Dominic
The hotel I’m staying at is basic, but fine.
I chuck my bag into the corner of the room, then realise that I’ve got a job interview tomorrow morning so I should probably do the right thing and hang some stuff up.
I take a long shower to get the plane off me, then I walk slowly over to the restaurant Orla picked.
It’s a sweet, romantic sort of French place with pleasingly rude waiters.
I order a beer and a glass of Pinot Grigio for her, and then I wait.
When she arrives, she’s undeniably gorgeous. Her hair is dark and shiny, her skin is pale with a sort of luminous quality like whipped cream. She’s wonderful.
‘This is a surprise,’ she says as she sits down without saying hello.
‘Do you like surprises?’
‘No.’ She smiles.
We order various specials to share and a bottle of red, and she tells me about her promotion, her new flat and her impending girls’ trip to Zante.
And once she’s told me about all the brilliant, exciting, challenging things that she’s doing with her life, she draws breath, sips her wine and asks, ‘And how about you?’
‘I’m here for a job interview,’ I say.
‘So you’re moving to Dublin?’
I shrug. ‘Only if I get the job.’
‘Do you want to move?’
It’s a great question, but not one that I feel like answering. ‘I think it’d be a bit of a sticky commute.’
We finish our food, and then we order a chocolate mousse to share, and then coffee, and by the time we’ve finished those the waiter is practically putting the chairs on the tables.
I can’t bear the idea of going back to my hotel room, alone, and spending the night trying to guess what questions they’re going to ask me at the interview and wondering what Stella is doing right now.
Her Instagram stories suggested that she’d gone to the countryside to some swanky hotel with Richard.
I muted her account after I saw a smug video of a boating lake.
‘What now?’ Orla asks, as she finishes her coffee.
I don’t want to be alone. I can’t be alone. And I doubt she ordered a double espresso at 11 p.m. because she thinks she’s about to go home for a nice long sleep.
Her flat is beautiful. It’s up at the top of an old Victorian building and she’s painted it in pale pinks and dusty blues. She’s collected all these things, clearly from her travels all over the world. It’s like walking into a scrapbook of who she is.
‘This is beautiful,’ I say, earnest in my assessment. ‘Really.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’ve got great taste.’
She pours us another drink and we sit on the sofa, legs touching.
‘So,’ she says. ‘You’ve come a long way to hear me talk about the hen dos I’ve been on and the prospect of making partner.’
I laugh. ‘I’d have gone twice the distance to hear any of it.’
She puts her hand a little higher on my leg.
‘Liar,’ she whispers. Then she leans in to kiss me.
She tastes like the chocolate mousse and the coffee.
I kiss her back. We kiss, and I wait for the rest of my body to get the memo about the kissing.
But it doesn’t happen. She runs her hands along my body, and nothing.
I put my hands under her top and find her nipple, hard under the lace of her bra, some of the nicest nipples I’ve ever had the fortune to look at, and still, nothing.
She straddles me, one thigh either side of my lap, grinding against me in a motion that would, the last time I saw her, have sent me seeing stars, and still absolutely fucking nothing.
‘Are you okay?’ she whispers.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper back. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. . .’
She sighs and gets off my lap. ‘Can I be plain?’
‘Are you ever anything other than plain?’
She nods. ‘Fair cop. But look, you look terrible. You don’t seem yourself. And now you’re suddenly trying to move to a different country. What’s going on?’
I laugh. ‘There’s nothing going on! I just got off a plane. I’m tired.’
‘The flight is less than two hours.’
‘I’ve had quite a lot on. At home.’
She looks concerned. ‘Like what?’
And then it all comes spilling out. Florrie, the pregnancy scare, realising that I want kids, realising that I’ve left it pretty late to realise that I might actually want to have kids.
Stella. Our date, the almost shag, meeting her husband, hanging out with her kid.
The fact that I think about her all the time, that she broke my fucking heart when she called me out the other day, the whole horrible messy, miserable business.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she says, smiling. ‘But I think even you know what the answer is here.’
I shake my head. ‘What if it’s not that I have feelings for her?
What if it’s just that, right now, I think I want kids and a marriage, and she’s the fastest way to get there, and then as soon as I’ve got her, if she’ll even have me because she’s in a relationship with a really rich guy whose name is literally Richard – what if I break that up, and then I get bored and I break her heart, and what if I even fuck up Rose’s life? ’
I look at Orla, at the flush on her chest and her unbuttoned top and how gorgeously pretty she is. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have taken up your evening when I’m so messed up.’
She kneels up and kisses me gently on the cheek. ‘You’re going to be fine.’ She smiles. ‘And I’m going to find someone who’s a bit like you, but much less trouble.’
I pause, because my phone is ringing and basically no one ever calls me. I look at the screen and do a double take. ‘It’s Stella,’ I say. ‘Why would Stella be calling me?’
Orla shrugs. ‘It sounds like you should pick up the phone.’
I answer. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ Stella says, her voice low. The skin on the back of my neck goes tight. Something is wrong.
‘What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it Rose?’
‘I’m at a hotel with Richard and I told him that you came over last week, after he’d asked me to stop seeing you, and he’s angry. Really angry.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in the bathroom, I just told him I needed a breather. Listen, if I go in there and I call you, can you just tell him that nothing happened? That it was purely platonic?’
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Stella! This is not normal – he can’t—’
‘I know,’ she snaps. ‘Please, I just need your help with damage limitation, okay? I lied to him, I shouldn’t have lied to him, I just need to—’
I look at Orla. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mouth.
‘Go into the other room,’ Orla tells me. ‘Talk to her. I’ll make some more coffee.’