by Dunn, Matt
‘It was funny, obviously. But it made you think, didn’t it?’
Lisa was giving him a look that suggested she didn’t believe he was capable of thought. ‘Did it?’ she said, sweetly. ‘About what?’
He hauled himself up from the sofa – the two of them had been sitting there for a little over an hour and a half, maintaining a respectable distance – and headed into his kitchenette. Coming back to his flat had been the obvious option – they’d found themselves just around the corner when Lisa had made her When Harry Met Sally suggestion – and, suddenly, he was a little embarrassed about the state of the place. It was a rental, and since he’d moved in Simon hadn’t bothered to do much to it. Do anything to it, to be honest, mainly because he never brought anyone back here except for Will, and as long as there was a beer with his name on it in the fridge, Will didn’t care if the place didn’t exactly look like an Interiors magazine photoshoot.
‘Coffee?’ he said, performing an exaggerated stretch.
‘Please,’ said Lisa, and Simon was pleased she hadn’t asked for tea. ‘And don’t avoid the question.’
‘I’m thinking about it,’ he said, opening the cupboard where he kept his coffee-making paraphernalia. ‘How do you like it?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘Until this morning, I didn’t know I did. So . . .’
‘Surprise you?’
She beamed at him, then nodded, and Simon felt a swelling in his chest that he hadn’t felt for a long time. ‘Okay,’ he said, removing two smallish glasses from the cupboard, followed by his AeroPress coffee maker. ‘This is that cortado I mentioned yesterday. Spanish for “short”.’
‘The one I shouldn’t just drop a couple of ice cubes into.’
‘You were paying attention!’ said Simon proudly, filling the kettle with just the right amount of water and clicking it on. ‘Half warm milk, half espresso.’
‘With an “s”, not an “x”.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Shouldn’t that be “esactly”?’
Simon gave her a look as he poured an appropriate amount of semi-skimmed into his milk frother. Then, as per his usual routine, he added a filter paper to the AeroPress’s cap, inserted the plunger into the end of the device, turned it upside down and spooned coffee into the cylinder. With an unnecessary flourish, he switched the frother to ‘warm’, and waited for the kettle to boil, enjoying the process. He’d loved making coffee for Alice, turning the steps almost into a show, like a croupier might with a few fancy card-shuffles. This time, though, with Lisa studying him closely, for some reason he felt under a bit of pressure.
Once the kettle had boiled, and with the AeroPress still upside down (his preferred method, and the one the real aficionados used, if you subscribed to the forums like Simon did), he counted to ten, added the appropriate amount of just-off-the-boil water, gave it a stir, screwed the cap on and let the coffee brew for just the right amount of time. Then he upended the device, placed it over one glass and slowly depressed the plunger, repeating the procedure with the other, then topping them both up with the warmed milk.
‘Should I applaud now?’ said Lisa, and Simon performed a curt bow. The last time he’d made one of these for anyone outside of the café had been for Alice, and, though it seemed silly when he thought about it, the fact that he’d managed to get through this unscathed felt like he’d passed some sort of test.
‘Sugar?’
‘Yes, honey?’
Simon couldn’t stop himself from reddening, and did his best to ignore Lisa’s gloating look at having caught him out like that again.
‘Not really,’ she said, so he handed her one of the glasses, then watched as she carefully blew over the top of the drink and took a sip.
‘Well?’
Lisa nodded appreciatively. ‘Not bad,’ she said.
‘Touché.’
‘Though . . .’ She took another sip of coffee, then put the glass down. ‘There’s not a lot to it, is there?’
‘Hence the name. But it’s all about quality, not quantity, as in if you get the quality right . . .’
‘Then surely you’d want more?’
‘Now that’s a metaphor.’
‘Is that a different type of coffee?’
‘Ha!’ Simon mimed applause in appreciation of Lisa’s joke. ‘Seriously, though . . . did you want more?’ He averted his eyes, wondering if Lisa had picked up on the inference, then sat back down next to her and smiled. ‘Which brings us back to the film.’
‘And?’
He gestured towards the TV. ‘That’s the movies. Not real life. Real life doesn’t happen so . . . neatly. There’s not always just the one question to answer.’ He took a sip of coffee, then swivelled round on the sofa to face her and steeled himself. If ever there were a time to talk about the two of them, where they went from here, it was now. ‘For example, that central premise, that men and women can’t be friends because the sex gets in the way . . . What’s so funny?’
‘You said “the sex”!’
‘And?’
‘That just sounds weird.’
‘Huh?’
‘Sex. It’s just “sex”.’
Simon hesitated. Was Lisa referring to his grammar, or making an observation about the previous evening? If so, maybe she was trying to let him down gently. And if that was the case . . .
Lisa’s expression had suddenly become hard to read, so Simon decided to change tack a little. While big declarations always seemed to work at the end of any romantic comedy he’d ever sat through, so far his and Lisa’s relationship – if you could call it that – had had precious little that had been romantic or funny about it. Besides, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to make one.
‘Anyway,’ he continued. ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.’
