Chapter 16
DOMINIC
Flavia has suddenly frozen, while looking intently at a giant Lego model.
Something’s happened. I’m not really sure what, though.
It’s like the air around us has suddenly become thick with tension.
‘Do you like doing Lego?’ I ask, which has to be the most inane question ever for a stressed-looking thirty-four-year-old woman.
She looks up at me blankly.
‘Lego?’ she repeats.
‘Yeah, no, don’t worry about it. Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh.’ I’m confused.
Flavia reverts to staring at the model. I really want to give her a big hug, help her feel better about whatever’s worrying her.
Except… the tension that’s suddenly surrounding us…
I feel as though it might be something to do with me, something about the way Flavia feels about me; and I suddenly feel very inhibited about hugging her, holding her hand again, anything.
From my side, even though I went into all of this knowing that this was no-strings, a just-for-now thing, these past few days have been huge. Maybe…
Maybe we need to have a conversation.
Except… what would I actually say? What would she say?
Flavia suddenly breaks the silence. ‘I think we should maybe talk,’ she says.
Okay, yes. Clearly this sudden tension is about me. Us.
‘Agreed,’ I say.
But I don’t think I’m ready to talk. I need to work things out in my head.
‘Could we…? Just… Could I have a moment alone?’ I say.
Oh fuck. I’m immediately sure that, going by her expression – part disappointed, part hurt – my phrasing wasn’t great.
My first instinct was to suggest taking a break for a moment, but my mind madly went down a rabbit hole of thinking about Ross from Friends saying We were on a break, and that is not the vibe I was aiming for. But nor was moment alone. Bugger.
Why why didn’t I just say yes absolutely but I just need to go to the loo first?
‘What I meant,’ I try to clarify tactfully, ‘was that I need to use the bathroom. It came out like a weird euphemism.’
‘Right.’ She is – obviously – not buying it. ‘Okay, then. No problem. See you later.’ And she begins to walks off.
‘Flavia,’ I call.
She turns round, eyebrows raised. Her eyes look very bright, like they’re slightly glistening.
‘Should we meet…’ I start to ask.
‘Text me when you’re ready.’ And then she walks into and out the other side of the nearest store, a bookshop, her head facing directly in front of her the whole way.
Maybe she’s fascinated by the airport-shopping view ahead of her; I think it’s more likely that she’s trying to hide an expression of hurt or sudden tears.
Okay. I take a deep breath. I’m panicking. I need to focus, and think.
I find a space on a bench, between a large man eating a very leafy salad, and a very slim woman eating the most enormous triple burger and chips. If I commented on that to Flavia, she’d tell me never to judge a book by its cover, and she’d be right.
I think she’s right about everything. I mean, not always right right, but perfect.
I love her. I think I always have. I think you can love someone you hardly know. The love is like a sense, an innate knowledge. And as you get to know the person, that sense proves right. It’s like an early connection, which just builds and builds.
I can’t believe that at the beginning of this trip she was annoying me. I love the way she is. I love everything about her. I love her full stop.
And because I love her I really don’t want to hurt her.
Vinny is right, of course. I do wreck relationships. And I do not ever, ever want to upset or hurt Flavia. She’s a kind, funny, lovely, wonderful, caring person, who deserves better than me. And she’s had a very difficult year. And therefore, for her sake, I should walk away.
I do, though, want to tell her that she wasn’t just a one-night (two-night) stand for me. That she’s so much – infinitely much – more than that. That if I weren’t such a crap partner I’d want nothing more than to be with her forever, but that I’m not right for her.
I stare hard at my shoes. I really don’t know how to start the conversation I think we should have, and that she clearly wants to have.
Hang on. I’m perhaps being very presumptuous. Perhaps she was actually about to try to let me down gently, having realised that I’ve fallen head over heels in love with her. Perhaps this actually was just no-strings sex for her and has remained that way.
I stare harder at my shoes.
I really need to get this clear in my head.
Because I’d really like to be with her. I’d love to be with her. I can’t imagine anything better. If she feels the same way.
Except… I’m being selfish. This shouldn’t be about me, it should be about her. I am not the right person for her. I’m not the right person for anyone. Especially someone who’s recently been through a huge relationship break-up.
I’m still looking at my shoes, and I’m not drawing a lot of inspiration from them.
Maybe…
My phone rings. Flavia.
Heart in my mouth – what am I going to say? – I swipe to answer.
‘I’m at the gate,’ she tells me. ‘Everyone’s boarding.’
