Page 38 of Love and Other Paradoxes

He grinned. “Well, the bar was pretty low, given that you expected me to be the worst person in the universe.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Problem is, every time you impress me, the bar’s rising. Think you can keep up?”

He looked into her dancing eyes. He knew this feeling, his blood fizzing, the air between them pulsing with light.Are we flirting?She laughed, as if answering his unspoken question.Yes.And why not? They both knew it wasn’t going to happen. So if they tiptoed around the edges of it happening, where was the harm?

Her attention flickered over his shoulder. Her face went slack.

“You okay? You look like you’ve seen...”A ghost.He knew, with a lurch of his gut, exactly who she had caught sight of in the crowd, even before she started running.

She ran with abandon, flailing and desperate as a child. Straining to look beyond her, he caught a glimpse of a slight girl in a puffy coat, the edge of a familiar cheekbone, a fall of straightened dark hair. He followed Esi out onto St. Andrew’s Street, crossing the road to a chorus of ringing bikes, up the slope behind the church that led into Lion Yard shopping centre. He caught up with her in the crowd of early evening shoppers, turning fruitlessly in circles.

“Fuck.She’s gone.” Her eyes, wide and unseeing, glanced off his and back into the crowd. “I lost her.”

A feeling coursed through him, leaving him trembling in its wake. He was disturbed to find it was relief. He was glad she hadn’t found her mum yet, because once she found her, she would be one step closer to leaving, and he didn’t want her to go. But he didn’t want to see her like this, dulled and broken, the pain of a second loss written all over her. The two impulses warred inside him, tearing him gently to pieces.

“Hey.” He touched her shoulder. “It’s a good sign. We found her once, we can find her again.”

He had meant to cheer her up, but she met his eyes with blank desolation. “I should go.”

“Let me walk with you.”

She didn’t protest. She didn’t talk at all, not on the way out of town up St. Andrew’s Street, not as they crossed the flat dark of Parker’s Piece under the overcast sky. The feeling of being watched crept up on him again. He turned, but there was only a random drunk weaving along the path behind them.

Esi turned with him. “Who are you looking for?”

“Vera.”

She frowned, not understanding. “We’re fine. It’s way after five.”

“I don’t think she’s sticking to the terms and conditions anymore. I’ve seen her on her own, out of hours. Watching me.”

“Shit. She must be looking for me.” Her eyes met his in panic. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it was important! I thought she might just be a fan.” It sounded stupid now he said it. The woman spent every day following him around: she must be utterly sick of him.

Esi searched the darkness, walking backwards past the Reality Checkpoint. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to be so much more careful.” Another worry he’d added to her list. He thought with a pang of how much simpler her life would have been if she’d never met him.

They went on up Mill Road, a backwards retread of their first walk together. As they neared the café, her steps slowed. In the window, coffee bean fireworks exploded around more coffee beans that spelled outremember.

“Another Campbell classic.”

She didn’t smile. “Need to update it. Fifth of November was weeks ago.” She reached in her bag for a jangling ring of keys.

He looked at her uncertainly. “Do you need to update it right now?”

“Oh. Yeah.” She turned, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “So, this is where I sleep.”

He stared. “What?”

“It’s not so bad. There’s a bathroom in the back, and turns out, sacks of coffee beans are actually pretty comfortable—”

“No. This—this is not okay.”

She sighed. “Don’t make a big deal of it. You sound like Shola.”

“Shola?”

She gestured at the counter. “The girl I work with. She’s a master’s student at the uni. She found out I was sleeping here, and she offered me a room in her house share.”

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