Chapter 21
FLAVIA
It’s the Friday following the evening that will forever live in my memory as The One With the Shots (long version and more accurate title: The One Where I Got Off My Face and Humiliated Myself In Front of Dozens of Close Friends and Family), and I’m in a wine bar with five girlfriends from uni, including Jenna, and we’re all drinking Prosecco to celebrate our friend Gubby’s engagement.
Last Saturday was so bad that Vinny, my laid-back, fun-loving, avoid-a-serious-conversation-with-a-bargepole-especially-on-his-birthday brother, sat me down for a deep and meaningful over late-night cheese on toast and two pints of water to minimise my hangover.
(It did not work; I spent about three days afterwards with the headache from hell and a churning stomach.)
When I say we’re all drinking Prosecco, what I mean is the others are and I am pretending to.
One sip was enough to remind me of last weekend and make me feel like I was going to vomit again, so I’m now interspersing tiny Prosecco sips with large gulps from the pint of tap water I went and got myself from the bar.
I wonder how long it’s going to be before any form of alcohol stops tasting like rancid Marmite in my mouth. Maybe I’m never going to be able to drink ever again.
‘Flavia, do you need a top-up?’ asks Gubby.
‘Just popping to the loo,’ I say, grabbing my glass as I go, like all desperate-to-get-drunk engagement drinks attendees should do.
When I get to the loos, I pour my Prosecco down the sink and then reapply my lipstick before staring at myself in the mirror.
I make a face at myself. More lipstick is not going to make me feel better.
My hangover was one thing. Worse is the misery I’ve been feeling all week.
Anyone would have felt a little cringy after my outburst (which one of Antonio’s friends got on video while recording his friend dancing, yay), but way, way worse than that is how sad I feel about Dominic. Like am I ever going to get over him?
Yes, I sternly tell my reflection in the mirror. Of course I will. I just need to avoid seeing him. And then I will forget about him very quickly. After all, our South Africa trip only lasted a few days. We’ve really spent very little time together. In reality, we barely know each other.
Okay, that is not actually true. You can get to know someone very well very fast. I mean, Judith and Mike are now happily engaged, after meeting for the first time at Cape Town airport at the beginning of the trip.
And you can spend years failing to get to know someone particularly well even if you’re married to them – Jed – if you never have great conversations. For example.
However. Dominic has no interest in any kind of relationship with me, and that is of course entirely his prerogative, and I need to stop feeling crap about it and get on and be happy. I have a great life. Friends, family, work. All good.
I slap a bit of water on my face, apply yet another layer of lipstick, and turn round to go back out there and have fun with my girlfriends. Who I promise myself I will tell about the whole Dominic thing in the future, once it’s no longer painful. Which will be very soon. Very soon indeed.
My phone buzzes as I leave the loos, and I automatically check it. Since we lost Dad, I always do, because I’d hate to think of Mum having a problem and asking for help and me not seeing the message.
There is actually a message from Mum, with a photo of a handbag she bought herself earlier today.
I’m really pleased that she’s buying herself nice things again.
She hasn’t cared much about her appearance over the past year since we lost Dad and hasn’t really been buying herself anything.
I send her a quick message telling her I love the bag and that I’ll speak either later tonight or tomorrow morning as I’m out at Gubby’s drinks at the moment.
There is also a message from Dominic. My heart soars when I see his name and then plummets when I remember that obviously he is not exactly texting to declare undying love.
I’m not going to open his message right now.
I’ve just resolved to have a good evening.
Reading his message and then feeling sad is the exact opposite of what I should be doing.
I’ll open it later, when I get home. Or maybe not even until tomorrow morning.
Or maybe I’ll never open it. Maybe that would be best.
Due to my amazing willpower, I open it approximately thirty seconds later, just before I arrive back at the table. Dominic says:
Hi Flavia, I hope you’re well. I’d love to meet up very soon if you can spare the time? Dinner? Or a walk? Dominic x
I am very distracted for the next few minutes. Jenna leans so that she’s whispering into my ear and asks if I’m alright.
I tell her that I’m extremely alright, don’t worry about me, honestly, and step away from the table for a moment to type:
Why?
As soon as I’ve sent it, I regret sounding so brusque and rude. Maybe I should be contacting him, to apologise for my ridiculous drunken rant.
I’m thinking about sending a nicer-sounding follow-up, when he replies:
I have something huge to say to you
Errrrr what?