‘Bugger, sorry. Coming.’ I am such an idiot. We can’t really have this conversation easily on a plane but how can we sit next to each other for the whole flight without having it. I should have thought more quickly.
I check the departures board for the gate number and then hurry to meet her. She’s standing in the queue basically tapping her foot.
‘Ironic,’ she says, fairly frostily, ‘that Mr Punctual nearly missed the flight.’
‘Yeah.’ I pull my phone out of my pocket to show my boarding pass, and as I do so a message pings in, from Annira, a woman I dated for a couple of months in the summer:
Happy New Year! I miss you. Dinner soon… and more?? xoxoxox
My first reaction is no. I don’t want to date anyone if I can’t be with Flavia. I’ll text Annira and wish her a happy new year and tell her that unfortunately I don’t think meeting up is a good idea.
My second reaction is to whip the phone over in the hope that Flavia hasn’t seen the message, only to then raise my eyes to see her looking at the phone, her face entirely expressionless, like she’s wearing a mask.
‘That was no-one,’ I say. ‘A friend. I mean, an ex-friend. Very ex. I mean not an ex-ex. An ex-kind-of-girlfriend. It was just a very loose thing. Very, very over now. On excellent terms. But very ex.’ Stop talking. Just stop. I’ve lost my mind.
Flavia’s expression has slipped from expressionless to homicidal.
And, yes. This is exactly what I do. I wreck things, often inadvertently.
‘What I meant…’ I begin to try to explain better.
Flavia silences me with a shake of the head and a finger pointing in the direction of the boarding pass reading machine.
‘Yep,’ I say, and hold my phone out.
We walk down the passage to the aeroplane door side by side but far apart.
We already know that our seats are next to each other and head towards the middle of the plane together.
On our way down the aisle, we pass Judith and Mike sitting next to each other.
‘I changed my flight to be on the same one as Judith.’ Mike places his hand on her knee in a very proprietorial-looking manner, while Judith beams up at us.
‘How very lovely,’ Flavia says.
‘We might have news,’ Judith says coyly.
‘You have to act fast when you get to a certain age,’ Mike says. ‘I’ve asked Judith to marry me.’
‘And I said yes,’ squeals Judith.
‘Oh my goodness. That’s wonderful.’ Flavia bends over and envelops Judith in a big hug.
Mike and I shake hands.
‘You’re both invited to the wedding, of course,’ says Judith. Then she wiggles her eyebrows and looks between us. ‘Could you two have any news?’
‘Nope,’ Flavia says baldly. ‘Very much just friends.’ She sounds as though she’s choking slightly on the word friends. ‘Anyway, huge, huge congratulations again. I’m so pleased for you. We’d better sit down; we’re holding people up. Look forward to seeing you when we get off.’
And then we continue down the plane.
We sit down in our customary positions, Flavia at the window, me next to her, still in silence.
She withdraws physically from me, sitting as far away from me as she can within the constraints of our adjacent seats. I squeeze to the far side of my seat too, not wanting to annoy her any further.
I want to talk to her right now. Explain somehow that she wasn’t just a holiday fling for me (even though she was in practice).
Tell her how very much I care about her and how infinitely attractive I find her.
But that I can’t see her again, and the reason for that is that I want to protect her from my relationship-wrecking. And point out that Vinny agrees.
‘Flavia.’ My voice sounds odd to my own ears, unusually tender.
‘Dominic.’ Flavia just sounds distant.
I lower my voice and begin, ‘You said that we should talk.’
‘And you said you needed a moment alone.’
‘Yes.’ I nod.
Flavia raises her eyebrows.
I plough on. ‘I like you. A lot.’ Then I stop to gather my thoughts because I don’t think either of us needs me to make things any worse with yet more stupid verbal diarrhoea.
‘Good to know,’ she says, when my thought-gathering persists.
‘So I really like you,’ I restart. ‘Very much indeed. But…’ I can’t work out what the words are.
‘Don’t worry,’ Flavia says. ‘Really. You don’t have to do this.
We agreed in advance that what we were doing was just no-strings sex.
You really don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings in any way.
It’s all good. It was just excellent… fun.
Between two adults who wanted nothing more than some holiday sex. That’s all it was. All good.’
‘Yeah,’ I say miserably.
And then I look at her face, the way she’s scrunching her nose very slightly, the way she does when she’s thinking, and at her hands, clasped too tightly around the bottle of water she just bought, and I kind of snap.