Chapter Nineteen #2
‘No! And I don’t know why you think I have!’
‘I think you take opportunities,’ she said. ‘And you had an opportunity right in front of you there,’ she added slowly, releasing each word methodically into the chill air. ‘You should have taken it.’
‘I told you, next time I want to be sure,’ he said, looking at her closely. ‘I need to.’
‘Right,’ she said, dropping her eyes to her plate again.
‘Still,’ she said, finally looking up. ‘You’ve earned your success, you should be allowed to reap the benefits.
’ How had this happened? she thought. This lunch, this sparring between them, so familiar?
They had been lovers, and they had been friends, and they had been enemies; is this what had grown between the cracks?
‘You’re a star of the literary world, Leo.
A magnet, a firecracker, a force. You were, right from the start. ’
‘I was just lucky.’
‘And supremely talented.’
‘And so are you.’
‘I was a few steps behind you, remember? And I have readers. You have fans.’
‘I think you’re being disingenuous. You have fans, too – ardent ones. Just look at the book panel!’
‘My fans don’t fancy me.’
‘Are you saying my readers think my writing’s rubbish and only follow me for a certain aesthetic, whatever that is?’ He narrowed his beautiful eyes at her.
‘I think your aesthetic is a lovely bonus.’
‘Oh, you do?’
‘For them,’ she qualified. It had sounded like she was almost flirting with him, and she had never intended to flirt with him again. ‘I don’t think about your aesthetic at all. Unless I’m writing a cocky charmer, of course.’
He flung his head back and laughed. ‘A cocky charmer, eh? Well, I’m glad I’ve still got it!’ He grabbed his beer. Took a gulp. He forked up some red cabbage with a frown. Then he looked at her more seriously. ‘But I’ve been single since Tuscany. Don’t you believe me?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ she replied, and she wondered again about the call he’d taken at Harry’s Bar.
She didn’t always believe he was a cocky charmer, of course.
She knew he had much more to him than what he often presented to the world.
But she wouldn’t tell him that. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you think we could ever be friends again?’
His fork halted in the air. His eyes took a long pause on her face.
‘Why not?’ he eventually replied.
Because we’re both guilty. Because we were both so angry.
‘I’m not sure if we can repair what happened,’ she said.
‘I’m not either.’ The fork didn’t move and neither did his gaze. ‘Are you ready to talk about things? To get into it?’
‘No,’ she replied honestly.
‘Then we won’t.’ She nodded, relieved and disappointed.
They had a shared story, but in many of its chapters they had typed ways to hurt each other, pressing on the keys with speed and determination, watching the words appear with haunted eyes.
She was frightened to leaf through their typed guilty pages, or to creep to the wastepaper basket to unfurl the screwed-up sheets of bitter paper they had chucked there in fury.
‘But I guess one day we might be able to be friends again.’
‘You do?’
He nodded. She watched as he thumbed the edge of his tumbler.
She absorbed the husk of rigorous smoke from the kitchen, the grey cool of the air, the sight of huddled heads bent over plates of food.
And she felt a sweet melancholy, a hankering, that only came with Leo Greene.
A swirl of desire, regret and sorrow that this man alone could lay at her heart.
Theirs was a tale that bore reading, time and time again. It was a book she peeked at after lights out, under the covers, with the faint beam of a pen torch illuminating each line, like how she had read as a child, to wonder if she could have written her part differently.
‘Now, then,’ he said. ‘Would you like something chocolatey? They do amazing gelato here.’
‘With an amaretti biscuit?’ she queried, regretting the words almost as soon as they left her mouth.
‘Oh,’ he said, surprised. ‘Our scene.’
‘Yes. Apparently.’ She had not yet downloaded his book. Something within her was frightened to. Maybe she would read it when she got back to London; maybe not.
‘Well, it was a great meal,’ he said carefully, and she knew they were back on dangerous ground.
They had kissed at the end of that meal.
Both at the table and then out on the street, pressed into a damp wall at the edge of the dark water of a canal, everything that existed between them overtaking them, suffocating them, filling a need in them.
That was why she had not yet downloaded his book. ‘Shall we order some?’
She swallowed. She could easily imagine sharing a gelato with Leo, two spoons, but she didn’t think they should.
‘I’m quite stuffed,’ she said.
‘Is that a no?’
‘It’s a no.’
‘OK.’ He shrugged casually, sat back in his chair, smiled at her gently. ‘Olivia, Olivia, Olivia,’ he murmured. ‘What are we doing here?’
‘We’ve come to a book festival in Venice,’ she responded quietly, but she suddenly wanted to make a gesture that was loud, that spoke volumes.
She wanted to lean across the table and kiss him, remind them both what that was like.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. They were better off as non-friends, fellow authors.
They were better off consigning all of their memories to the past, where they belonged.
‘OK,’ he repeated, but he kept on looking at her, curious and with a soft note of affection, until she had to look away.