Chapter Forty-Four
Elle
I managed to shower, dress, dry my hair, do my make up and travel halfway to the Upper West Side before I caved in and texted Stephen again.
The whole time he’d been at the back of my mind — or OK, maybe it was more that he’d been inserting himself at the front of my mind with regularity while I did routine tasks — and I’d never been much good at holding back on messaging people in order to play it cool.
The best I could manage was a generic invite out to join us at the bar.
Me: Hey, so, I’m meeting up with Keisha and some other friends to celebrate the conquering of my manuscript. If you get out of work at some point before the next century, come and join us? I’ll send you the address of the bar.
Me: Oh, and no judgment about how cliché our choice of establishment is for a group of writers, please.
There. My conscience should technically be clear now about dropping the news of his father’s address and leaving him to stew on it alone.
Except of course, it wasn’t really guilt that I was trying to assuage.
It was my own worry about how he was processing it.
I hated the thought of him going home by himself and sitting with the mess of emotions it prompted.
That detached tone he’d used when we met his father’s ex had been back in his voice — over the phone the change had been so obvious.
And that was only a taste of what it was going to be like when he met the man who’d abandoned him.
I hated it; watching in real time as he pulled so far back rather than confront the pain that was all tied up with his grief.
My own conflicts about whether it was smart to see him, to let myself give into temptation, seemed so ridiculous in comparison.
What did it matter if he thought it was a sign that I wanted to keep him around despite our arrangement technically being over?
I did want that. I wanted to be there if he needed to talk, or needed a distraction from his apprehension.
And I should have offered to go with him to his father’s.
I would offer, even if he didn’t make it to the drinks.
I’d said I wanted to be friends and whether or not either of us would make a move to change that to something more was irrelevant.
I didn’t want him to go through any of this alone, as I feared he might try to.
The bar was deceptively big, with a small front that stretched for what seemed like miles back in one long, narrow room, kitted out in variations of dark wood and gothic wallpaper — if that was a thing — and velvet seats all the way back.
I could never tell if it was leaning into the Irish part of its theme or the literary side, but either way, it had excellent air-conditioning, a gorgeous little garden terrace out the back and the best atmosphere.
I spotted Caitlin and her husband Donall immediately with the other members of the folk band he played the mandolin and bouzouki for.
Caitlin and I didn’t say hello so much as squeal at each other and throw ourselves in a hug that could have doubled up as a dance.
When I surfaced, I leaned down to give Donall a kiss on the cheek and he wheeled his chair back so I could do the same with the other members of the band who I’d met numerous times.
‘How long have you been back in New York?’ I asked, as Caitlin and I commandeered the large table on the opposite side of the room, directly parallel to the band, who were right next to the bar.
We wanted to see them play but still hear each other talk given that we’d been deprived of Caitlin for months while she’d been travelling with Donall on the band’s tour.
This was not an “official” gig for them though, it was just one of the places that gave them their first chance, so they liked to come back and do that off the cuff kind of performance that suited the vibe of spontaneous fun an evening here was full of.
‘Two days. They’ve got a couple of dates here and then we’re off again,’ Caitlin told me, grabbing the menu. Her myriad of bracelets and rings rattled as she pointed out new literary cocktails they’d added since we last came.
Keisha and Boyd joined us shortly after and two hours disappeared at an exponential rate as we picked drinks for each other and caught up on gossip.
I could have ended up feeling a bit third-wheel-ish, out with two married couples, but if anyone did, it was probably Boyd.
With Donall over with the band, Boyd was outnumbered by the three of us writers catching up on life and publishing news and, as the alcohol started to lubricate us, gossip.
But he was naturally an extremely quiet person so we’d learned a long time ago not to worry.
If he hadn’t enjoyed just sitting back and listening to us, he’d never have bothered to arrange a babysitter and join Keisha when she suggested it.
I suspected he just loved seeing her in her element, which was of course, adorable and everything she deserved.
We listened to the band, singing along to the songs we knew, and were applauding the end of the set when Stephen arrived.
It was so dark in the bar and busy enough we should probably have been worried about the fire regulations, so I don’t know how I spotted him at all.
He’d not texted me back so I hadn’t even known he was going to try to make it.
I only knew that Keisha and Boyd were having an affectionate argument about the etiquette of watching Netflix series without the other one — she was in the wrong — and some instinct made me look over towards the door, which I’d been heroically ignoring all night.
The rush of giddiness that went through my body as I recognised him, simultaneously made me feel more sober and more drunk somehow.
I couldn’t even see his face properly. He was just a dark head and broad shoulders cutting through the groups of people standing by the high tables between us and the entrance.
‘What is it, Elle? Did Pedro Pascal just walk in or something?’ Caitlin asked.
I pressed my lips together as I glanced back at her, feeling the heat rising to my cheeks. ‘No. My friend Stephen, I think.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Your “friend”?’
‘That is the technical status of the relationship, yes. Please don’t ask me to explain it any further because I don’t think I have the mental capacity or the time before he arrives.’
