Page 2 of Forever, Maybe
Jesus, she wasstunning.
“What’s your name, by the way?” she asked.
“Daniel. And yours?” he countered with a tilt of his head.
“Daniel?” Her face lit up as if she’d just discovered buried treasure. “That’s a lovely name! You’ve got so many options: Daniel, Danny, Dan… endless possibilities!”
“Aye, s’pose. But everyone just calls me Daniel.” As soon as the words were out, he cringed. He sounded like a pompous idiot.
“Well,I’mgoing to call you Danny,” she declared with an air of finality. “And I’m Nell. Lovely to meet you.”
The name suited her perfectly: short, sharp, and full of spark. Daniel—or Danny, apparently—couldn’t help but smile.
Most people who attended university or art school had a posh accent. She sounded English, but not posh English. He recognised a regional accent but couldn’t place it. A tiny bit of sandwich filling clung to the corner of her mouth. Without thinking too much about it, he leant forward and brushed it off. Her eyes widened in surprise as she jerked back.
“Sorry!” He raised his hands. “I… um… there was a wee bit of food stuck to your face.”
She moved her head. “Oh. Okay, thanks. Do you own that sandwich van?”
She gestured towards the van, with its prominentStuffed!sign on the side.
“Aye, a year ago, my Uncle Shane had lent me enough money to buy this clapped-out old van, which my dad helped me convert into a mobile sandwich shop. Joe came up wi’ the name and this mate o’ his wi’ a paint shop in the east end had a load o’ red and black paint left over, so that’s why we ended up wi’ that colour scheme.”
She nodded. “I love it. It’s bold. Standy-outy. D’you just come here to sell sandwiches?”
“No, most of the time we go round the industrial estates. There’s aw these workers there who dinnae get much time for lunch, and there are no shops nearby, so they’re happy to pay for decent fresh food. Uncle Shane came up wi’ the idea of selling to students. He said we wouldn’t need permission for the council to park outside the student union and that all the students would be—”
Shane’s words—off their fucking tits—froze on his tongue. His uncle uttered all kinds of off-colour phrases most of the time, but he had this old-fashioned thing about not swearing or using rude words in front of women, which his nephew had inherited.
A smile danced in the corners of Nell’s mouth. “Drunk as skunks, per chance? Ready to hand over their dosh, even though it would only take them about three seconds to return to their halls and make something themselves for nothing?”
Busted. He grinned. “Aye.”
He’d followed Shane’s advice, and the students flocked there every Thursday evening. So much so, that now that a lease on a shop in Hyndland had expired, Shane had advised him to buy the premises and turning it into a permanent sandwich shop/delicatessen. He would lend him the money, too.
He and Joe had slaved to get to this position. Five am starts to make the fresh bread, treks across Glasgow with the van, non-stop bargaining with suppliers, trying to source the best ingredients at the cheapest price and late nights now that they’d added student discos to their regular jaunts.
“All work and no play makes Daniel a dull boy!” his mum liked to nag. He could hear her voice now, tutting, as he let an opportunity slip through his fingers yet again.
Nell, meanwhile, looked as though she might nod off in front of him. She’d finished her sandwich and was resting her head on her forearms while a stray lock of pink hair dangled over her cheek. Her eyes had gone glassy again, and she teetered on the edge of sleep—or possibly unconsciousness. Either way, she definitely wasn’t sober.
Now was the time to ask.
Daniel swallowed, summoning the blunt honesty that had served him so well in life or at least hadn’t gotten him punched too often. “D’you have a boyfriend?”
Nell’s head shot up like a jack-in-the-box, her turquoise eyes wide and fully awake. “What?”
“Can I see you again?” he clarified quickly, feeling his ears start to burn.
Her lips twitched, teasing a smile. “See me again at your sandwich van? Or see me again, like, we go out for a drink or something?”
Not quite as straightforward as he’d hoped. “See you again as in we go out for a drink. Or… something like that.”
She tilted her head, studying him for a moment that felt like forever. Then she nodded—just once. It wasn’t exactly definitive. Was that a yes, ‘I’d love to go out with you’ nod? Or a cool, ‘see you next Thursday when I’m drunk and broke again’?
The silence stretched, each second dragging by. Daniel could feel a familiar flush creeping up his neck and spreading across his face.
“Okay,” Nell said at last, breaking the tension with an easy smile. “A drink. Or something like that.”
