He shouldn’t let her go like this. He should apologise, right now. Again, though, he couldn’t squeeze the words out through the red mist. It was like, after the kiss, he’d almost been seeking an argument, and he couldn’t reverse his way out of it now.

  ‘I’ll get a black cab. There are always lots on this road. Good night.’ She was right, there were always a lot of cabs on this road, so she’d be safe to get home.

  She did an excellent job of stalking towards the door on those wobbly heels, with her hips swaying and her hair rippling down her back.

  She didn’t look round and Sam didn’t make any attempt to stop her going. Maybe the end of their friendship. Apparently he’d just destroyed one of the few uncomplicated great things in his life. Except it wasn’t uncomplicated, was it? Because he’d clearly fallen head over heels for Izzy but a) Liv hated her, so he couldn’t do anything about it, and b) he didn’t want to do anything about it because there was too great a risk of getting hurt. He’d have liked very much to have remained friends with Izzy, though. And yet now he’d driven her away. Really, what was wrong with him? The kiss had been a disaster and the way he’d spoken to her even worse.

  He went over to the bar and ordered an extra-large Bloody Mary, with the vodka.

  Twenty-Two

  Izzy

  Just over three hours ago, Izzy had been sitting in a taxi on her way to the restaurant, full of anticipation, trying really hard not to think of the evening as a date. Now she was sitting in a taxi on her way home, full of food and immense misery, trying really hard not to cry, because she did not want one of those ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen’ taxi-driver conversations. Honestly one of the worst evenings of her life. She couldn’t remember a time when someone she’d liked so much had spoken to her so unpleasantly. Just awful.

  How it had ended felt even worse because the rest of the evening had been so wonderful. Dinner had been lovely. She and Sam had connected in the way they had the last time it had been just the two of them, all those years ago in the café. But this time they were both single, and Izzy wasn’t a pissed-off heavily pregnant woman. There’d been tension sizzling between them from the moment she’d stepped out of the taxi, all the way through dinner. She’d laughed, smiled, confided, been confided in. And the food had been delicious.

  Had it been inevitable that they’d kiss? It was when the conversation had turned to the question of straight men and women being friends that the tension had reached almost boiling point, like from that point on they’d both known that something was going to happen.

  Or maybe they’d both known even before the evening started that something might happen. Izzy had, anyway, if she was honest. She’d happened to place an online order earlier in the week, and was wearing a considerably fancier bra and knickers than her usual M&S cotton comfort, all about the boob support and tummy flattening, no-sex-here-thank-you underwear. This evening she was wearing matching underwear. Black lace, silk. Lingerie.

  She definitely hadn’t been intending or expecting that Sam would see the underwear. In fact, there’d been no way that he’d see it. She couldn’t possibly have taken him home, because Ruby was there and so was Lily. She couldn’t possibly have gone back to his hotel with him because she had to be home on time for Lily to be in bed by midnight. And aged thirty-six and wearing very hard-to-balance-on shoes, she wasn’t exactly going to have been doing stuff al fresco in a doorway. She’d still worn the black lace, though.

  The kiss had been earth shattering. The best of Izzy’s life. And she was sure that Sam had felt the same way. Afterwards, he’d had a look in his eyes, a look that she was pretty sure mirrored the one in her own eyes. Glazed, astonished, but yet not astonished, and, above all, completely besotted. At that moment she’d known something, which had crept up on her over the past couple of months but which she hadn’t acknowledged. And she wasn’t going to acknowledge it now. She needed to move her thoughts on.

  Except she couldn’t. Their kiss had probably been way better than it would have been if they’d kissed all those years ago, when they first met, because now they properly knew each other. Except. Did she know Sam? Did she really? Could you know someone properly via only the written word and a couple of meetings? Would the Sam she’d thought she’d known have been capable of speaking as harshly as he did in the pub? No. So apparently she didn’t know him at all.

  She’d obviously overstepped the mark. Obviously mistaken how close they were. Although did you share a kiss like that if you weren’t close?

  Maybe she’d worded what she’d said awkwardly. Or maybe she’d been right and struck a nerve and he’d been lashing out. Whichever, it must have been obvious that she’d said it because she cared, and he’d been a complete bastard in response.

  ‘And there you go, young lady.’ The taxi driver pulled up outside her house. Young. Ha. Izzy felt about a hundred. She switched on a smile, paid him and went inside.

  ‘Hi, Izzy.’ Lily was so bubbly, so teenage, so bloody happy. Not a clue about real, adult life. Izzy had been like that once. In Izzy’s case, when she was twenty-two, an idiot who’d asked a complete stranger out, genuinely believing that she’d been struck by love at first sight. For God’s sake. ‘Did you have a lovely evening?’

