Chapter 25
The worn lace in Meeko’s left trainer had finally snapped as he jogged level with One More Bean. The reduction in tension across his foot made his heel start to move in the shoe. If he carried on, he’d either get a blister or trip up. He stopped just after the café door, crouched down and attempted to tie the two fraying ends together.
The sound of Fiona’s voice behind him was a surprise and he was on the brink of standing up to greet her, when his brain started processing the snatches of her words that he could hear above the traffic. “I’ve thought about telling my . . . friend, Meeko.” A lorry braked and then accelerated alongside them. “But I don’t trust him . . .” A mother went past pushing a buggy containing a screaming toddler. “He’d probably . . . I don’t want that . . . my revelation . . . relationship.”
Fiona didn’t trust him! Trust him with what? He thought they were best friends. How could he have got their relationship so wrong?
The words of a male voice were lost to the traffic.
He needed to get away. Fiona mustn’t see his humiliation. Meeko’s brain failed to instruct his hands how to join the ends of the laces. With his back still towards the café and his left toes tightly curled in an effort to keep his trainer on, he hurried away. He turned automatically when she called his name but then thought better of it and continued walking.
He’d thought that he and Fiona trusted each other completely. Whenever they touched accidentally there were sparks and tingles. He’d assumed she’d felt those too and had hoped there was a chance their friendship could develop into something more. These hopes had been the main reason he’d ended the relationship with Lynn. He’d been fond of Lynn and they got on well together but his feelings for her would never be as deep as those he had for Fiona. It hadn’t been fair to keep Lynn hanging on.
He’d been waiting patiently for Fiona for two reasons. Firstly, if he made a move before she was ready, it would be a friendship ruined — and Meeko valued his friendship with Fiona more highly than any other relationship in his life.
Secondly, he was giving himself time to become someone that she would be proud to call her ‘life partner’. Fiona moved in middle-class circles with people who had proper careers and pension pots. Her friends didn’t live hand to mouth in rented flats. He would be an embarrassment at social events when people asked, “What do you do for a living?” Ad hoc yoga teacher with a temporary Father Christmas job wasn’t good enough. He needed a salary and a job title and a pension. To that end he had applied for and failed to get all the Fitness Manager jobs that had come up at hotels within a fifteen-mile radius. Apparently, teaching great classes with a loyal clientele was not a qualification that helped when managing staff, timetabling classes, dealing with budgets and organising stuff. Meeko didn’t want a Fitness Manager role, but he would have taken it to help his prospects with Fiona.
But now it seemed that Fiona didn’t see him as unique and special at all. She didn’t trust him. He wasn’t good enough. The more he thought about it, the more devastated he felt. The only way forward was to pack up his hopes and dreams. And he had to do it before he saw her again. That meant avoiding her until he’d got himself in check. He wouldn’t let the pregnant girl down by cancelling his appearance at her baby shower, but, until the party, ‘Fiona avoidance’ was his tactic of choice. He constantly varied his hotel breakfast times, and on the couple of occasions when she arrived slightly ahead of him, he persuaded the staff to do him a takeaway coffee plus a paper bag filled with pastries and a couple of boiled eggs.