My mind is boggling so much that I decide the best response is a quip:
You aren’t pregnant are you? Ha-ha
Obviously within one nanosecond of sending it I’m regretting it because I don’t want to be reminding him about my mention last weekend of us sleeping together.
He replies with a Ha, and then nothing.
I sit back down and think about saying no to his request, and then after a while I decide that – given how much I’ve stared into my pint of water over the past ten minutes wondering what he means by having something huge to tell me – I’ll regret it if I don’t just meet him.
And if I’m going to meet him, I’d like to get it out of the way so that I can go back to doing my best not to think about him at all.
We settle on Sunday afternoon for a walk (I had that time earmarked for marking GCSE mocks; I’ll do the marking in the evening instead), and then – annoyingly feeling happier just because I’m going to see Dominic again – I get on with my evening with my friends.
When Jenna mentions that I suddenly seem very cheery, I don’t tell her why. And then I wonder why I won’t tell her.
I’ll tell her after I see him on Sunday, I resolve. Tell her that I had a stupid crush on stupid Dominic and stupidly slept with him and then stupidly slept with him again and then stupidly embarrassed myself last weekend but am now over being stupid. I’ll tell her that on Sunday evening.
* * *
Dominic and I meet in Battersea Park, a location I’ve chosen because it’s fairly easily accessible by public transport but isn’t too close to home for either of us.
It’s one of those see-your-breath frosty days, with a piercing blue sky and yellow sun that make outside look a lot more appealing from the warmth of inside than it actually is when you get into the freeze-you-to-the-bone air.
I’m fully wrapped up in a hat, scarf and gloves plus my thickest coat and woolly socks inside my boots, but am still far too cold to stand still.
We don’t hug or kiss each other hello, we just kind of do awkward waves.
Then I start walking, because my feet are fast becoming ice blocks, and Dominic follows.
‘How have you been this week?’ he asks.
I have decided that the best thing is to make a joke of The Night of the Shots, so I (very mildly humorously) say, ‘Hungover.’
‘Ha,’ Dominic says obligingly.
‘How have you been?’ I ask.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he tells me.
A tiny little shoot of something that I think might be hope springs up inside me, and I do my best to squash it. I don’t want to be hoping things about Dominic Rock. For all I know, he could just have been thinking about his laundry.
I say, ‘Oh,’ to encourage him to elaborate, because clearly I’m hoping he was not having laundry thoughts.
‘I don’t really know how to phrase this,’ he says, immediately disappointing me, because if he wanted to say what I want him to want to say he’d know exactly how to phrase it.
It’s three short words. He said them before, but they weren’t exactly unqualified.
I want him to say them, mean them and act on them.
Apparently, that is not going to happen now.
‘Oh,’ I repeat, despondently. I’ve just realised that the reason he wanted to meet is probably just to rehash our aeroplane conversation, in response to my stupid drunken outburst at the weekend.
Maybe I should cut him off now, apologise and say he doesn’t owe me anything, and then we can go our separate ways.
‘So, basically, I’ve been an idiot,’ he says.
Not what I was expecting.
I nod, because it’s true.
‘You might have very different thoughts,’ he continues.
‘No, I agree,’ I say.
‘Agree?’
‘You are an idiot.’
‘Oh. Ha. Yes. Got it. Yep. That’s what you agreed with.’ He seems to be losing his mind.
‘And?’ I prompt. I’d like to end this torture quickly.
‘Yes, right. Yep, so I obviously am not assuming anything. But it’s just that, if you were…’ He stops talking and also stops walking, so I stop too and turn to face him.
‘Okay,’ he begins again. ‘I’m just going to say this. I apologise if it’s unwelcome.’ He fixes me with a very serious stare. I stare back.
We stand and mutually stare for a while and then I begin to stamp my feet a bit to warm them up (and possibly because I’m getting fed up with waiting).
And then, very suddenly, he blurts out, ‘I love you.’ Then he repeats, ‘I love you.’ Apparently on a roll now, he says again, ‘I love you.’
I want to be happy, but I don’t know why he’s said that. Is he trying to be kind after I embarrassed myself last weekend? Is he now going to tell me again that he can’t commit to me? It is not in fact kind to do another ‘I love you but’.
‘I love you,’ he says yet again.
‘Just three short words,’ I observe.
Now it’s Dominic’s turn to reply, ‘Oh? Those three words being I love you?’