Page 8 of Love Around the Corner

He couldn’t just walk in there blind, it was too much. He needed to prepare himself. Stopping, he turned around and walked back again, passing the door for a second time. Shit.

He stopped again, fingers biting into his book. Okay, he needed to see. That was it, he needed to just have a little glimpse of Camaro89 before he walked in. He didn’t want to be ambushed by something unexpected and have Camaro89 see anything but excitement on his face. He couldn’t bear that. He’d just have a quick peek through the window first, get the lay of the land.

Walking back to the pub he glanced around to make sure nobody was watching and edged closer to one of the bar’s narrow floor-to-ceiling windows, trying to casually peer inside.

Luckily, this early, the bar wasn’t too busy. Next to the window were a couple of long, black leather sofas with a low pine table between them, and behind them smaller tables for four were scattered across the dark wood floor. He scanned the room, looking for a guy sitting alone. At the bar, he saw a couple of possibilities—one guy in a suit and probably pushing fifty, the other in jeans and a leather jacket, his back turned. Leo fixed his eyes on that leather-clad back, until the guy was joined by a woman who leaned over and kissed him.

Not him, then. He moved to the next window, trying not to draw too much attention. And then he saw it: a copy ofPersuasion, the exact same edition as his own, sat propped half upright on a table against the right hand wall, half hidden by the sloping ceiling of the underside of a staircase.

His stomach clenched so hard he felt sick. The occupant of the table was hidden in the alcove formed by the stairs and Leo had to edge back a little to see him. The first thing Leo noticed was the man’s hand, wrapped around a can of Street Green pale ale (nice choice). The hand of a youngish man—yes!—wearing a heavy sweater, and attached to—

He stumbled back a step, the breath seizing in his lungs.

Impossible.

He pressed a hand to his eyes until he saw white dots of light, then looked again. But, no, the man sitting at the table with the copy ofPersuasionwas indisputably Alfie Carter.

Leo felt…horror.

There was no other word for it. Utter horror as his dreams fell apart like a house of cards. Camaro89 was Alfie Carter? Leo had somehow, impossibly, fallen for Alfie-fucking-Carter ofAlfie’s Auto’s—two apostrophes. Alfie Carter who mocked him, who laughed at him?

Turning away from the window, heart pounding, he shoved his book into his bag and fled. Heedless of where he was going, he found himself running up the steps to the High Line. As always, it was busy, even in the cold winter night. Tourists were fucking idiots. But he found an empty bench and sank down on the icy metal, stomach churning and breath catching in his throat.

This was a nightmare.

It wasimpossible. Camaro89 was witty, and well-read, and sweet and— And nothing like Alfie Carter.

Alfie Carter hated him. He thought he was a prissy asshole. If Leo walked through that door right now, Alfie would be as horrified as him.

He felt a sickening sting behind his eyes as he realized that Camaro89 was an illusion, a fantasy. A figment of Leo’s imagination. Their friendship—theirrelationship—was a lie. It had to be. There was nowayhe could have fallen for Alfie Carter, the grumpy mechanic who thought he was an asshole.

“Fuck!”

That earned him a couple of cold looks from a pair of women passing by, but he ignored them. Why should he care about offending strangers?

What he didn’t get was how this could have happened. Carter was semi-literate. How could he have opinions on Poe and Henry James? How could Austen be his favorite novelist? Austen, of all people. A writer so subtle most people thought she wrote chick-lit, and yet Camaro89—Carter—loved her scalpel-like dissection of human nature. She made him LOL, so he’d said.

But maybe he’d been lying. Christ, was Dee right? Had Leo been catfished?

Catfished by the asshole who lived around the corner. Shit—a worse thought struck—did Alfieknow? Was this some kind of joke?

A flush of humiliation washed over him, swiftly followed by a dark wave of fury. And on its heels, a cold splash of reality.

Carter couldn’t know. He might be an asshole, but he’d never struck Leo as insane. And faking a relationship with his neighbor for twelve months, as a joke, would be nuts. No, this must just be one of those unlikely cosmic fuck-ups the universe was so fond of these days.

It also left Leo with a problem: what the hell did he do now?

Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees and pressed his face into his gloved hands. The world had turned from bright and beautiful to grim and grey, and it hurt. Half an hour ago he’d been in love, and now the man he’d loved turned out to be someone else entirely. A fake, a fiction. A figment of Leo’s fevered dreams.

Into his maudlin thoughts intruded a sound that had, for the past few months, always made him smile. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, he reached for his phone and read the message.

Camaro89: Hey, I’m here. Beer’s good. See you soon?

The time at the top of the screen read 7.12pm.

He stared at the message, paralyzed. What did he do? What the fuck did hedo? Walk in there, slap his copy ofPersuasiondown on the table and say, “Well, this is a surprise!”

Or walk away.

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