One Small Step

by M. A. Binfield

“Yeah, I get that. Do you write?” Cam asked.

  “I do. I mean, I try to. I like to. I don’t always have the time or the inspiration, to be honest.”

  Cam nodded. “Do you perform?”

  “I don’t.” Iris wondered if she looked as uncomfortable as she felt. It was partly the questions and partly the way Cam’s earnest attention made her feel.

  “I want to but don’t think I have the nerve. It feels so…exposing, and I guess I’m not the kind of person who likes to expose their feelings. Kudos to your sister for doing it. She’s braver than me.” Iris tried to sound less bothered than she felt at having to acknowledge her lack of confidence to Cam before they really knew each other.

  Ryan waved a coffee cup in Iris’s direction and pointed at Cam.

  “Your fiancé is waving at you.”

  Cam turned to look in Ryan’s direction and gave him the universal sign that meant “I’m coming.”

  “I’d better go. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I don’t want your half-time cuppa to get cold.” Iris felt regret at not being able to chat to Cam for a little longer.

  “Well, it was nice to see you again, anyway.” Cam sounded oddly formal, almost British.

  Iris nodded and Cam headed back to her seat. As she got to the end of the row, several seats away, Iris called out.

  “Really nice to see you again too. See you at training or work or somewhere soon.” Iris mentally face-palmed, wondering where all that friendliness had come from. It wasn’t like her at all.

  Cam turned back and smiled. Iris caught it before looking away feeling a little embarrassed.

  “Iris?”

  Iris turned back toward Cam’s voice, and their eyes met across the chairs.

  “Next time, we could save Ryan the trauma and come to one of these things together.”

  Iris took a beat before replying. “That sounds like a really cool plan.”

  Cam picked her way through the rows of chairs back to her seat. And Iris watched her go, happy that Cam had been so friendly.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” Ryan asked.

  “Just someone from work. Iris. Plays on the soccer team.”

  Ryan made a listening noise and Cam continued.

  “Surprised she’s here really. Didn’t seem the poetry evening type, but it might let you off the hook if we can come to these things together in the future.”

  Ryan looked in Iris’s direction. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at Iris properly.

  “She’s cute. And I’ll gladly buy her a beer if she gets me out of poetry duty. My ears are already complaining and it’s only halfway.”

  Cam could have gotten annoyed with him, but her mood had improved since arriving, and she chose to punch him playfully on the arm instead. He grabbed her and pretended to bite her neck in retaliation. Cam drank her coffee, looking forward to the second half and feeling more at peace than when she’d arrived.

  * * *

  As Ryan was parking the car in front of their rented semidetached house, a delivery driver on a moped pulled up next to them, dismounted at speed, and knocked on their door. Ryan jumped out of the car and intercepted the man, taking possession of a brown paper bag full of Chinese food. He waggled his phone at Cam.

  “Ordered during the break. Got your favorite stir-fry with king prawns and a side of spring rolls.” He looked pleased with himself.

  “I have prawns in the fridge. I could’ve made us a stir-fry if you’d gotten home on time,” Cam replied coolly.

  She walked past Ryan and slipped her key in the front door, realizing she sounded churlish but not really caring. She hung up her coat and kicked off her shoes into the storage space under the stairs without waiting for Ryan and made her way along the long hallway into their kitchen. Her earlier annoyance with him had returned, and she felt tension in her body as she reached up to pull plates from the cabinet above the sink.

  Ryan put the bag of food on the counter and then snaked his arms around Cam’s waist, nuzzling the back of her neck.

  “I thought you’d forgiven me?”

  So did I, thought Cam.

  “I’m sorry about making us late, honey. It’s hard. It’s not like Seattle here. They’re real hard-asses. It’s just not the kind of place that’s gonna let me go in the middle of some important call just because I have plans. I told you that already. I got home as fast as I could.” He sounded genuinely sorry.

  Ryan turned Cam around, making her face him. “We didn’t miss anything, huh? Not a single word. No harm done.” He brushed the hair from her forehead tenderly.