Lisa stared at him for a moment, then she put her coffee down on the table next to the sofa and clasped her hands in her lap. ‘You want to be friends with me?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Why?’
Simon considered reminding her how that had actually been her suggestion in her earlier text, but something about Lisa’s tone of voice made him quickly decide against it. ‘Well, um, because, you know, eventually, I think we might realise that we’re good . . .’ Simon stopped short of adding ‘together’.
‘Good friends? Or do you mean just good friends?’
Not for the first time, Simon wasn’t sure what point Lisa was making, so he decided soldiering on was the best strategy. Or rather his only strategy. ‘Either. Or both. Because we’ve already got “the sex”’ – Simon added air quotes around the last two words for what was, he hoped, comedic emphasis – ‘out of the way.’
‘Out of the way?’
‘That’s right.’ Simon grinned, pleased she’d got it, though his smile faded almost as quickly because Lisa was looking horrified.
‘I’m sorry you feel it was something you wanted to “get out of the way”,’ she said, leaping to her feet. ‘And they say romance is dead!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Simon, quickly. ‘I was talking in terms of timeline.’
‘We don’t have a timeline!’
Lisa was looking angrier than Simon had seen her all weekend: Certainly more so than when he’d nearly run her over, and even angrier than when she’d stormed off after the funfair.
‘Lisa. Please. Sit down. I . . . I got that wrong.’
‘Well, there’s a first!’
She was striding towards the door, and Simon realised his window of opportunity was closing rapidly. Not in the least because his flat wasn’t that big, and she didn’t have all that far to go.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, desperately. ‘Storm off again? Because that would be the second time in a little over twenty-four hours.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe you’re the kind of man women storm off from. Did you ever think about that?’
Lisa was already halfway out of the front door, and Simon sat and watched her pull
it shut angrily behind her, the resounding slam knocking the one photo he had of him and Alice off the top of his bookshelf and on to the floor.
And though he didn’t believe in signs, or omens, or anything like that, Simon knew he’d be a fool if he didn’t recognise how that had been an almighty one.
Chapter 42
Lisa hurried towards the bus stop on the Canterbury Road, cursing under her breath when she saw the number 8 bus that would take her virtually to her front door had just left, then began walking after it. This weekend couldn’t have been any weirder. Still, at least it was over now. Or it would be when she eventually got home.
She strode along the pavement, watching out for dog mess, grateful she had a pair of ‘sensible’ shoes on given the potentially long walk she had in front of her. Putting them on when she’d left the house had been the only sensible thing she’d done all weekend – and surely what had just happened had been one of the stupidest.
She spotted a poster advertising Dreamland on the side of a bus going in the opposite direction, and allowed herself a wry smile. The date had been a rollercoaster of its own, without them needing to go to the funfair. And yet . . . it hadn’t all been a disaster.
They’d had a nice lunch, and her parents’ approval had been so obvious she could have pulled up a chair and asked it to join them at the table – the one time she’d taken Chris home and presented him to her mum and dad, their faces had fallen so quickly it had been like the ‘after’ and ‘before’ of a plastic surgery advert. Perhaps, as a result, as the four of them had demolished their roasts today, she’d found herself warming to Simon, so much so that she’d began to think that Jess had been wrong: he did want a relationship. Or, at least, he wanted one with her. But then – and even after a film guaranteed to put even the most cold-hearted man in the mood for love – he’d told her he just wanted to be friends.
She shook her head and muttered to herself, then noticed a couple of old ladies walking their miniature more-hair-than-body dogs in the opposite direction giving her a funny look.
‘I’m not mad. Honest,’ she said, though they looked as if they didn’t believe her. And yet Lisa was mad. Mad with herself for letting Simon get to her just now. Angry that she cared about what he thought. Annoyed that she couldn’t deal with things like an adult. And pissed off that she’d probably have to go through all of this again with someone else.
She strode on purposefully, sighting the next bus stop four hundred or so yards in the distance – hoping she might reach it just as the next bus turned up – just as a second number 8 roared past her. Hurriedly, Lisa sized up the distance between her and the stop, considering putting in a sprint, then decided at this rate she’d probably miss every bus. She could only hope that wasn’t a metaphor.
Lisa heard a noise behind her – running footsteps – and told herself not to look round, just in case it was Simon, chasing after her to apologise, just like they’d watched Billy Crystal sprint across New York on New Year’s Eve to make his declaration of love. Then she realised this was Margate, not Manhattan, and she was a bit worried it might be a mugger, so she stepped to one side of the pavement and spun round, only to see a middle-aged man jog past, a phone wedged into the waistband of his shorts and a pair of Apple earbuds sticking out from either side of his head as if his ears were new and someone had forgotten to cut the tags off them.
She swallowed her disappointment that it hadn’t been Simon, continued on to the bus shelter in front of The Hussar and slumped down heavily on the bench, ignoring the rude graffiti scrawled on the glass partition by her head. The last thing she wanted to do was play bus-stop tag, especially the way her luck was going. No, she’d just sit here and wait until the next one came along, and . . .
