Page 48 of The Happy Hour
‘Oh my God, then why are you evenbothering? A couple of miles up the river, and on the northside, too? No long-distance love affair has ever survived such a chasm.’ She pressed her hands on either side of her face, doing an excellent impression of Munch’sTheScream.
Jess threw the cushion at her. Lola caught it and grinned at her over the top. ‘Continue, please.’
Jess scowled, but she couldn’t hold it in, now. ‘He has an hour at the market every Sunday, and—’
‘Why?’
Jess chewed her lip. ‘He hasn’t told me that, yet. He has this appointment he has to get to, every week. I’ve asked him about it, but he always changes the subject.’ Or distracted her with a tour, a kite, an unspilled Americano, frothy with crema. ‘But before that, we have an hour together. We’ve been to the park and flown a kite on Blackheath. Last weekend he made up this film location tour, about Thor and the Muppets...’ She broke off, laughing.
‘Holy shit,’ Lola whispered.
‘What?’
‘A minute ago you saidwe’re not evena thing, but you’re cracking up at the memories. You’ve flown akitetogether. This isn’t just a thing, Jess. This is more than a thing.’
‘It’s just fun,’ Jess told her. ‘He’s easy to be around, and whenever I think about him, whenever we spend time together, I’m full of happy, nervous anticipation. I can’t wait to see him again the moment he leaves, and it’s like... when you only have a small amount of time for something, you make the most of it, don’t you?’
‘Like me and Malik on a Monday night,’ Lola said. ‘There’s only a small window between him finishing work and his online World of Warcraft game. Monday night sex is the best sex as a result.’
Jess shook her head slowly.
‘So you and Ash, you’ve kissed?’ Lola asked.
‘Last Sunday,’ Jess said. ‘But I think... I mean, I like him alot. And he must like me too.’
Lola rolled her eyes. ‘He didn’t put his tongue in your mouth to get a bit of lettuce out of your teeth, did he?’
‘I am running out of things to throw at you.’
‘I know. That’s why I said it. Seriously, though, what’s next?’
‘Next is the fact that you’ve arranged a Market Misfits meeting when we usually meet up, so unless I abandon you to manage Spade and Susie and our fundraising for Enzo all by yourself, then Ash is going to have to spend his Sunday morning helping us.’
‘Whoop!’ Lola clapped so enthusiastically the fairy lights shivered. ‘I meant it as a joke when I said he should come along, but Iknewthere was a reason I wanted to do it on Sunday. I must have had a secret intuition.’ She tapped her temple.
‘Yeah, well. This is when it all falls apart.’
‘Why?’ Lola laughed incredulously. ‘Because he’ll get to meet your market friends, andme?Is it me you’re worried about?’
‘Of course not,’ Jess said. ‘And he knows everyone at the market already.’ She didn’t know how to explain it. Her hours with Ash felt like a precious, almost fantastical bubble, and the moment she brought him into the real world, with Lola and her voracious enthusiasm, all the ways in which he might find out that she was less than perfect in comparison to her best friend, that she was often a grumpy, cynical person, it was likely to burst. An hour a week felt contained, like nothing could go wrong. ‘It’s just new and... a bit precarious,’ she said. ‘We’re just meeting for coffee, so—’
‘And kisses,’ Lola reminded her.
‘Onekiss,’ Jess said. ‘And I don’t know if it’ll be more. You can’t have a proper relationship in one hour a week.’ Perhaps that was why she’d let it happen.
‘So break through the boundaries,’ Lola said. ‘Meet him one evening; take him to the cinema or to dinner, or bring him here.’ She patted the bed. ‘Be honest with him, see what he wants, and if it turns out that he wants what a long,
fiery-hot kiss suggests he wants, do all of it with him. Enjoy every moment. Don’t confine this thing, Jess – and don’t confine yourself. You don’t have to put all the bits of your life in separate little boxes, or... Russian dolls. What are they called?’
‘Matryoshka,’ Jess said.
Lola looked surprised, and Jess shrugged. She couldn’t tell her friend that she’d Googled it after seeing the chaotic collection on Felicity’s kitchen windowsill. That was another thing she’d yet to come up with a plan for, and the reminder was like an itch, somewhere on her body she couldn’t quite reach.
‘Right,’ Lola said. ‘Don’t separate your life into matryoshka dolls – that’s not how it works. Things are messy, they overlap all the time. Embrace the overlap!’
Jess managed a smile, but she wasn’t convinced by Lola’s suggestion. Ash was the one who had put a one-hour limit on their time together – coffee with his neighbour beforehand, the thing he wouldn’t talk about afterwards. But maybe that’s how they worked best. An hour of doing silly, fun things, having the occasional kiss, not letting themselves ask too much of each other.
‘How did it go with Spade?’ she asked, wanting to change the subject.
