Dion and the Belmonts
A TEENAGER IN LOVE
‘Why must I be…’
‘David. Sod. Off.’
‘Do you think Donna and Val will want garlic bread? I didn’t buy any.’
‘Then does it matter?’
‘Hm.’ There came another clang of a pan. ‘Fair point.’
Donna and Val were more my friends than David’s to begin with, but they’d come to adore him over the years.
They were also one of the couples who were privy to our fake marriage – and outraged, still, that I hadn’t invited them to Vegas.
They’d been nothing but supportive of the whole thing, though. ‘Practical’, they’d called it.
Which is the romance everyone is searching for…
‘So what have you typed?’ David stood behind me and kneaded at the firm dough of my shoulders.
Once, when I was a child, my grandmother had tried to teach me how to crochet.
The result had been a mess of yarn tangled around my fingers with the needle knotted somewhere between it all.
My grandmother had given up with the unspinning in the end and she’d resorted to cutting the needle free.
That is precisely how my shoulders felt: David’s hands, working to untangle wool and free something.
I sighed. ‘“Dildo aside, it was really lovely meeting you. Shall we do dinner next time?”’
‘You’ve actually written “dildo aside”?’
‘I was trying to be funny.’
‘Have you put Laugh Out Loud?’
‘Do people still use that?’ I craned around in time to catch a shrug. ‘That’s not helpful.’
‘Okay. If you really want help, I think you should stop trying to be funny.’
‘Meaning, remove the dildo?’
There was a short pause before David answered with a ‘Yes’ that was strangled by a laugh.
‘It was lovely meeting you. Let’s try dinner next time,’ he said, with a straighter face.
‘Don’t make it a question, Patti, you have to be assertive.
’ He kneaded harder then, like a trainer might to a boxer in the corner of the ring, and I felt him leaning over me to watch as I redrafted the message. My thumb lingered over the send button.
‘And I just send it?’
‘That’s how texting works, darling Patti, yes.’
I forced out a long stream of air and–
‘David!’
‘Oh, love, I am sorry. Did I nudge your hand?’
That’s it. The message was sent.
‘You’re a shit.’ I stood to face him. ‘You did that on purpose.’
David rested a hand on his chest and feigned outrage.
‘Patti, that you would even suggest such a thing…’ His voice wavered as though trying to draw out tears.
But David hadn’t cried since 1995, and this wasn’t going to be the thing that broke his streak.
‘I’m here, offering you support, and you would accuse me of–’ The front doorbell cut through his performance.
‘Get that will you? That’ll be Donna and Val.
’ He leaned forward and kissed my cheek, and then turned at speed to check on whatever he was making.
‘Tit,’ I muttered to Fred, who dutifully followed me into the hallway and grumbled like he agreed. I wiggled my jaw, limbering up for a wide smile, and then yanked open the door. ‘Ladies! Come in, come in.’
‘Patti, love.’ Donna came scooting in first and handed over an outlandish bunch of daffodils. ‘Something smells fab.’
‘Sweetheart, how are we?’ Val pulled me to her by my shoulders, kissed one cheek then the other. But she held me at arm’s length rather than unleashing me, and fixed me with a narrowed expression as though she were searching for something. ‘Did you and David argue?’
I sighed. Val had been a marriage counsellor her entire working life, and she’d never quite gotten away from the… nose of it.
‘Oh, there’s someone else,’ she added. ‘No, wait.’ Another narrowed stare, another searching look. ‘Oh my God.’ She raised her voice. ‘Don, Patti has met someone!’
‘What?’ Donna’s voice bounced back from the kitchen.
‘It’s true, she has,’ David added.
All I could muster was a groan and a half laugh. I shrugged free of Val’s grip long enough to close the door at least, then gestured for her to walk ahead of me down the hall. ‘After you,’ I managed with a tired smile. ‘Apparently I’ve got some explaining to do…’
‘I should think you bloody have,’ she answered, her tone more playful than mine.