Keisha outright laughed at that. ‘So, you invited him in the end?’
I nodded and looked back, nerves tingling in a ridiculously heightened state.
Yes, it was definitely him. He’d made it through the pack, and was wearing a simple light blue shirt and dark trousers.
His hair looked marginally more dishevelled than usual, but if you didn’t know him, you probably wouldn’t notice.
I raised my hand and waved, but he didn’t seem to need it as he was already heading our way.
I swallowed. ‘OK, help. How do I greet him? Quick, he’s almost here.’
Caitlin blinked at me like I’d just asked her to take a mid-term paper on a class she’d never even attended.
Which was fair. I wasn’t even sure where I was coming from.
It just occurred to me that Stephen and I had not progressed to a point of greeting each other like I did with all my other friends and yet just sitting here like a queen with an attendant on his way, felt unbearable.
Keisha reached across the table and patted my hand, getting me to look her in the eye. ‘However you feel is right,’ she said, like she could read my mind.
It was all the permission my stupid brain seemed to need. I sprang up when he was about a metre away and wrapped him in a fierce hug as though I hadn’t only seen him yesterday.
There was a beat when his arms came around me, slow and unsure, but then he tightened them and I felt his chest rise with a deep breath that he exhaled along with my name, like I’d forced the word out of him with my friendly assault, stirring my hair and tickling over the side of my face.
Had he needed this as much as I did?
Going from no-Stephen to my senses flooded with the heat and scent and shape of him, was surreal and heavenly.
The only thing that made me loosen my hold was the fact I wanted to examine his face.
My worry for him eased as I took in his smile; wide and genuine.
I don’t think we’d ever been this close, this openly affectionate with no attempt from either of us to hide how much we liked it.
Then he put his hand on the back of my neck and gave it a light squeeze and every feminist sensibility fled my body.
‘How are your neck and shoulders doing?’
‘F-fine.’ My voice cracked and I cleared my throat. ‘You already asked me that earlier. Is that why you’re here; the doctor needed to check on the patient in person?’
‘I wouldn’t want them to take away my fake medical degree. And my boss finally decided she could bear to part with me.’
‘Can’t blame her for the reluctance. You do improve the aesthetics of a place.
’ In my defence, I was being overwhelmed by the evidence that he was flawless in any lighting.
Glaring sun, neon fairground, bursts of firework, and now these seductive shadows.
His eyes were so dark, I couldn’t make out the pupils of them anymore and it was utterly mesmerising.
Oh well. It wasn’t like I’d made it a secret that I found him pretty to look at — I just tended to say it with resentment rather than appreciation.
‘And yet it never comes up at my performance reviews,’ he quipped and moved back to coast a look over my face, his smile turning speculative. ‘I do believe you’re a little bit drunk.’
‘Moi?’ I pointed to my chest and then held up my hand and pinched my index finger and thumb together. ‘Just a teensy bit. But I’m celebrating.’
He held up his hands. ‘I am not judging you in the slightest. Just feel like I should catch up. On the subject of judgement though, how exactly is an Irish pub a cliché for writers?’
‘There are literary themed cocktails,’ I imparted with a theatrical whisper that, of course, forced me to have to lean closer to him again.
He nodded, biting his bottom lip briefly as his eyes carried on their warm assessment. ‘Oh. And how does that even work? Drinks that are mentioned in the books, writers favourite tipples, or…?’
‘It’s just vibes, mainly,’ Keisha interrupted loudly from behind me.
Oh yeah, there were people — my friends — watching us.
‘Just thought I would butt in to remind Elle she needs to share you with the group. I know we’ve met once before but weren’t properly introduced.
’ She stood and put an arm around my waist. I wondered whether I looked like I was going to fall down.
My knees were worryingly weak. ‘I’m Keisha and I know you’re Stephen.
You stepped in when that idiot wasn’t taking no for an answer back at the bar on Fifth Avenue. ’
‘Lovely to officially meet you, especially under better circumstances. You might be glad to know that idiot has been off work with a stomach virus.’
‘Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.’ She laughed and turned towards the table, moving me so Stephen had an unobstructed view. ‘That’s my husband Boyd, and the lovely Caitlin.’
Stephen greeted them all and offered to buy the next round. I restrained myself from springing up to help him and Boyd went with him instead. When I sat down with Keisha and Caitlin, they looked at each other and then at me.
‘You don’t need to say it. I know. That was not cool.’
Caitlin rested her chin on her hand, her bobbed hair swinging forward to frame her face. ‘I wonder about cool people — do you think they are happy? Must take up a lot of energy repressing all the messiness of being human.’
‘Speak for yourself. Some of us are just born like it,’ Keisha announced.
I scoffed. ‘I really don’t think your obsession with Poirot supports that claim.’
‘You got me into it!’
‘I know. I never said I was cool.’
We collapsed into laughter. God, I really was a bit drunk. But I had finished my book, and I was proud of it, and I was here with my friends, and Stephen, and with any luck the night was holding more delights in its pockets, yet to be discovered.