Page 107 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
My new can-do attitude doesn’t last long. It turns out youneed an extraordinary amount of upper-body strength to pull yourself up a thirty-foot wall, but as I collapse in a heap at the bottom, Andre refuses to let me give up.
“Don’t think of it as ‘pulling yourself up’; you need to spread your weight, it’s about finding a good position, a good grip with your feet as well as your hands.” He takes time to show me. He’s a good teacher, patient and generous with his praise. When I get ten feet up the wall, he hollers and cheers in a way that’s embarrassing and adorable all at once. Eventually, my hands refuse to try anymore, and I opt to sit the rest of the session out so I can “watch and learn.” Andre sprints up the wall like a vertical gazelle, and from the comfort of the floor I enjoy the view of his stuntman physique.
After the climbing session, Andre and I go for coffee, and he is just as lovely to talk to as he is to watch climb a wall. He tells me he worked as a stuntman in the US for eight years but came home after a shoulder injury forced him to retire early.
“What did you love most about being a stuntman?” I ask him.
“I got into it because I was an adrenaline junkie,” he tells me. “It never gets old, throwing yourself off a bridge or running from an explosion, but then, I also came to love the problem-solving element, working with directors and stunt coordinators. I guess every job is problem-solving. You’ve just got to work out what problem you want to solve.”
“Children not being able to swim being your current problem,” I say with a smile.
“Right, exactly,” he laughs. “What’s your problem, work-wise?”
“Working out how to say something interesting that resonates with people. Keeping my integrity while also moving with the times.” I take a sip of my coffee. “Making sure I back up my laptop.”
“Sounds challenging,” Andre laughs, then looks up at the menu board. “The waffles here are supposed to be incredible. Can I tempt you?”
“Why not? I burned so many calories sitting on the floor watching you climb.”
Andre laughs again, which makes me glow with the delightful feeling of being found funny. “Do you want toppings?”
“Oh, just however it comes,” I say, then catch myself, taking a moment to consider what I actually want. “No, wait. Could I have blueberries and strawberries, mascarpone, and maple syrup, but on the side? Thank you.”
“Great choice,” he says.
I can’t fault my morning with Andre. It’s been a perfect date. After our waffles, he walks me to the bus stop, tells me he’s had a great time, and asks if he can take me out to dinner next week. I say yes, because he’s lovely and I’ve enjoyed his company. But then on the bus home my heart starts to race, my fingertips tingle with nervous energy, and I have to get off the bus because my chest hurts and I’m hyperventilating. Standing on the pavement, bent double trying to catch my breath, I cannot work out what is wrong. I had a lovely morning, with a lovely man, so why does it feel so wrong? Why am I bursting into tears in the middle of the street, then texting Andre to politely decline his invitation to dinner? Why does my heart hurt?
—
A cup ofdecaf coffee in hand—worried too much caffeine is why my chest felt weird earlier—I sit at my desk and stare at a blank document. I still haven’t written my half of the article about Reconnect Retreats. I’ve been putting it off, staring at a blinking cursor every time I sit down to write it. The deadline is tomorrow, and I still have nothing. Will sent me what he’d written last week, the sight of his name in my inbox giving me a jolt of illogical hope, which quickly evaporated when I read the brief, perfunctory e-mail.
Copy and photos attached, happy for you to choose whicheverones you think we should use. Once you’ve written your copy, just submit it along with mine directly to the editor, details enclosed. Thanks, W.
He doesn’t even want to read what I write before it goes out. It’s as though he’s purposely shutting off any need for further communication between us.
Opening the Word document, I reread his copy now. He describes the concept behind the retreat, the idyllic location, how he rediscovered his love of fire building and wild swimming. He doesn’t go into too many specifics about me, but he says it was the perfect way to get to know someone and that two days there felt like two months. There is one sentence that jumps out at me: “If you want to know whether you could fall in love with someone, this is the ideal place to find out.”