  “We missed our dinner. That’s why we’re eating takeaway at nine o’clock.” Cam didn’t want to argue again, but she also wasn’t going to let him brush away her annoyance so easily.

  She slipped out of his arms and busied herself spooning food out of the containers. It smelled heavenly and her stomach rumbled.

  “Let’s just eat.”

  Cam carried the plates across to the dining table.

  Just every now and then, putting me before work would be great. She really didn’t want them to have another argument so, this time, Cam didn’t speak the complaint out loud.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m sorry. Will it disturb you if I join you?” Iris looked up from her iPad, and Cam looked for signs of annoyance. She was relieved to see none.

  Iris moved her things to make room. The colorful tables in the small lunchroom at Cottoms each had four chairs arranged around them, but they were tiny and would only really ever seat four if two of them happened to be toddlers.

  “Of course not, please take a seat.” Iris pulled out the chair next to her.

  Cam knew that things were still pretty formal between them. But it was something she hoped would change as they got to know each other better.

  Cam sat and began the process of unpacking her lunch. Iris’s gaze made her feel a little self-conscious. Ryan had put the lunch together—as he often did—but he was up and out to work so early that she rarely saw him prepare it and never knew what to expect. Inside a large sandwich box, Cam found a couple of chunks of focaccia bread wrapped in foil, a generous portion of pâté in a smaller lidded container, and lots of crudités scattered across the bottom of the box, looking colorful and very healthy. Set to one side, Ryan had tucked in a small Kit Kat—her favorite chocolate bar. The thoughtfulness of the lunch made Cam feel fondly toward him.

  “Yours kind of puts my shop bought tuna sandwich to shame.” Iris indicated the empty triangular cardboard box next to her.

  Cam liked how Iris’s face softened when she smiled.

  “I’m spoiled. Ryan always makes me a lunch when he’s home. He’s on a health kick, and I get the benefits.”

  “Lucky you.” Iris sipped her coffee. “He sounds like a keeper.”

  Cam nodded. She was feeling oddly lost for words.

  “Hey, I really enjoyed the book club yesterday. Thanks for inviting me.” Cam blurted it out as Iris focused her attention on her.

  “No problem. It was actually really good having someone there who agreed with me for once. I’m usually the odd one out.” Iris chewed her lip. “It was a pretty awful book, let’s be honest.”

  “It was god-awful. Sometimes I think people pretend to like books because they know they’ve sold well and been hyped so much that they don’t want to be the person to say they’re actually not any good.”

  Iris stole a piece of pepper from Cam’s lunchbox. Cam raised an eyebrow and got a wink in return. Not so formal now. She liked it.

  “I know I’m not exactly the demographic for those Fifty Shades of Grey-type books, but you are and you hated it even more than me. That’s got to tell you something about how bad it is.”

  Cam spread a too thick coating of pâté onto her bread, wondering how she was going to get it into her mouth without dropping half of it onto the table.

  “Jeez, I hate to think I’m the demographic. Surely it’s just bored housewives who want t
o spice up their love lives.” A thought crossed her mind that Cam pushed away. “Not that there was much that was sexy in there. It mainly made me cringe.” Cam knew she sounded more bothered than she felt about the book, but she was just happy to prolong the conversation, to keep Iris talking.

  At the book club, Cam enjoyed hearing Iris explain her views, picking out passages to illustrate her points, listening respectfully to the others even when, Cam could tell, she vehemently disagreed with them. “Jess isn’t exactly the intended readership either, but she seemed to like it, until…well, until you said you didn’t and then she decided she hated it. I’m sure you noticed.”

  Iris looked uncomfortable but said nothing. Cam wasn’t sure if she’d said too much or struck a nerve. The thought was interrupted by a lump of pâté falling as predicted from the overloaded bread and landing on the foil in front of her. Before Cam could react, Iris moved to scoop it up and pop it into her own mouth. She raised her eyebrows at Cam playfully.

  “What? I’m still hungry. I had a long run this morning and it always leaves me ravenous, and all I had…” She pointed ruefully at the sandwich wrapper next to her. Cam passed her a cherry tomato.

