Page 54 of One Day and Forever
‘Check you out, with your famous friends,’ he teased her. ‘That’s amazing. He must be pretty chuffed that it’s going so well.’
Kara nodded. ‘He definitely is – he’s loving life. He’s shooting in Croatia right now, but his wife is in New York in a play there, so he was on his lonesome for New Year. Which is all my roundabout way of saying that I’m on my way back from Croatia because I spent New Year there with my pal.’
‘And your boyfriend didn’t mind?’
‘I forgot that bit. He’s been in Paris for the last five days with a big corporate client who was launching a new product on the Eiffel Tower at midnight on New Year’s Eve. They’re still there,although I suspect it’s now more of a jolly than work. Oh, and it’s more than boyfriend now.’ She held up her hand and he saw the large solitaire sparkling in the light. ‘Fiancé now.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. We’re getting married next year in Hawaii. A double wedding with my sister.’
‘Congratulations again.’ His face was smiling, and his words sounded convincing, but both were masking a mighty pang of disappointment that was thumping the inside of his chest.
‘Thank you.’
He could end the conversation right there and go catch his plane. He could, but he didn’t want to. He’d thought back to the last time they’d met on a thousand occasions, and nothing else since had quite matched up. This felt… right. Natural. He’d met her twice and yet, clichéd as it was, he felt like he’d known her forever. So no, he didn’t go. Instead, he took a sip of his coffee and decided that the rest of the world could wait.
‘And how’s your work going?’ he asked her, and then settled back to listen as she chatted about her job, then asked about his, and an hour later their coffees were cold, the final call was made for his flight, and he realised that he didn’t want to go.
He made a split-second decision. ‘Can I ask you something?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘Shoot.’
‘If I were to go and change my flight and catch the first one tomorrow morning, would you have dinner with me? Only I feel that we have several more conversations to get through. We haven’t even scratched on world peace or the history of the boy band.’
Her laugh was one of his favourite things about her. She didn’t even break eye contact and her smile widened as she answered his question with one of her own. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Shoot.’
‘Can we have dinner in exactly the same place, in exactly the same way that we did last time? Because I think that was one of my favourite nights ever.’
‘I think we can manage that,’ he agreed. ‘And for the record, it was one of mine too.’
Thankfully, he hadn’t checked any luggage in, so he just let a harassed gate attendant know that he was no longer taking the flight.
Less than an hour later, they were lying, fully clothed, on a bed in the hotel across from the airport, drinking beers, eating room service and chocolate from the minibar. They watched ten more episodes ofFriendsand Zac thought how he hadn’t laughed more in one night since the last time they’d done this.
It was almost midnight when she rolled on her side to face him. ‘I’m glad we got to do this again.’
‘Me too.’
‘You know, I never told a soul about the last time we met.’
That surprised him. She’d said she shared everything with her sister and her actor mate. ‘I didn’t either.’
‘I think it felt… special. And innocent. I didn’t want to let anyone make it something it wasn’t.’
‘I get that. Don’t get me wrong, if you didn’t have a boyfriend…’
‘I know,’ she said, and they didn’t have to say all the words in the sentence because they both knew what they were thinking.
He wasn’t sure who fell asleep first, but he remembered waking in the middle of the night, and they were spooning, and then waking in the morning and she was gone.
He glanced around for a note. Nothing. Just a Toblerone, sitting on the bedside table next to him. They hadn’t kissed. They had barely touched. He was sure he’d never see her again. Yet it had totally been worth it.
The shower beckoned, so he got up, spent twenty minutes under the jets, then, when he was dried and dressed, checked the flight app to see that his rescheduled midday flight was on time.
Pulling his bag up on to his shoulder, he was about to leave the room when his phone rang. Dad.
