Page 22 of The Love of Our Lives
What to say? I have no idea why Emily came up here, and for some reason I really don’t want to lie to this guy. I may have only known him for twenty minutes but he seems so very open and kind and, sometimes, you just get a feeling.
I take a sip of my water. ‘I don’t totally know, if I’m being honest.’ I pause. ‘I guess I’m still figuring things out.’
He smiles in a way that starts that fluttering in my chest again. ‘Well, I’m glad you chose to figure things out in the flat opposite mine.’
I take a quick sip of my water. ‘And how long have you lived there?’
‘Oh, I don’t reallylivethere exactly; I don’t really stay anywhere for long. It’s more a base for when I’m back. And I always try and catch the Fringe, you see.’
For some reason my stomach sinks just slightly.
‘And on that note.’ He pulls two white tickets from his pocket, sliding them apart with his thumb and forefinger.
I stare down at them.
‘Show tickets,’ he says before I ask. ‘A comedy act in a couple of hours. I got them on the off-chance that you would come out tonight. A little presumptuous, I know, but failing that, there was always Sven.’ He laughs.
I feel myself hesitating. A show? I’ve just got my head around having a slice of pizza with this guy.
‘Not keen?’ Adam says quickly, and holds up his hands. ‘No pressure, honestly. If you’re bored by my chat before then, I will gladly walk you back home.’
The way he’s so open and friendly about the whole thing makes me like him even more, and I have the strongest sense that I should at least try.
‘Well,’ I say eventually, smiling across at him, ‘let’s see how the rest of the evening goes, OK?’
He nods. ‘Good plan.’
We finish off our pizza slices and, for the next while, I find myself talking easily to him. It’s soothing after everything that’s happened in the last week, as though somehow he’s managing to ground me to this time, this life, and I stop thinking about the hows and the whys of it all. He tells me about his upholstering business, how he started it a few years back, and despite some initial setbacks, he’s done all right. His bespoke stuff is even in some of the fancy hotels around town apparently, and he travels around the country to deliver his orders personally, partlybecause he likes meeting new people, and partly because he just likes exploring. He’s incredibly easy to talk with, warm too, and I have the strangest sense that maybe I met him before in my own life.
‘Well, enough about me,’ he says eventually, ‘I want to know about you. What’s your family like?’
I pause.
What can I possibly tell him? Dad, Jess and the boys, Mum – they all feel so far away right now, like they’re in another life.
‘Let’s just say I needed a fresh start,’ I say eventually. And with a jolt, I realise that perhaps that’s true.
‘Well, I hope you find it, Emily,’ he says, his startling green eyes on mine. ‘And would you look at that?’ he says suddenly, turning an old brown-strap watch on his wrist to me. ‘Looks like we made it to showtime. You game?’
I’m not sure if it’s the full-belly feeling I have or the smudges of happy pink in the sky above, but I find myself nodding at him.
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I’m game.’
All around us, the venue continues to fill up, and my breathing quickens. When we first got in, there were very few people here, and I still felt light-headed with the evening, drifting along in a pleasant, dream-like state.
But now, as I walk through the darkened theatre, the haze of the evening is starting to wear off and that fresh openness of sky above has vanished.
Everything seems so very solid and dark in here.
‘This is us,’ Adam says, pointing to the middle of a row, in the middle of the theatre.
My heart quickens.
What am I doing here with this guy?
Did I just think I could pretend all of this was normal? That I could go on a date and pretend I was someone else entirely?
This isn’t my life to mess with.