  “I’ll tell Ryan to pack me extra tomorrow. He obviously didn’t know that I was eating for two.”

  “You’ve got him that well trained?”

  “It’s about the only thing I can get him to do. He’s pretty strong minded. You’re right though, I’ll have to add ‘and forever make me a healthy lunch’ into his wedding vows to make sure he doesn’t slack off after the wedding.”

  “Is it soon?”

  Cam passed Iris another piece of pepper and watched as Iris finished it off in one bite.

  “Not really. We don’t have a date. We’re going to wait till we get back to the States so our families can attend. It’d be silly to have it here when we don’t really know anyone and they’d all have to travel. My mom is super anxious that it’s soon though. She’s been planning it for years. I’m the elder of two daughters and she can’t wait. She keeps telling me I shouldn’t wait too long as my biological clock is ticking.”

  “She’s worried about that at your age? What are you, twenty-five, twenty-six?” Iris shook her head.

  “I’m twenty-eight in March.”

  “You look younger than that. But twenty-eight’s not exactly ancient.”

  “It’s desperately old according to my mom—especially since she had me at twenty-one.”

  “Rubbish. You’re in the prime of life. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

  “Are those kind of flattering comments how you get all those women to fall for your charms?” Cam chanced a joke, but regretted it when Iris’s jaw tightened.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  “I don’t have women falling for my charms. Probably best not to listen to Jess on the subject of me. She tends to exaggerate.” Iris sounded weary and let out a breath.

  Cam wanted to get Iris talking again…about safer things.

  “Where do you run? And more to the point, how the hell do you get yourself out of bed to run on winter mornings like this one? I find it impossible and I love running.”

  Iris ticked off her responses on her fingers. “One, I love my food—other people’s food too as you might have noticed.” She stole another piece of pepper. “I eat so much that if I don’t run, I’ll get out of shape. Two, I’m scared to get out of shape because Megan will notice and she will punish me with extra training and push-ups. Fear is a very powerful motivator. And three, I live close to Hampstead Heath, which is one of the most amazing places in London to run. Sometimes when I don’t want to get up, I think about the views and being out there as the Heath wakes up and it gets me out of bed.”

  “Oh,” Cam exclaimed. “No way. I live near there too. We must be neighbors. That’s amazing. I’ve walked over the Heath so many times but just never thought to run there. It’s so dark in the mornings, I’d be a bit nervous of getting lost.”

  “It’s dark all right, but it’s got a good network of paths and, anyway, the light from all the luminous running jerseys of the other early runners out at that time of day means you never really have to worry about the dark.”

  Cam looked pensive.

  “Ryan and I used to run together before work. Not on the Heath, but there’s this park closer to the house. We’d run laps together. He stopped a while back, too busy to fit in the early runs and preferring to play squash on the weekends. I guess running is something else I don’t much like doing on my own so I kind of stopped too. I miss early morning runs actually. They used to set me up for the day.” Cam blew out a breath, feeling frustrated that she had let herself go without something else that she really liked doing.

  “That’s funny, I sort of prefer—” Iris stopped halfway through the sentence.

  “What?”

  “I was going to say that I prefer running alone. That I love to put on a playlist and lose myself for an hour but, actually, I’m not even sure that’s really true. I guess it’s just what I’ve got used to.” Iris shrugged.

  “Considering we live close by, and considering we’re both too scared of Megan not to maintain peak fitness, don’t you think it’d be neighborly of us to run together sometime? I have plenty of luminous stuff in my closet. I would love to run on the Heath with you. Or I could show you the little park where Ryan and I used to run.” Cam waited, worried she had been too forward, too quick to ask.

  “That sounds cool.”

  Cam sat back, satisfied that her boldness had paid off. She had a good feeling about Iris. She unwrapped the Kit Kat and offered half to Iris.

  Iris raised an eyebrow. “You sure you’re not just being polite?” Cam shook her head and Iris took the offering happily.

  Cam pointed at Iris’s iPad. “Working during your lunch hour? Not good.”

