Chapter 2
TWO
A YEAR LATER
Tyler holds his glass up towards mine and we clink, laughing as some of the Champagne sloshes over the sides.
‘To us!’ he says, grinning at me over his glasses. ‘And our six-month-iversary!’
‘Is that even a thing?’ I ask, smiling back at him. Tyler has thick dark hair, and although his glasses give him a vaguely nerdy look, he’s a hot nerd. He works out a lot and has a Clark Kent vibe, and even thinking about that makes me wonder what he might look like dressed up in a Superman outfit…
‘It is a thing,’ he replies, looking hurt.
‘Look, I have proof!’ He pulls an envelope from his bag and passes it over to me.
I can tell it’s a card, and I already feel bad because I don’t have one to give to him.
I tear it open and see that yes, sure enough, it is a card.
Bearing the words ‘Happy Six Months Anniversary’.
I guess it’s official then – this is a thing.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, looking up into his blue eyes apologetically. ‘I am a terrible girlfriend.’
He reaches out and strokes my face, and I lean my cheek into his palm. If we weren’t in public I might actually purr. ‘You’re not a terrible girlfriend. And anyway, I’m sure you can make it up to me later.’
He winks, and I know it is meant to be flirtatious, but it somehow comes out comedic instead.
When we first met, I really wasn’t sure about him.
He was good-looking, and seemed decent, but until I got to know him better I thought he was joking about literally everything.
And that’s fine – who doesn’t love a good sense of humour?
But even when he was talking about serious issues, like his mom’s cancer battle or his grandad’s experiences in France in World War II, he always seemed like he was only a wink and a nudge away from laughter.
I know now that it’s just a social tic. He can feel awkward easily, and one of the ways he has dealt with that since childhood is to joke around. The physical remnants of that creep into all his interactions, and I’ve learned to interpret them better with time.
‘Well, I’ll do my best,’ I say, enjoying the look of surprise on his face as I slide my foot up his leg under the table. ‘A six-month anniversary is a thing. Everybody knows that. We have to mark the occasion.’
He leans forward to kiss me, just a gentle touch of the lips, and I tell myself yet again how lucky I am.
The world of online dating is probably a carousel of crap for everyone, but in a city like New York, it’s even worse.
It took a lot of courage to try again, and I’d kissed my share of frogs before I found this particular prince.
In fact I was on the verge of shutting down the apps, and was about to do that, when his message landed.
Not only was he geeky-hot, but he has dogs.
Three yellow Labradors, to be precise. The dogs swung things his way, and I decided to give this one more shot.
I’m still with him a whole half-year later, but I’d be lying if I said I was all in. Even after I vowed last Christmas to be open to love, part of me is still cynical, still scared I guess. Lessons you learn when you are young are hard to unlearn; they seem to take root in your emotional DNA.
My parents split up when I was sixteen, and it was Messy with a capital M. I still don’t know what caused it, but my mum and dad went from being normal and boring to all-out warfare overnight.
There was a terrible period of screaming rows and fights, me lying in my room confused as I listened to plates get thrown downstairs.
My normally calm mum became shrill and angry, crying in that way women do when they’re furious.
My dad gave as good as he got. It was a terrible, traumatic time in our lives, and something in me seemed to get broken in the process.
The warfare lasted for months, and I was caught in the middle, dazed and confused.
My parents ran an inn in Cornwall, the place where I grew up, and maybe they stayed together because of that.
Or because of me. Who knows? Eventually, Mum met and married Ethan, a cardiologist who came to stay at the B&B.
I was dragged kicking and screaming from my home, my father, my friends, and relocated to the States, where I felt like a freak. The perfect storm for a teenage girl.
My ex-husband, a man who I married when I was twenty-four just because he asked, told me I was ‘emotionally unavailable’, and I suspect he was right. I think I probably need a world of therapy, but I’m still just a bit too British at heart to consider it.
Though Tyler, sitting there opposite me in all his glory, might be enough to make me change my mind. Doesn’t he deserve someone more whole than me? More fixed than me? In fact, don’t I?
That’s too big a question for a pleasant night like this, I tell myself.
