Page 18 of Out of the Shadows
She smiles before she slips her hand from mine, and goes back to picking at her olives. I top up the glasses, then tear off a piece of bread and dip it in the oil that’s come with it. It’s all displacement activity, an echo of when we were together, neither of us wanting to dig deeper into why all our friends considered us to be the perfect couple even though we lived more like brother and sister once we closed the doors on the world.
Doors. Two doors, two houses.
We had our own homes when we first met and we kept it that way, the two of us flitting between houses, spending more time apart than together. It was a strange situation for two people who were supposed to be madly in love and were engaged to be married.
“I don’t want your life to contract to be nothing more than work.” Geraldine looks straight at me, an olive pinched between thumb and forefinger. I suppress a sigh. This isn’t a road I want to go down. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re like, Daniel. I was your friend for years before I was your fiancée. I want you to be happy and have more in your life than the occasional meet up with me and the company of Wally.”
“Wallace.” I say it automatically. She’s always called my cat Wally and it’s always irritated me.
“I really wish you’d start dating again,” she says, ignoring my comment about Wallace.
I’m cringing inside. I should have known this was coming. Geraldine’s been seeing somebody for the last three or four months, a lawyer like herself. She seems happy, and I’m glad. She’s certainly happier than I ever made her, but she wants to spread her blissful happy dust around and I’m just not in the mood.
“I will. I promise. But at the moment this job is all consuming. It wouldn’t be fair to start any kind of relationship when I don’t have the time to invest in it.”
Geraldine peers at me with what I always think of asthat look. She’s not letting this go.
She leans forward. “It’s always easy to find an excuse, but you need to loosen up a little bit. I’m not talking about relationships per se, but more about having some fun and playing the field.”
“Playing the field? That’s all well and good but what if I don’t much fancy what’s in the field?”
We fall into silence and stare at each other. My comment should be innocuous, nothing more than a throwaway line, but it’s heavier and weightier than I mean it to be. I feel the sudden need to back pedal, to explain, to get rid of this sudden awful fucking silence.
“What I mean is—”
“It’s fine. I understand. About not pushing you when you don’t feel ready.”
I’m not sure it’s at all what she means, but I won’t dig deeper. This is a conversation I don’t want with her but even more, I don’t want it with myself.
She launches into a story about a mutual friend, and we both seize it for the life raft it is.
I keep half an ear on what she’s saying, but I essentially tune her out. My gaze occasionally drifts around the bar. I’ve not been here before although it’s not far from the Cleaver Jackson office. The suggestion was Geraldine’s and I was happy to go along with it as I didn’t much care where we went.
The Breaker’s Yard was clearly once — a yard. The cobbled and uneven ground is enclosed by a rough brick wall on two sides, heavily festooned with fairy lights and old mirrors. Of the two remaining ends, one is taken up by big, heavy slung open wooden gates and the other is the indoor area where the bar is.
It is, very clearly, primarily a gay pub, although there’s a reasonable scattering of mixed sex groups and couples. I’d felt self-conscious sitting alone and waiting for my ex-fiancée to turn up. I’d been aware of more than a few curious glances thrown my way as I fiddled around on my phone.
Geraldine’s in full flow with the story, and I add a comment or two, but I’m taking less and less notice as the activity happening around me in the bar is claiming more and more of my attention. If she’s noticed, she doesn’t show it or say anything.
A couple of guys at a nearby table lean into each other, oblivious to everything going on around them, as they smile and talk, their conversation peppered with frequent affectionate touches. One slips his arm around the other’s shoulders and eases in him closer for a light, gentle, tender kiss. There’s nothing heated or sexual about their exchange and my heart tightens. Every touch and glance, every smile, every tiny kiss is tender and sweet, and overbrimming with love. They are who they are and in this place, they’re safe to be so.
“Can I get you another?”
My attention’s jerked away, and I look up at the barman. He’s smiling and waiting for an answer to a question I’ve not heard.
“Another bottle?” he prompts.
I glance at the ice bucket. The bottle’s been turned over indicating it’s empty.
“Same again?” I ask Geraldine. She nods and smiles before she rummages in her enormous handbag and produces a lipstick.
With a fresh bottle open, Geraldine and I clink glasses and talk about a multitude of subjects flitting from one to the other like nervous butterflies. This time I don’t allow myself to get side tracked, and I give her every shred of my attention as she shares some juicy nuggets of gossip, and I let myself relax properly into the evening.
Geraldine’s a witty conversationalist, and I find myself chuckling at her stories. A sudden burst of laughter over by the bar catches our attention, and we turn and look.
The small group of men are a little raucous as they laugh and joke with the bar staff. A tall red-haired guy slips an arm around the waist of a shorter man, who’s wearing dark jeans and a skimpy neon pink T-shirt, both of which are so tight they may as well have been spray painted on. The shorter of the two twists around and coils his arms around the redhead, before he jumps, wrapping his legs around the other’s waist, who supports his weight by cupping his arse. They cling together not just with their bodies but with their lips. I can feel the electricity of the kiss from here and it burns into my skin. My mouth dries. I don’t need to see the shorter guy’s face full on, because I already know who it is.
The kiss is greeted by more laughter from the little group before Cosmo, grinning, slides off the tall redhead. He stretches, pulling the already tight T-shirt even tighter across his body. His eyes sweep around the bar, and he catches my eye. Cosmo’s arms drop to his side, and his grin disappears leaving his face with the closed off look he always seems to have for me. The blankness is there for only a second before his lips twist into a wry smile. He nods at me before he turns away and once more loops his arms around the redhead.