  Iris sat back in her chair. Her expression was thoughtful, like she was deciding about something. Finally, Iris sat forward.

  “I was working on a poem, been working on it for weeks actually. I just can’t seem to get it right. I thought I’d got hold of what the problem was an hour ago and snuck off for an early lunch to see if I could make it work. Turns out to have been a false dawn.” She pushed the iPad farther away from her.

  Cam leaned forward conspiratorially. “I totally approve of you thinking about poetry during the team meeting. You looked like you were paying attention, but you were actually being all creative and not listening at all. Graham would be very offended.”

  “Graham is a Grade A pillock.”

  “A what?” Cam frowned.

  “Pillock is British for jerk. Or asshat. It’s politer than wanker but stronger than moron,” Iris clarified. “I’m enlarging your British cursing vocabulary. You can thank me later.”

  “Pillock.” Cam tried out the word, it sounded strange in her mouth. “I’ll give it a try and let you know how it goes.”

  “Extra points if you try it out on Graham,” Iris said. She put her sandwich wrapper in the trash can to the left of their table.

  Cam didn’t want her to leave so soon. She sat forward in her chair. “Do you…I mean, can I…” She pointed at the iPad. “Can I help? Can I look at it?”

  The look of horror that passed across Iris’s face was all the answer Cam needed.

  “Of course not. Sorry. You barely know me. Put it down to me being a socially forward American or something. My sister used to let me help by reading hers…never mind, sorry, Iris.” Cam focused on putting away her lunch and trying to hide her embarrassment.

  “It’s not that, it’s not that it’s you I mean. It’s just…I’m sorry, but I don’t show them to anyone. They’re just for me really. I write about personal things.”

  “It’s okay, don’t worry. Sorry for intruding. I’m kind of jealous actually. I used to write…not poetry…I always considered poems too hard, maybe a little too creative for me. But I wrote nonfiction. A lot of articles, reviews, that sort of thing. I wa
s a journalism major in college, and I wrote for the college newspaper.” Cam hesitated.

  “But I kinda lost my way with it all. I sometimes think that it’s a shame because I think that…” Cam stopped again, not sure she knew what she thought, knowing that she tried not to think about it at all. “I think being a journalist would have suited me. I’m very curious about things, and I really like words, reading them, writing them.”

  “How’d you lose your way?” Iris asked quietly.

  They were interrupted by the sound of the door swinging open and Hazel stepped in.

  “James decided he wants you in this meeting after all.” Hazel spoke from the doorway. “Sorry.”

  Cam looked on forlornly as Iris stood up—wishing she’d had the chance to apologize again for her tactlessness in asking to see the poem. Iris picked up her iPad.

  “Got to get back to work I suppose.”

  “See you at training later?”

  Iris nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”

  Cam smiled hesitantly, really hoping she hadn’t made a mess of things by trying too hard to be friendly. She really liked Iris and knew they had lots in common, and as Iris turned toward the door, Cam realized that she hadn’t wanted someone to be her friend this much in a really long time.

  Chapter Five

  Cam looked across the table at Ryan. It was barely eight, but he was already showered and dressed. His dark hair was still a little damp, and she couldn’t help but notice how pale he looked, the dark rings around his eyes giving away that he wasn’t sleeping enough. He had his head buried in the Financial Times like most weekend mornings. When they first got together, Cam would challenge him to put the paper aside and be more sociable over breakfast, but these days she didn’t bother.

  Cam knew she should be more worried about the change than she was, but like everything these days, even the worrying had become routine and she didn’t have enough energy for it. When she’d confided to her sister a few months ago that she was concerned at how little she and Ryan did together, how disconnected they sometimes felt, Alison told her it was natural for a couple with four years on the clock to not be sparking off each other all the time. Alison wasn’t exactly an expert though. Her longest relationship had been nine months, and she’d always told Cam that she was too easily bored to manage anything longer. Despite that, Alison seemed to think it was absolutely the right thing for Cam to stick it out and make her long-term relationship work. Like always, they reverted to their childhood roles. Cam was the sensible one and Alison was younger and wilder.