  ‘Hi, Lily. Yes, thank you, really nice. I hope you’ve had a good evening. How was Ruby’s bedtime story?’ Izzy was struggling to remember how to hold a normal conversation. Now that she was home, she just wanted to sit in the kitchen, by herself, and howl. And swear. Again, bastard. Who spoke to people like that? ‘Nearly midnight. I mustn’t keep you. Here’s your cash. Thank you so much.’

  Obviously, Lily had mislaid her shoes somewhere in Izzy’s tiny house. Izzy just wanted to scream, ‘Go in your socks then, we live in a bloody terrace of minute houses, it’s only about ten feet to your front door, just go.’ She didn’t, she managed to stand and smile and not stamp her foot, while Lily searched and eventually found them next to the front door under her bloody coat. Why did she even need a coat when it was summer and she lived next door? Teenagers weren’t supposed to feel the cold; what was wrong with her?

  And, obviously, Lily’s shoes were in fact DM boots, and she had to si
t on the bottom stair and put her feet in really slowly. That’s right, Lily, so important to make sure there are no wrinkles on the bottom of your socks when you’re walking ten feet, and yes, Lily, make sure you do the laces just bloody right. Who’d have thought a person could be bubbly all the way through putting boots on? Bubble, bubble, chat, chat, bubble. And Izzy had to chat right back because otherwise Lily would tell her mother and Izzy would have a concerned neighbour asking her in the morning what was wrong.

  Eventually, Lily bubbled her way out of the front door. Bubble, smile, bubble. Good night.

  Izzy put the bolts on the door and went and sat down at the kitchen table, put her arms on top of the table, and her head on top of her arms, and wailed. Quietly, so that she wouldn’t wake Ruby up.

  She felt as if she’d lost her best friend. Which she hadn’t, because Emma and Rohan were her best friends. Except she didn’t fancy them, or love them the way she loved Sam. The way she had loved him, anyway, the Sam she’d thought she’d known.

  And she’d acknowledged The Thing. The L word.

  Her phone pinged. An email. From Sam. Maybe he was apologising. Maybe he was going to say that the reason he’d reacted like that was that he knew that Izzy was right and that he needed to sort his work-life balance out and he’d been stressed and he was sorry, and everything would be okay, they could be friends again. And ignore the kiss, because that was too big to deal with.

  Hi Izzy,

  I just wanted to check that you got home safely.

  Best,

  Sam

  Best. He was Besting her. After everything they’d talked about over the past few months, everything they’d shared. And their kiss. He’d stepped back from two kisses to a Best, his whole name and no kiss. Fuck him. Fuck him.

  She’d discussed her two best friends with him, for God’s sake, while barely discussing him with them. She’d literally put him above them in the confidences stakes and now he was Besting her and not apologising. Okay, then.

  Hello Sam,

  Yes, thank you. I got a taxi immediately and am now home, sitting in my kitchen.

  Thank you for a lovely evening.

  Izzy

  Good job the recipient of an email couldn’t tell if you were crying when you wrote it.

  Bastard. The Sam she’d thought she’d fallen in love with was a nice, decent, lovely person. The Sam who’d spoken to her like that in the pub was unfair, unpleasant and rude. Maybe he’d regretted the kiss. Maybe it had been too intense for him. Maybe he was still mourning Lana. He’d paused for ages after he’d mentioned her in the pub. Maybe he’d created the argument on purpose because he didn’t want anything serious to happen with Izzy because he still missed her.

  Whichever, he’d still been unacceptably unpleasant.

  Again, fuck him.

  She started to trudge upstairs.

  One thing this evening had underlined was that successful relationships weren’t about passion and stars and all of that crap. They were about being able to find a common ground, talk about things, work together. Share the toothpaste, actually and metaphorically.

  Probably the way this evening had ended had been a good thing. Stop any stupid daydreams of Izzy’s once and for all.

  She went into the bathroom and scrubbed off all her carefully applied make-up, her pathetic new lash-enhancing mascara and the remains of her glossy Charlotte Tilbury lipstick, until her face hurt. And then she went into her bedroom and threw her stupid, lovely, black silk underwear viciously towards the laundry bin, where obviously, because that was the kind of evening this had been, it landed on the floor, so she had to walk over and pick it up.

  Twenty-Three

  Sam

  Sam knocked back three painkillers and a pint of water before he stepped into the shower. Your two-tablet dose, suitable for anyone over twelve, wouldn’t get close to tackling this hangover. The way he felt physically this morning exactly matched his mood: black as hell.

  He turned the shower as hot as he could take it. No. The steam was going to make his headache worse. He turned the temperature knob to cold. He really needed an extreme shower today. And, jeez, that was extreme. He did feel a little better when he stepped out of the shower, though. Physically, anyway.