Opening the photo files from Greta, first I see the posed shots of the cabin, Will and me by the fire, an arty shot of sunlight on the glade, then Will trying to stack wood. Greta is a skilled photographer; you can practically hear the birds in the trees. When I scroll to the end, my breath catches in my throat. Will and I are wrapped in blankets sitting up in the grass; my shoulders are bare and so is his chest, but the rest of us is covered by the rug or shadow. The light hits Will’s cheekbone; he looks beautiful. But it is me my eye is drawn to. My hair is disheveled, wavy and wild, like an ethereal woodland nymph’s. In the photo, I’m gazing up at him, and there’s a lightness in my face; my eyes shine almost gold in the light, we are smiling at each other, and I look so full of joy, so self-assured. I stare at the photo. Is that really me? The photo is a fleeting moment captured perfectly by her lens. Greta was right, it is tasteful, and more beautiful than anything that could be posed.
And now I know why I had that reaction on the bus. It hits me all at once, like the sun emerging from behind a dark cloud,landing with such an urgent clarity I feel the need to say it out loud: “I am in love with Will Havers.”
Suddenly, I know exactly what I need to write.
Can Turning Technology Off Be a Turn-on?
As a newly single divorcée, I found the prospect of being thrust back onto the dating scene terrifying. Online dating, specifically, seemed about as appealing as the three-day-old cup of tea you find abandoned in the microwave. Having met my husband at university and experienced the slow build of friendship that ignites into something more, I had no concept of dating someone I didn’t already know. I couldn’t fathom how one could judge someone on a snapshot or a list of their interests. Even if I could get past the concept of “swiping,” a few hours in a bar with someone felt too pressured, too much like a job interview. So when I heard about the concept behind Reconnect Retreats, I was curious. How might it feel to get to know someone cut off from day-to-day demands and distractions? And could I survive a whole weekend without access to my phone or Wi-Fi?
While on paper I might be “single” again, my true status is complicated. The fallout from divorce is like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. There’s the initial shock wave, the devastation and upheaval. Beyond the initial blast radius, there’s a wasteland: your shared dreams, the job of disentangling your finances, your living situation. Once you’ve gotten through that, there’s another fallout zone full of more nuanced challenges: loss of confidence, confusion, jealousy, anger, being left with a heart that—while it might no longer be broken—has gone into hibernation for its own protection. To put it simply, I wasn’t open to a new relationship.
As a self-confessed phone addict, going into this retreat, I was honestly more interested in seeing how I was going to managewithout my smartphone than I was in finding a romantic connection. But as soon as I arrived in the woods, what struck me was how fine I was without it. The reflex was still there, reaching for my phone to take a picture, then remembering I must commit such things to memory instead.
With a comfortable bed and a fully catered menu, this retreat was my kind of camping. I soon fell in love with the quiet, the sound of the woods, listening to the gentle crackle of life in the trees. Time feels different when it’s marked by the movement of the sun rather than a clock. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I was even more surprised by how I came to feel about the person I was with.
Will is someone I have worked with for six months. As colleagues we were prone to rubbing each other the wrong way. But in the woods, lying by a campfire, with all life’s distractions muted, we were finally honest about miscommunications, misconceptions we had about each other. I discovered the boy who delights in building fires, learned about the people in his life, began to understand where his driving ambition comes from. I uncovered a man who takes delight in small things and is wonderfully unjaded by heartache. Talking late into the night around the fire, my numb heart began to melt. The beam of Will’s attention was like the warmth of the sun on your face after a long, dark winter. We connected in a way that excited and terrified me in equal measure, because it made me feel vulnerable again. I don’t know if I fell for Will because we were alone in the woods together or if it would have happened anyway, but it felt like the retreat removed all barriers.
On Sunday, turning my phone on, a hundred e-mails pinged into my hand, messages I couldn’t ignore, and the bubble of the retreat burst. Back in reality, all I saw were the reasons a relationship with Will wouldn’t work. An eight-year age gap, being at different life stages, a job that was going to take him away and a life that would keep me in Bath. There were simply too many obstacles,and the woods were not real life. So, I pushed him away, I wasn’t honest about how I felt.
But now I look at this photo and realize the woods were as much a reality as the world outside. The baggage we carry isn’t a bad thing; it is our substance, our history, the experiences that make us who we are. All the reasons not to be together might be surmountable, because love is rare, and if you’re lucky enough to feel it, you shouldn’t let it pass you by.
