Chapter Twelve #3
‘I wish I didn’t,’ Tess muttered, covering her face with her hands as the fight went out of her. ‘Or that we still had arranged marriages. I’d be living in wedded bliss with my mum’s dentist’s nephew by now.’
‘People always need their teeth looking after …’
‘Not by him. For a qualified dentist, he had the worst halitosis,’ Tess remembered with a shudder. ‘Look, you don’t need to worry …’
Gabe held out his hands. ‘I’m not worrying.’
‘I’m not going to write a piece about another lousy loan from The Love Library.
’ As she said it, Tess knew that her future was set.
The lonely years stretched out ahead of her as she waited for Claire to retire so she could take up the reins of the Creative Solutions department.
Then in turn, she’d crush the dreams of her direct reports while insisting that not even their elbows were allowed on their desks.
‘I wouldn’t make any rash decisions,’ Gabe advised her softly. ‘Not while you’re still decompressing from a bad date.’
Tess struggled to her feet even though the sofa did its best to keep her captive in its sagging embrace.
‘They’re all bad dates,’ she said bitterly.
‘It doesn’t matter if they’re real live men or men from some dull old novel from the nineteenth century.
They’re all useless and the dates are horrible and the last thing I want to do is relive them all over again for the readers of The Sunday Sentinel just so they can tell me in the comments that I wouldn’t be single if I lost some weight. ’
Finally, Tess was standing on her own two feet and blinking back tears, as the food coma and the cosy companionship had now worn off and she was reminded of what a failure her life was.
What a failure she was.
Gabe got to his feet too, in one lithe easy movement, so he could tower over Tess and block her path to the door.
‘Regret is natural,’ he said, putting his hands on Tess’s shoulders so he could look deep into her eyes. ‘Kierkegaard called it the essence of philosophy.’
Tess stared up into dark soulful eyes even from behind their multifocal lenses. ‘I don’t know who that is.’
‘A Swedish philosopher who believed that in life there are always two possible actions: to do something or not to do something. Whichever one you choose to do, it’s inevitable that you’ll regret your decision …’
His touch was soothing. His words absolutely weren’t. ‘So, basically, I’m fucked whatever I choose to do. Or unfucked in this case.’
‘I thought we were talking about dating, not fucking,’ Gabe said, with that arch of an eyebrow which should have its own viewer-discretion-is-advised warning. As should the way his mouth, his tongue, curled around the F-word.
‘When it comes down to it, the whole reason that we date is because we want to find someone that we’d like to have sex with,’ Tess pointed out.
She really wished that she hadn’t brought up the subject of sex, of fucking, as Gabe’s thumb drifted into the hollow of her collarbone.
The tiniest, most inconsequential gesture, to remind her that it had been too long, seventeen long months, since she’d been touched by a man in a manner that was far more erotic than a handshake or a kiss on the cheek.
Tess hadn’t even realised that the hollow of her collarbone was an erogenous zone, made up of all kinds of delicious nerve endings.
‘Schopenhauer had similar beliefs,’ Gabe said throatily. ‘Although he took it one step further because he believed that romantic love is based on the desire to reproduce and propagate the species.’
The last thing that Tess wanted was a philosophical debate about sex. ‘Well, in that case, what’s the point of dating a man from a book? It’s not like I’m going to have sex with any of them, is it?’
Gabe let go of her shoulders so quickly that Tess was suddenly untethered and staggered slightly.
‘No sex. That would definitely constitute damaging library property,’ he said, his hand to his chest like he was having heart palpitations at the very thought of it.
‘Imagine if a library user got knocked up by your actual Casanova.’ Somehow Tess felt lighter in spirit. Things could always be worse. ‘They’d have to sue him for child support.’
‘Oh God, please stop talking,’ Gabe begged, collapsing back into his chair.
‘Probably another good reason why I don’t write any more articles about The Love Library,’ Tess decided, as she gathered up her bag and jacket. ‘It’s a lovely idea in theory but in reality, it’s unworkable.’
‘I know,’ Gabe said softly. ‘I do know that.’
‘I’m sorry that I’ve wasted your time,’ Tess said, now desperate to get out of there. The evening, her hopes, even this last hour spent with Gabe, all ruined. ‘Good luck with the library. Maybe your lecture tour with your philosopher mates might be the way to go.’
Gabe said something but Tess had already opened the door and wasn’t inclined to stay even a second longer to hear what it was.
But even as she walked through Soho towards Oxford Circus tube, the night air crisp as she took long, slow breaths, she could still catch the traces of the smell of old books and beeswax and the forest after a rainstorm notes in Gabe’s aftershave.