Page 52 of Our Stop

Eddie pulled her in for a kiss, then – the first time he’d done so all day, to the point where Nadia had found herself wanting it to happen and convincing herself that she’d misunderstood and they were only spending time together as friends. Or strangers who’d slept together once. Their hands had brushed as they’d walked, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed when Eddie had found the exact spot of the curve of her hip to guide her around the corners of the gallery. Knees had knocked as they ate and he’d put his arm around her neck, across her shoulders, a few times. But until then, no kiss. Body contact but no kiss, and when it finally happened Nadia found herself wanting more of it.

They’d got supplies for a simple pasta and pesto dish at the Tesco Extra on the corner, and a bottle of wine and some fizzy water, and kept kissing as they drank on her patio, and boiled water for the noodles, and once they’d eaten the kissing got deeper, and deeper, and then, come Sunday morning, Nadia woke up next to him again, convinced he was the guy for her.You might have been right …she texted Emma, to no reply.He’s pretty awesome …

They’d spent all Sunday together, going out to read the papers over breakfast like they’d been a couple for years, and this was their normal, weekly routine, before taking the overground across the city to take a big walk up the heath and stopping for roast beef in the beer garden of a pub nearby. It was nice to belong to somebody for a whole block of time: not to be hurtling across London to do a workout with one friend and then lunch with another and head home alone after somebody’s Saturday-night birthday dinner or drinks. Nadia felt rooted that weekend, spending time with one person – a person who seemed to like her an awful lot. The ‘couple behavior’ that had bugged her on Friday, by Sunday night felt comforting and welcome.

I like how this feels, she’d told him, snuggled into his neck on her sofa in front of a David Attenborough documentary.

And she did.

Train Guy who?she smiled to herself. In three days, her life had changed completely. Now that she’d let herself entertain the idea, Eddie was actually almost everything she wanted.

On Monday morning, when she saw Train Guy had written back to her in the paper, she decided to ignore it.

I screwed up, Coffee Spill Girl. I left, and I shouldn’t have, and now I’m worried I blew it. I know you don’t get a second chance at a first impression, but how about a first meeting on the second try?

No, she thought.Not when there’s a man right here who shows up when he says he will. Sorry, Train Guy.

34

Daniel

On Monday, when Daniel got home from work, he hesitated at the door before he put his key in the lock. Lorenzo was home. Daniel didn’t want to see him.

Pushing open the door, smells of garlic and salmon wafted through the hallway. Daniel’s first thought was that if Lorenzo was hosting a date in their living room – a date with no warning, no less – he’d go straight back out again, probably to his mother’s. His second reaction was to think,How dare he impose on the house this way?In theory Daniel didn’t care who Lorenzo had over, but it was fucking poor form to have somebody over two nights after they’d thrown punches at each other over his treatment of another woman.

In so many ways Daniel had had no right to get involved with him and Becky, but … he just knew it wasn’t right. He knew that Lorenzo would have taken Becky into his room if Daniel hadn’t have stopped him, and that was just wrong. Daniel had saved Becky from doing something she probably wouldn’t remember doing, but he’d saved Lorenzo from doing something he’d never be able to un-do too, no matter how blurred the line was. Daniel’s conscience told him there were no shades of grey here, even if Lorenzo would’ve argued for them.

Lorenzo had been gone all day Sunday and come home after Daniel had locked himself away in his room, but in the forty-eight hours since it happened, Daniel had convinced himself that he was absolutely right to have stood up for Becky that way, whether she knew it or not. Whether Lorenzo knew it or not.

‘Hello?’ Lorenzo yelled, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘Oh, hey man. I’m, erm … making pasta al salmone.’

Daniel nodded, and searched for clues as to who else was there.

‘I got in a bottle of Malbec too.’

Daniel scrunched up his nose. For him? Was this for him?

‘I’ll open it,’ Lorenzo said.

Daniel took off his jacket and threw it over the arm of the sofa as he heard the pop of a cork easing out of a bottle neck, and the sloshing of liquid against a glass. Lorenzo reappeared with two glasses and handed one over. Daniel took it.

‘I’d have thought you’d be hungover,’ Daniel said. ‘Still.’

‘I think you knocked my hangover out of me,’ Lorenzo said. If that was a joke, neither of them laughed.

They sipped their wine. Eventually, Daniel moved to sit at the table. He wasn’t sure what there was to talk about, really. There was nothing he really wanted to say.

‘I know the other night was stupid,’ Lorenzo said, awkwardly hovering by the table. ‘I … I know that. I was a twat.’ Daniel listened. Hehadbeen a twat, yes. It was good that he understood that. ‘And I texted Becky, and obviously she’s …’

He kept letting his sentences trail off. Daniel almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

‘She’s told me not to text her again. Which, erm, you know.’ And then his bottom lip wobbled and he burst into tears. A grown, thirty-something-year-old man with a bruise on his face and a glass of red wine in his hand let out a low guttural noise, like an animal in a trap.

‘Oh mate, I don’t know what happened,’ he said, wiping at his eyes and trying to pull himself back together. ‘We’d had sex before and I thought she was up for it. But she said …’

He trailed off.

Daniel’s resolve to stay angry softened – but only slightly.

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