  Mentally, not so much. Izzy had forced him to confront the fact that he had zero work-life balance and should do something about it. And then he’d been an asshole to her and ruined their friendship. Although maybe their kiss had already ruined it. It had been awkward in the pub even before he’d been so snarky to her. Snarky was an understatement. He’d been outright nasty.

  He wrapped his towel round his waist and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. And there was the face of someone who’d messed up big time. The only thing in his life that he was succeeding in was his job. And for what?

  All of his relationships were heading towards disaster in one way or another. Kids, family, friends. He had no time for any of them and it was really starting to show. Liv and Barney, his mother, Izzy. And who had to be asked by text by someone who lived in the same state to be godfather?

  He should probably apologise to Izzy. He’d hurt her, he knew that, and it felt terrible. But he couldn’t. He should have followed her out of the pub, said sorry, explained to her that the reason he’d rounded on her like that was that everything she’d told him was true, and he couldn’t deal with it. And that he probably wouldn’t have lost it so much if he hadn’t been freaked out by their kiss.

  But since – even if he hadn’t been betraying Liv – he couldn’t deal with the way he felt about Izzy, because if there was one thing he’d learned in the past fourteen or so years, it was that love hurt, and he didn’t want any more hurt, he hadn’t gone after her. And when he’d worried that she might not have gotten home safely, he’d sent her a really shitty, over-formal email to check in on her. From her response, and from common sense, he was fairly sure that his email had hurt her too.

  He started brushing his teeth. He was thinking about his relationship with Lana now, the first time he’d properly thought about it for years. He hadn’t been in love with her, but during their short marriage he’d grown to love her, because she was a nice person and a good mother. When she’d died, despite the fact that theirs hadn’t been a passionate love and maybe they wouldn’t have stayed together forever, he’d been devastated. And with the twins, seeing everything they’d been through after the accident, watching them hurting in different ways had nearly killed him. Loving someone was basically a special kind of torture. One that you’d be insane to choose.

  Yesterday evening, dinner with Izzy and then their kiss had been mind-blowing. He was right on the brink of falling deeply in love with her. Maybe he’d already fallen. Whatever, he needed to haul himself back up to the precipice and out of the trough that love was. And get on with his life.

  He rinsed his mouth.

  Better get dressed and go to his breakfast meeting, since work was the only thing that was going well in his life. And it was low risk emotionally. No love involved.

  Part Three

  Twenty-Four

  Izzy

  ‘Hello, hello.’ Emma burst into Izzy’s hall in a flurry of hugs and chirpiness. She was followed by a smiling Rohan. Okay, good, so they’d obviously got over their argument. Although if Izzy was honest, cheerful people were really pissing her off today. She’d been tempted all day to pull a sickie to get out of climbing this evening, but Emma had sent several texts of the ‘Yay, it’s climbing tonight’ genre, so she’d felt too guilty. Plus, a physical workout would probably be a good thing. ‘You look tired. Are you okay?’ Emma had pulled out of their hug and was holding Izzy’s shoulders and studying her face.

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Izzy did her best ‘I am very much looking forward to climbing’ smile. She was so glad now that she hadn’t told Emma that she was going out for dinner with Sam. It had been bad enough avoiding questions about him before. Now she really didn’t want to talk about him. ‘How’s your day
been?’

  ‘Good,’ Emma and Rohan both said at the same time, and then looked at each other and smirked. What? Weird. Whatever. Izzy didn’t have the emotional energy to think about why other people were in good moods.

  Emma was on fine form all evening, producing some great one-liners. She even summoned up some tolerance from somewhere when a new single, who was sweet but very unfunny and very much not Emma’s type, asked her for her number at the end. She seemed to have lost interest in the Tom Cruise-alike, but she was nice to him.

  While Emma was buckling up in the passenger seat of Izzy’s car after climbing, Izzy snuck a look at her phone. And no, no email from Sam. Although there wouldn’t be, because he’d probably be somewhere over the Atlantic now.

  He hadn’t emailed all day. Maybe he was never going to email again.

  Emma turned the radio on and started singing along to Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’, making the song her own, as Simon Cowell might say. Bloody hell. Izzy truly loved Emma, but she wasn’t really up for this level of happiness in anyone. She just wanted to be miserable alone.

  ‘Are you definitely okay?’ Emma asked over the mint teas that Rohan had very kindly made for them when they got back, while Izzy screamed Just go home in her mind.

  ‘Yes, sorry, just really tired. Been a busy week. You know. Work. Ruby.’

  ‘We should let you get to bed then.’ Rohan stood up, fast, and carried his and Emma’s barely touched cups of tea over to the sink. He was blatantly eager to get away. Obviously he’d just been being polite in making the tea. Good.