Page 32 of Never Too Late

I waved a hand to tell him to continue. “Sorry.”

“We will live together. Me, you, and the unfortunate and not so aesthetically pleasing cat. You will stay busy…” He thought for a moment. “Nights at the theater.” Never having been a huge fan of the theater, I frowned at that, but let him continue without further interruption. “We will taste all the wines in France.” That sounded better. A way of drowning my sorrows cunningly disguised as something cultural. “We will get bikes and take long cycle rides.” Hopefully, before the wine rather than after. “You will have rebound sex with Henri.”

I wasn’t letting that one go without comment. “I think he might have something to say about that.”

Laurent shook his head. “I know my friend. He will be fine with it.”

“What else?” I asked, growing more invested in this wild after-Cillian fantasy the longer it went on.

“Hmm…” Laurent looked off into the distance, thinking hard. “We will buy an old car… Something classic… and we will restore it to its former glory so we can drive around in it on the weekends.”

“I didn’t know you had any mechanical knowledge.”

“I don’t. But how hard can it be? We will learn.”

I burst out laughing and after a few seconds, Laurent joined in. He reached over and grasped my shoulder. “Maybe the car is a little too far and we stick to the bikes. But my point is, we can do whatever takes our fancy. The world is our…”

“Oyster,” I finished for him before it ended up being some other sort of sea creature.

“What does that even mean?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.”

Laurent accepted that with a slight blink. “And all of this…” He waved his hands in an expansive gesture that was very European. “Is just a plan for if things don’t work out.”

“Yeah.” I thought about the last few minutes of conversation. “It’s almost going to be a letdown now if things work out. I don’t get to live with you, ride a bike, drink all the wine, and sleep with Henri, whether or not he wants me to.”

Laurent grinned. “We can still do some of that. Just not the living together or sleeping with Henri part.” He checked his watch. “We are late returning from lunch. If Jules catches us and questions our tardiness, you must look heartbroken, so I can say I was consoling you.”

“Sneaky,” I said. “I like it. Although, I should probably warn you that my acting skills aren’t that good.”

Cillian called me that evening, making it less than twenty-four hours since we’d last spoken. It was a promising start, but I wasn’t about to make too much of it. Anyone could manage one day.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft.

“Hey yourself.” Despite the effort to keep my feet firmly on the ground, there was no keeping the smile out of my voice.

“This is my new number.”

“Did you buy the phone at the airport?” I was only half joking. I wouldn’t have put it past him to do exactly that.

“Amrita already had it for me when I showed my face in the office. Actually, she gave me two phones.”

“Two phones! Ah yes… That’s so much better than one. Now you can have two conversations at the same time.”

“This one,” Cillian continued without reacting to the slight bite in my voice, “is my personal one only. I’m going to be careful who I give this number to. Amrita has it obviously, and I’ve given it to my family. But so far, that’s it.”

“And the other phone?”

“The other is my work phone. It’s still got the old number. Anything work-related from now on will come through that number. Meaning, when I don’t want to be disturbed, I can switch it off. It’s off now.”

The pause that followed said he expected some sort of congratulations for finally joining the millions of people that had employed that technique ever since the invention of the mobile phone. “Amrita’s idea, I assume?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“I hope it works,” I said. And I meant it. Not just for the sake of our relationship, but for Cillian’s future mental health. He might handle long hours of work now. But what about when he was in his fifties? His sixties? A time came when everyone needed to slow down.

“It will,” Cillian said. “I’m going to switch it off at the same time every day.”

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