Page 101 of Between Us

‘OK?’ Matt said, wiping rainwater from his brow.

‘I really like you.’

Matt looked perplexed, yet impassive. She worried he would even be annoyed at being dragged out of his evening for this crap.

Roisin had rehearsed a more ambitious version of this speech, and she immediately junked it. It turned out life was not like romantic comedy films. Making grand statements about your passion to an unwary person you knew well was not like that scene at the New Year party inWhen Harry Met Sally: it was excruciating.

It was raining, and she did notice.

‘Whatever started the other night. You know. With Bryan Ferry. And Spandau Ballet. I really like you, and I think we should … date. If you want to. Gina’s totally fine with it.’

‘That’s what you wanted to say? You got permission?’ Matt said, and Roisin wanted to die. She’d have to characterise this incident, in the months and years to come, as ‘Joe PTSD’.

‘What if Gina had said no? You’d choose Gina?’

Roisin nodded, reluctantly.

‘The right decision,’ Matt said.Oof.

And the very fact Matt wasn’t sayingwow, really, me tooand clasping in her arms was as much answer as Roisin needed.

‘Thing is …’ Matt said. ‘This may be too much honesty, but I am so weary with not saying what I mean, and not being sure what other people mean. Thing is, I’m not who you think I am.’

62

‘How?’

Was this where he admitted he was indeed a remorseless womaniser?

‘I think you think I’m this fun party animal, who’s going to whirl you around the dancefloor and get you back on your feet after a decade of Joe Powell.’

He drew breath. ‘Despite what it looks like …’ He nodded back at the teeming bar. ‘I don’t have a lot of people in my life. Ones that matter. I don’t see my family; I won’t be seeing much of the Brian lot from now on. At times, I feel pretty lonely. I don’t know why that feels so hard to admit, but it does. I’m not ashamed, and yet … it seems I am.’

Roisin exactly understood that feeling of being ashamed of something you weren’t ashamed of.

‘You, however, matter. You are one of my oldest friends, and I love you. I’m really flattered you think I’m good for a good time. But I can see us on the other side of that, and I don’t want it. I don’t want to scale down to the awkward WhatsApps every couple of months. Checking in and beingforced-casual and cagey with each other about who we’re both seeing. It doesn’t work to stay mates with someone you’ve had those times with.’

Roisin nodded.

‘If you need a self-esteem boost, then I can promise you: you are staggeringly lovely. You won’t struggle to find someone to say yes. But he can’t be me. If it helps, I already hate him.’

‘Thank you,’ Roisin said. ‘For the nicest,You?No, ta, loveI will ever get.’ She pulled a comedy face.

Matt smiled, shook his head, and winced. ‘It’s not “no, ta.” It’s, “I like you too much to swap close friends status for being kind-of-exes”. However much fun the brief spell in between is.’

Roisin said, ‘I get it.’ That was that. She decided to claw back some tattered shreds of dignity. ‘But I wasn’t completely off the mark in thinking you might be up for it. You did kiss me? Before I remembered Gina,’ Roisin said.

‘I never said I found saying no to you easy,’ Matt said, with a devastating smile. ‘I’m saying it would be too costly a fling.’

Except … she wasn’t asking him for a fling. Should she say it? Oh, fuck it. She’d come this far.

‘I’m not asking you to have somedalliancewith me,’ Roisin said, a last bid she wasn’t at all sure she should make. If not quit while you’re ahead, quit while you’ve not completely humiliated yourself.

‘Then what are you saying?’ Matt said.

‘I’m saying …’ Roisin petered out at the impossibility of looking him in that spectacular face and uttering the actual foolish words.

‘Be extremely blunt and as graphic as you like,’ Matt said. ‘I think we’re beyond nice euphemisms.’ He put his arm up to shield them as a gust of rain somehow managed to pelt sideways, under the awning.

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