Page 118 of Cover Story

‘Would it ruin it?’ Bel said, aiming for a throwaway inflection.

‘Are you in touch with any of your past one-night stands?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to say: ‘no idea, I’m a serial monogamist’, except that might scare the living shit out of Connor. She hastily redrafted: ‘Honestly, I’ve never actually had one before. Unless you count …thatincident, which I don’t. Are there rules?’

Superb smokescreen that she was an experienced, do this all the time sex person. 5/5, no notes.Idiot.

‘Not exactly … but weren’t we staying friends?’

‘Friends can’t ever have done this?’

This sounds hideously like pleading, Bel.

‘In theory, yes, but in practice we’ll feel strange about it and never know what the subtext is if we get in touch, and therefore won’t get in touch.’

Translation: my next girlfriend will do thorough background checks and you won’t survive the cull.

‘Yeah, I see your point. We don’t want to be sharing smash burgers and a beer and getting involuntary flashbacks to the sight of each other writhing around naked. Like prisoners of war with PTSD.’

Irreverent humour was full masking. When their being this close felt narcotic to Bel, when she’d discovered he held her heart like a newly hatched bird in his hand, it was weird indeed to be chatting potential intercourse through like it was whether they took the A640 or A642 tomorrow. But Connor was making his disinclination clear in very feeling-sparing terms, for her sake. It was ungrateful and self-sabotaging to insist he outright said:look you’re not really my type. The gig was ‘pretending’.

‘Bel, this is because I want to stay in touch so much. I haven’t said it before because I worried I was being …what do the kids call it …extra.But I’m really going to miss you. Some serious attachment has been created.’

‘Sure! I get it,’ she said, thinking there was no way of making And I Don’t Want To Do It Enough not hurt. She thought it might be time to stop having her chest hanging out as untaken bait, and humiliatingly pulled her dress back up and into place.

Later, after lights out, while wondering if Connor was alsowide awake in the dark, Bel tried very hard to see positives. You couldn’t lose what you’d never had.

If he didn’t want to sleep with her, that was a pretty conclusive answer to the question: ‘Do I tell him I’ve fallen head over heels in love with him?’

She’d got an answer– the answer she fully expected– without the agony of ever baring her soul, or her body.

Why then, was this such agony?

65

I can’t leave, I don’t want to leave, Connor had thought, while ‘The Queen Is Dead’ thundered in his ears on his final morning run around Salford Quays, except this pervasive ennui made no sense because he absolutely did want to leave.

When he was comforting Bel, without his shirt on and somehow unselfconscious about the fact, what was going on came into very clear focus: he didn’t want to leaveher.

It wasn’t the moment he’d have chosen to fully understand himself. After Psycho Tumnus and Bitter Tim, Connor was supposed to be the reliable pal, not the next applicant.

After ‘you’re human’, he’d wanted to add:the only one I lie awake at night thinking about, possibly my favourite onebut it definitely wasn’t the time. Sadly, time wasn’t something they now had much of.

Worse, it seemed this wasn’t merely ‘fancying’ Bel. He could tell his symptoms were not going to abate if they had a night together, or even a fling. It would probably make his suffering even more acute. It was as if Connor had put off seeing the GP until he was an urgent A&E case. Except the dangerously high fever was Bel Macauley.

If it wasn’t simply fancying her, he asked himself what wordhe might use instead to sum up the combination of adoration, fascination, tenderness and fierce desire he felt towards her. It had one syllable and, as soon as he spoke it in his head, he knew it applied.

What practical use was this surreal revelation? He couldn’t disgrace himself and embarrass her by revealing that their game of splashing around the shallow end for show had seen him accidentally drown. Falling for her was, apart from anything else, idiotically suggestible.

Ofcoursehe got on famously with her family, who were a total delight, a demonstration to him of things that would never be. Her mother had short grey hair and an aristocratic bone structure, very well-spoken but entirely friendly. Connor had briefly worried ‘what if Miles was a to-the-manor-born Guy Ritchie film character’, but he was a great laugh, and Connor genuinely felt that in different circumstances they’d be friends.

As he embarked on a wedding day with Bel at his side, he thought, is there the smallest chance she has started to feel feelings for me? Unfortunately, paying closer attention suggested: lol no.

When Bel said she’d love them to stay ‘friends’, then teasingly inquired if he and Jennifer would be back on in London– as if he’d do that, and as if she’d not care in the slightest!– Connor could see that while her regard for him had soared, when it came to attraction towards him, nothing had changed. To be fair, why would it have? It still hurt.

Then came the catastrophic wonder of there being a legitimate reason to offer to kiss her as a favour. The opportunity served up to him as if a benevolent God decided Connor should have a wish granted before his life continued on its sad-sack trajectory.

Obviously, circumstances conspired to force it, but if Bel was willing to do it, she couldn’t find him wholly off-putting.

---