‘You know,’ I say to him, ‘at first, I was worried that those pictures of you with the pooches were fake. I mean, how could someone who looked like you, and who had such beautiful dogs, be single?’
‘I know,’ he says seriously, nodding. ‘It is hard to believe, isn’t it? I think it’s the glasses. Or my boring job. Or maybe my, uh, personality?’
‘True. You are rotten, really. You’re lucky I gave you a chance.’
‘I am, but I also know you weren’t really interested in me. You just wanted to get your hands on my puppies. Which when I say it like that, sounds pretty suspect!’
I laugh and sip my Champagne. Six months of Tyler and his puppies. Amusingly, he wouldn’t actually introduce me to the dogs until we’d been on quite a few dates. They were like his babies, and he needed to be sure before I was allowed into the inner circle. They were worth waiting for, though.
After that fateful visit to see Santa, I fulfilled my promise – I made real changes to my life.
I left my job and instead joined a temping agency, reducing my working days to four a week.
On the Friday and the weekends, I now bake – and people even pay me to do it.
At the moment, it’s a side hustle, but who knows?
I got the haircut, and the new phone, and I put more effort into making my apartment feel like a home.
As for the love – I’m doing my best. I am giving it a good shot and trying to open up more to Tyler.
I like him a lot, but I haven’t said the L-word yet.
There is an emotional block inside me still, one that means I can’t quite let myself go.
I am a work in progress, I guess, and I have always been honest with him about that.
I have never promised more than I can give.
I know he wants more. I know he is being patient, and I cannot expect him to wait around forever.
But life has taught me never to let my entire sense of wellbeing rest on a man, no matter how good he is.
It’s not fair to the man, apart from anything else.
My ex cheated on me, and although those wounds have faded so much they are barely there, the scar tissue still lies beneath the surface.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Tyler asks. I blink away my thoughts and decide on a white lie. The real answer – Oh, I’m just wondering if I’ll ever be capable of committing to anybody – would be a bit of a downer on our night out.
‘I was just wondering,’ I say, ‘if you’d ever consider dressing up as Superman?’
‘Well, that depends on the circumstances. I mean, I have a meeting tomorrow with the CEO and a tax auditor – so obviously, yes, I’d wear it then. Is that what you meant?’ He does the silly wink again and makes me laugh.
‘Yes. That’s exactly the kind of situation I had in mind… as long as you kept it on later. When you came round to my place.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Anything you say, Lois.’
I am pondering these possibilities when my phone rings.
I glance at the number and see that it is my father, which is deeply unusual.
We rarely speak on the phone, and I immediately feel a prickle of concern, especially when I realise it’s after eleven at night there.
I mouth a silent ‘sorry’ to Superman and answer, walking away to the outside of the bar where it’s a little quieter.
‘Dad?’ I ask. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Hello, dear girl!’ he says, bridging the thousands of miles between us. ‘Is life treating you kindly?’
On the rare occasions that he writes to me, he always starts his conversations with the same line.
Sometimes I am darling girl, sometimes a completely new and made-up pet name, but he always asks if life is treating me kindly.
He is only seventy-five, my dad, which is not old by modern standards – but he is old-fashioned.
It’s actually a point of pride with him, the way he clings to the way things used to be, back in what he would undoubtedly think of as better days.
I frown, confused by the whole thing. ‘Um, yeah, I’m okay, Dad. Why are you calling?’
‘Just to hear the sound of your voice, darling! It’s been too long since we had a proper chat. Is that so bad, for a father to want to speak to his only child?’
Now, that’s an odd question – because we have never really done ‘proper chats’.
We have never really spent hours on the phone catching up and exchanging the dull details of our lives.
That’s simply not the relationship we have ever had.
I know my dad loves me, and I love him, but we are just not close in that way.
When my mum met Ethan and moved me to the States, I begged my dad to let me stay – but he shook his head sadly and told me ‘It wouldn’t be for the best.’ I remember being so angry that nobody was listening to what I wanted and feeling so hurt that he wasn’t fighting for me.
We have never discussed it, because that is simply not the way he functions – I have not seen him in the flesh for over ten years now, and although we are not in any way estranged, we are also not the kinds of people who call ‘for a chat’.