‘It’s a great yarn as well,’ David chimed as we entered the room. ‘It even involves a dildo.’
Donna promptly spat a mouthful of wine across the kitchen. ‘A dildo?’
‘Like, an actual dildo?’ Val clarified.
‘No,’ David answered, stirring a pot both literally and metaphorically, ‘an antique one.’
I rubbed at my forehead and mustered another groan, which is when I caught sight of Lucy lapping softly at the white wine on the kitchen tiles. ‘David, I’ll get drinks sorted. Will you clean that up before the cat gets pissed?’
And if that isn’t a sentence that sets the tone of an evening, I don’t know what does…
* * *
To his credit, that husband of mine made a fantastic charred chicken and vegetable medley – that would have been better with a side of garlic bread, though I wasn’t yet drunk enough to point it out.
He’d even managed to make home-made honeycomb ice cream for dessert, too, though we were yet to sample that delight.
I had to assume he’d done it while I was drafting and redrafting my epic romance – that Sheila hadn’t replied to, but that was fine.
Though she might have replied by now… I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt for something to keep my hands busy.
David had confiscated my phone ten minutes into dinner owing to me being rude enough to keep checking it.
Now, we’d migrated to the living room with more wine and my phone was still inside the bread bin.
I’d never been quite so desperate to serve a dessert to anyone, just to make a break from one room to the other.
‘…and that’s when the whole thing exploded over my face,’ I heard David say, so pointedly that I was snapped out of my distraction.
‘Wait, what?’
Val laughed and gave Donna, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, a soft nudge. ‘See, I told you she wasn’t listening.’
‘How much were you not listening to?’ Donna asked.
‘I missed the start of the explosion story…’
‘Okay, there was no explosion story, Patti.’ David picked up his drink from his side table.
‘So I suppose that sort of answers things. Do you want to serve our guests dessert now?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow, sucking a gin and tonic through a straw.
He was wearing a pale pink shirt and, I was sure, the lightest dusting of blusher on his cheeks.
But with his wide-legged position on the sofa, like a young man taking up too much of his share on London’s Tube, he was the wildest of contradictions just then.
‘I think I will, if that’s okay for everyone?
’ I was already pushing myself free of my armchair, struggling to hurry on legs that had stiffened from too long of being tucked beneath me.
There was a murmur of agreement from my friends, as though it mattered to me whether they were ready for dessert or not, but I appreciated their going along with the facade.
I rushed from the room, like a yummy-mummy speed-walker with arms bent, propelling me forwards, and I very nearly tripped over Lucy in the process.
She weaved between my feet, slowing me down en route, and meowed so loudly in response to my ‘Lucy, shift!’ that I wondered whether the spilled wine from earlier might have actually hit her system.
She wasn’t usually the sort of cat to howl for attention.
‘Or get even more in the way…’ I muttered to myself as I finally arrived in the kitchen doorway, with the heartiest of breaths, like I’d just overcome an Olympian task rather than darting from one side of the flat to the other. ‘Christ, I really am an old woman sometimes.’
I threw open the bread bin, snatched for my phone and felt my panting breath catch when I saw that Sheila had replied.
Sheila: How about an art exhibition? Gives us something to talk about. Maybe over dinner afterwards? x
I was every bit the cartoon character. Driven by excitement and enthusiasm and panic and– God, things I can’t even name! I actually leapt in the air and clicked my slipper-socked heels together, landing against the kitchen floor with a loud, ‘Hoo-fucking-ray!’
There was a chorus of laughter from the living room.
‘Replied then, has she?’
‘Yes, David, yes she has, and I’m going on a date!’
Of course, like all flurries of excitement at something new, and something longed for, there was the inevitable counterweight of it: the fear that comes with wanting something quite so much that it isn’t until after you get it that a small worry hits and– Good grief, I’m going on a date.
Well, then you wonder how you could have been quite so na?ve as not to panic sooner.