Chapter 4
FOUR
ROMAN
‘Out!’ Granny demands, shooing me from her kitchen with wafts of a tea towel.
‘I’m just trying to serve the cake.’
‘You were trying to take the biggest slice. I saw you.’ For someone standing at five feet two, she took no nonsense. Especially where cake is concerned.
‘I’m almost a foot taller than you, I need more cake,’ I laugh, moving through to the sitting room and pulling out the nest of tables, furnishing both of our seats with one.
‘Sit yourself down and behave. You’re in my house, I’ll serve up the tea.’ Granny walked more slowly these days, the teapot less steady in her grip than it used to be.
‘I thought we were having rum?’ I ask, fetching her dainty ceramic teacups from the seventies-style sideboard, setting them on matching saucers, and taking a seat.
‘You’re not getting back on that two-wheeled death machine after drinking. Not in my house.’ Her tea towel slaps my hand as I go to pour the tea. ‘Leave it.’
Sitting back, I sigh. Granny still lives in the home where I grew up.
The most familiar place I know. Home. The charm of it is from an age gone by, chintzy doilies and dark brown furniture, three ascending-sized ducks on the wall.
A collection of gingerbread ornaments covers the slim shelf that loops around the top of the room.
I would say gathering dust, but I doubt there is a speck on them. Even dust feared my grandmother.
‘Where’s the cake from?’ Granny asks when she finally sits beside me, masking the pain in her hip as she does. She couldn’t freeze me out of the issue forever. Every attempted conversation has so far been quashed. ‘It looks good.’
‘Not as good as yours.’ Pleasure suffuses her face at the compliments, but she coyly bats it away with a hand. ‘It’s from the little bakery down on the green. The new one with the American woman. Frankie’s, I think it’s called.’
‘American?’ Granny repeats, looking suspicious.
‘Trust me, it’s good. She makes them all fresh in the shop every day. There’s a cafe too. I’ll take you sometime.’
Unable to resist the lure of the thick, decadent chocolate ganache, she cuts a little with her fork and tries it.
Not a word.
I take a bite, and it’s like angels break into a chorus inside my mouth—God-tier cake. And I’m not even a cake guy. Only for Granny.
Two bites and three sips of tea later, Granny smacks her lips. ‘It’s not bad at all.’
‘It’s bloody lovely,’ I respond, my cake already reduced to a scraping of ganache and a gathering of crumbs.
‘You look so much like your father.’ It’s not the first time the words have slipped from her mouth. I can’t blame her. She had to take me on as a kid, effectively repeating motherhood with a copy-paste of the son who took his own life.
‘I know,’ I murmur, losing myself in the hot, milky tea.
‘I want better for you than he had. Avoiding it doesn’t make it better.’
It sure as hell doesn’t make it worse.
I hadn’t been enough for Dad to want to stay. Not without her. How could I be enough for anyone else?
‘I tried.’ Avoiding her stare, I lose myself in the brown-orange of my tea.
‘Your first love is rarely the love that lasts. It’s the love that teaches you that it takes more than just attraction to make something work. It teaches you your base level for what you need. Learn from what you had with her, but don’t let its loss cripple you.’
Her soft, wrinkled hand covers mine, the warmth anchoring me as it had in so many emotional dips. From the abandonment of my mother, to the death of my father, to the loss of the first woman I’d believed wanted me for me.
It’s the catalyst of my entire career. So many times, I called it a blessing.
Inside, the void lingers. No matter how often I try to stuff it full of friends, meaningless sex and online adoration.
‘My love life can’t be the only thing happening around here. What about you? Why don’t you get back out there?’
I hope the question will deflect from the black mood that settles over me.
‘Who’d have an old bird like me? I’ve loved enough for a lifetime. I’m happy just as I am.’
‘Same.’
‘Mmhmm.’ Granny’s acknowledgement drips with sarcasm.
Standing, I gather the plates, my skin prickling with the need to escape her questioning. ‘I should head off. Told Ben I’d meet him at the gym.’
Granny’s eyes soften. ‘It’s never too late to walk away from a belief. You’re not the same man now in your thirties as you were at twenty-four. We grow. You don’t need anyone’s permission to outgrow your past.’
