Chapter 33 #2
He shrugged, but it seemed more practised than genuine.
“One of those things. He was a bouncer. He was breaking up a fight one night, and the fella pushed him a little too hard. Dad fell and hit his head on the curb. One in a million chance.”
I didn’t know what to say. What does anyone say to that?
“In a way, we were lucky,” he said, surprising me.
“We moved over here because we have so much family,” he smiled, a quirk of his lips as if he was remembering something.
“For weeks, we were surrounded by aunts and cousins. Our feet barely touched the ground, which in hindsight I think was more for my mum, than for us kids. We got up to so much mischief, this great big pack us running around the estate, while mum got to be with family.”
Watching the way he talked about his family was fascinating. So many people who talked about their families seemed to do so with a kind of long-suffering attitude. Patrick had a sense of reverence in the way he spoke. Like he knew exactly how lucky he was.
As someone who didn’t have much family to speak of, it was nice.
“Oh my god, what am I doing?” Patrick said suddenly, putting a hand on his forehead, effectively shaking me out of my observation.
“What, what’s wrong?” I sat up straighter, wondering if I’d missed something.
“Bad enough I tell you about the massive family you might need to meet one day, but bringing up my dead dad on a first date is a new low for me.” He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
I laughed, holding my hand in front of my mouth as I felt my cheeks heating.
“It’s fine!” I said through the little bubbles of laughter.
Patrick groaned again.
“You can’t fancy someone you feel sorry for. Bollocks, um, I’m quite good at footy, long legs, you see. I am fantastic in the kitchen. Never met a kitchen gadget I didn’t like. Except air fryers. Pointless bit of kit, that. Um, what else…”
By this point, I was curled in on myself, holding onto my stomach with one hand and waving him to stop with the other.
“Stop,” I wheezed, “it’s fine!”
“She thinks I’m funny. I think we saved it, boys!” He rubbed his hands together, before shooting me a horrified look. “That’s not a pity laugh, is it?”
In response, I only laughed harder.
The candle on the table sputtered out long before we’d finished talking. We’d eaten and drunk so much that I felt like I might need to be rolled home.
The wait staff moved efficiently around us, stacking chairs on tables, blowing out candles and somewhere, the ambient music was turned off.
“I think they’re politely trying to tell us to leave,” he grinned, leaning across the table, flicking his eyes to the side where a couple of the wait staff were not so subtly leaning against the bar.
“Oops,” I giggled.
“Can I walk you home? Or call you a taxi?”
The restaurant was about half way between my dorm at HSJ and the Frequency offices.
It was a fine evening for late September, and the way home was only about thirty minutes on foot, versus waiting that for a taxi.
“I don’t mind walking,” I said, shrugging, “but what will you do on the other end?”
He looked at his watch. “We’ll make it before the tubes shut for the night.”
The nearest underground station to my dorm was not one of the twenty-four hour lines, and I looked sceptically at my watch.
“Come on Kaiya, have some faith.” He winked.
“Better leave now then,” I said, gamely, getting up from the table.
We’d already paid, so as soon as we stood, the wait staff swooped in, clearing away our glasses.
Patrick and I shared a look of barely suppressed laughter, and he helped me into my coat, lightly brushing his fingers up my arm as he did in a way that felt unexpectedly intimate.
My breath faltered as warmth bloomed in the wake of his touch, and I had to suppress the urge to look down.
I’d forgotten my body could feel like that.
The night had cooled since we’d been inside the restaurant, a chill breeze swayed through the branches of the trees lining the road, the leaves rustling in the quiet night air.
We set off at a moderate pace, which I was grateful for, as I’d bought new shoes specifically for this date, and they were starting to pinch.
Our conversation seemed to blend seamlessly from the table to the road, light and easy, like we’d known each other for a lifetime.
Since moving to London, I hadn’t formed any real attachments. Hari had been lovely, but my other housemates had been, at best, friendly. In fairness, I hadn’t put much effort into developing those friendships. From the day I’d moved in, it had felt transitory.
Much of my life over the past two years had felt like that. I couldn’t seem to put down roots. I couldn’t find it in me to want to.
I said as much to Patrick.
“Maybe you’ve just not found the right patch of ground.”
I pasted a smile onto my face, because maybe he was right, but it didn’t feel like the kind of thing you should admit to.
He didn’t outright reach for my hand, but I felt him inching closer, the swinging of his arms bringing him incrementally closer, until his fingers brushed mine.
The moment was so similar to another date, another city, five thousand miles away.
I cleared my throat to clear the sudden blockage, bringing my hand up to push my hair behind my ear before shoving my hand in my pocket, hoping desperately he hadn’t seen my moment of panic, and also cursing myself for having one.
True to his word, we made it to my street before the underground closed for the night, but not by much. It meant he couldn’t hang around.
“I wanted to make sure you got home safely,” he said, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t puzzle out.
As I looked up into his handsome face, eyes alight in the glow of the streetlamps, I hated myself for comparing them to another pair of eyes. A pair that was coffee brown and always seemed to light up from within.
I clenched my fists in my pockets so tight I felt my ring pressing uncomfortably into my finger.
“Thank you for tonight,” I said, covering my disquiet with a smile I hoped looked as genuine as I wanted it to be.
“Thank you for saying yes,” he murmured.
His eyes roamed over my face before settling on my lips.
He seemed to hesitate, and for a split second, I wondered if I’d have to make a decision, but then he took a single step back, exhaling heavily.
“I better run, if I want to make that train.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I laughed, a mix of relief, and nerves.
“See you soon?” His eyebrows raised in an expression that was half question, half promise.
“Yes,” I said, even as my hand automatically rose to fiddle with my necklace.
Patrick gave me one last grin, before he spun on his heel and jogged off down the street.
Just as I was about to walk into my building, he turned around.
He held his hands around his mouth, and called out, “I like you, Kaiya Thompson!”
He waved, spun back around and jogged away before I could react.
I watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the street, biting my lip.
October
In the two years that GVibes had been enlisted, there had been sparse social media posts from them. The maknaes being the most prolific, posting whenever they got any kind of sanctioned time off. But not him.
It had gotten to the point where I’d allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security.
It was a game of chicken with my emotional well being and the fact that I hadn’t blocked his main account.
I reasoned that as a bonafide professional journalist, it would be remiss of me not to follow him.
I also followed hundreds of other performers. He wasn’t unique.
On Halloween, he broke his social media silence with a single post. An uncaptioned photo. No one would recognise it, except me, and I had no way of knowing if he knew that, or if he cared.
It wasn’t a good photo, the lighting was too erratic, the exposure poor.
It was a photo of a brightly lit up street, giant skeletons lining the pavement. People in grotesque costumes milled around, none of them in focus.
Except one. A black suit with neon wires in the general shape of a skeleton, side-on to the camera, and utterly unaware a photo was being taken, because she was too engrossed in staring up at a flame-eater on stilts.
My breath caught in my chest, trapped somewhere between my hammering heart and the lump in my throat.
I’d had no idea he’d taken the photo.
The post was gone by morning.