Lisa sat up with a start. This was her problem. Always waiting for something to come along, rather than being in control of her own destiny. Why hadn’t she taken the lead, asked Simon out, told him she’d like to be more than friends . . . ? But Lisa knew the answer to that. She was fed up of rejection. And surely that was what she was going to get. After all, she’d just spent the best part of the weekend with someone who might well be perfect for her, and at almost every step of the way she’d managed to mess things up. It wasn’t a surprise, then, that Simon had only wanted to be friends . . . No, scratch that, it was a surprise. After the way she’d treated him, she should be surprised he wanted anything to do with her at all.
A flash of red in the distance made Lisa look up. The number 52 this time – not quite her bus, but it would take her to the bottom of the High Street rather than to the top of her road, so Lisa waved it down, then, for some strange reason, found herself waving it on again. After all, unless you were on the bus that took you exactly where you wanted to be, surely there was no point getting on just for the sake of it?
The bus had stopped anyway, and, as the doors hissed open, the driver, a friendly-looking woman a decade or so older than Lisa, smiled at her from behind the wheel.
‘You getting on, love?’ she said, and Lisa smiled back and shook her head, even though the opposite was true. She was getting on. And she couldn’t afford to hang about.
As the bus pulled quickly back out into the road, Lisa hauled herself up off the bench and began walking home again. She needed time to think about what her next move should be – after all, the cosmos didn’t work to anyone’s timetable but its own.
Still, she remembered, after Jess wrote up the ‘Blind Date’ piece in the Gazette she’d be fighting them off. And while none of ‘them’ would be Simon, at least they’d come without an impossibly perfect dead girlfriend for Lisa to try to live up to.
No, she told herself, she’d actually just had a lucky escape.
So why did she feel so miserable?
Chapter 43
Simon was on the top deck of the bus, on his way to collect his car. He’d thought about going after Lisa, but she seemed to be a fan of dramatic exits, and while so far this weekend he’d chased the others down, he’d quickly decided he’d let her have this one. Mainly because he didn’t have the faintest idea what to say.
So, instead, he’d given it ten minutes and then – half expecting to see her loitering outside, and more-than-half disappointed to see that she wasn’t – headed out of his flat and made for the bus stop on the Canterbury Road. The number 52 was just pulling in, so he’d hopped on board, nodded at the cheery hello from the female driver, and made his way up to the top deck. Now he was sitting next to a teenage boy playing music so loudly through his headphones that Simon could almost feel the seat vibrate.
He sighed, surreptitiously stuck a finger into his ear in an attempt to block out the tsk-tsk of the music, then looked out of the window, marvelling at the view of the sea to his left. The sun was glinting off the water, and the sky was a cloud-free powder blue – the kind of day that made you glad to be alive. Even though he’d had the kind of weekend that made you almost wish you weren’t.
Still, Will had told him he shouldn’t expect the date to be plain sailing. He’d be ‘rusty’, plus Lisa might be on edge, or have expectations he couldn’t possibly expect to meet, and not forgetting the fact that attraction – and blind dates – was all about chemistry. As he knew from his barista training, you had to have the right combination of ingredients – and at the right temperature – to produce something good. And while he suspected he and Lisa had all that, somehow it had gone off the boil.
He glanced up and noticed the left-hand front seat was empty, so Simon jumped smartly up and made his way towards it, though he nearly tumbled down the stairs when the bus slammed its brakes on, pulled in towards the shelter in front of The Hussar, stopped briefly, then accelerated out again. He used to love riding the buses in London – Alice had too, preferring them to the Tube. On buses, you got a view, and quite often a seat, rather than standing up on a miserable underground train where no one ever spoke to each other or you had to spend the majority of the journey with your face wedged into someone’s armp
it. And like nudist beaches, which were never populated with the finer-figured of people, you could always guarantee the people you found yourself pressed against didn’t exactly smell like a walking advert for deodorant.
He sat down, all too aware of the empty space next to him. Once in a while, he and Alice would ride a London bus for fun, picking a number almost at random, seeing where it took them, like some sort of poor man’s mystery tour. Sometimes they’d manage to secure the front seat on the top deck, where they’d sit, giggling childishly to each other, pointing out sights you’d never be able to see from the ground level, from interesting architectural features to peoples’ gardens, and – surprisingly often – naked occupants of first-floor flats who’d forgotten to – or didn’t care to – close their curtains.
One time they’d ended up in Walthamstow, a slightly dodgy part of town then, and when the bus had reached its final stop they’d almost cowered under the shelter, wondering how they were going to get home – if they were going to get home, given the menacing-looking groups of youths hanging around – until the bus driver had simply changed the display on the front of the bus and beckoned them back on board. And that had been the other good thing about the buses: there was always one going in the opposite direction. And, on occasion, the one you were on might even do a loop and take you all the way back home again.
He’d missed that, he realised. Not just riding the bus, but letting it take you somewhere – anywhere – without necessarily being sure of (or caring) where you were headed. Just seeing where the journey went, going with it . . . But it had been easier when you had someone to do that with, which was why he hadn’t been on a bus since Alice. Hadn’t done a lot of things since Alice. Maybe now was the time to start.