Wrong.
I am the same guy, just with a few more lines appearing around my eyes.
Bodies writhe, rim lit by a cascade of different coloured lights. The strobe’s flashing makes the room feel like a dream, the thumping music adding to the far-off sensation.
My feet ache from hours of standing near the bar, shout-talking over the music with Ben and Darren.
The plastic beer cup I’ve clung to for far too long grows warm in my hand, not wanting to tip the line from tipsy to drunk. I can’t if I want to lose myself between someone’s thighs to distract myself from the world for a few hours.
What makes the chase even trickier is avoiding my friends seeing me pull. Taking a woman home had to remain a secret from everyone.
Thankfully, the two of them are sloshed.
I pile the two of them, hands loaded up with dripping kebabs, into a cab and send them home before going back into the club.
All around, people grind against one another, lust seeping from their gyrating bodies and filling the cavernous room with thick tension.
Now to find a woman on the same hunt as I, someone looking for a few hours to lose themselves, and happy to slink home afterwards without trying to make it a thing.
Moving through the skirmish, I survey women around me, trying my hardest not to look like a creep. I’m not a creep. Not really. Just avoidant. There were plenty of women just as needy as I, at least.
A pretty woman with dark curls piled on top of her head and ruby red lips catches my eye. She’s near the rear bar, holding a pink neon drink that looks more like something you’d clean a toilet with than consume. Three friends dance around her, laughing and smiling, but she holds my gaze.
It happens.
That bolt of electricity that calls of promise. It threads us together in a moment of hazy desire. It’s not love, not even true attraction, but an understanding.
I clench my fingers into fists, readying myself to go to her. Someone bumps into me hard, my plastic beer cup hitting the floor and showering a whole host of ankles in weak lager.
‘Shit, sorry man,’ A young guy exclaims, spitting saliva at my face.
‘No worries,’ I say, shaking off my trousers.
‘Oh my god. You’re him!’ My stomach sinks at his excited shout. ‘The guy from the videos.’
He hits his buddy on the shoulder. The buddy’s face changes, morphing into recognition.
‘I fucking love you, man. Wish I had the balls to do what you do.’ The urge to flee rises.
It’s one thing to get the digital praise from the safety of my iPad screen, but when confronted with it in person, it always makes me uneasy.
These people who think they know me, who believe everything I say.
Who cheerlead things I no longer even believe.
Stupid things.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I shout back at them, feigning ignorance.
‘You do. I’ve watched all your videos.’
Pulling out his phone, he goes to my social media page as I back away. ‘Nah, man, wrong guy.’
Then the video is in my face —my animated conversation with a fellow influencer, thankfully unable to compete with the music.
Turning away, I flee for the door, seeking an escape.
The cloakroom attendant hands my leather jacket over with a gruff nod when a feminine hand settles over my bicep.
‘Going so soon?’ A lilting voice whispers in my ear, the long scarlet nails dragging slowly over my skin and causing goose pimples to rise in their wake.
Interesting. Maybe the night wouldn’t be a bust after all.
‘I am. You coming?’ Facing her, I take in her dark, glittering eyes full to the brim with promise. I wait to see if recognition kicks in. To see if she either recoils from me or decides to make me a conquest.
It doesn’t come.
‘As long as you’re not going to kidnap me or anything…’
She shivers as I run a hand up to her jaw, pulling her close but refraining from sealing the kiss that lingers between us. Even with the promise of a night of lust-laced passion, the void inside me deepens.
Ignoring it, I swallow.
‘Promise I’ll have you in a cab home by morning.’
The whole ride home, I justify it in my mind.
She wants it. I want it. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Liar.
Hypocrite.
When we stumble into my hall, I see a paper bag on my door handle. Confusion fills me until I peer inside the bag and see some misshapen chocolate chip cookies.
Why does the void feel slightly less empty at the sight of the slightly too brown treats?
‘Come on,’ my evening distraction coos. ‘Take me inside and make me forget for a while.’
I don’t ask what she wants to forget.
And she doesn’t ask me, either.