‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
I sat down on small wooden chair, dropping shopping bags all over the floor and collapsing onto the table in front of me.
‘Buongiorno.’
A waiter smiled politely at Kekipi as he seated himself with considerably more grace, taking off his grey checked jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair.
‘Buongiorno,’ he replied. ‘Due caffe, per favore. Grazie.’
‘Prego.’ The waiter waltzed wearily back inside the café, leaving me and my enabler to wallow in the spoils of our shopping trip.
‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about; you’ve got what, four bags? Five? It’s nothing.’ Kekipi whipped out his phone, furrowed his brow for a moment and then popped it back in his pocket. ‘And they’re all fabulous investment pieces.’
‘I was completely broke before I got here,’ I replied, pushing one of the bags with the tip of my toe and trying not to convert the many euros I had parted with into pounds. As long as they were euros, it didn’t count, did it?
I took my own phone out and placed it on the table, waiting for the inevitable call from the credit card company to confirm that I had, in fact, been killed by a desperate shopaholic who was now trying to calm her murderous impulse by spending money that I didn’t have in assorted Milanese boutiques. ‘Now I’m completely broke and horribly in debt.’
‘But you’re completely broke, horribly in debt and the owner of some very beautiful shoes,’ he reasoned. ‘Those little black pumps you were insisting on wearing made me so sad. They looked as though they were about to crawl off your feet and throw themselves into a volcano.’
While we were shopping, everything he had suggested had made so much sense. I did need new flats and maybe spending money on a pair of handmade Italian shoes rather than picking up three identical pairs from Primark for a tenner was an investment. And I couldn’t walk around Milan with one pair of jeans, one stained T-shirt and one borrowed too-tight vest, could I? So, the new J Brand jeans were vital. And what with the weather being so unpredictable, I definitely needed the adorable printed Red Valentino cropped trousers for when it was too hot to wear my jeans. If I thought about it, I could rationalize all of it, from the Cosabella lingerie, past the satin-front Vince sweater, down to the Sergio Rossi black patent pumps, but sitting here looking at it all, I had epic shopper’s remorse. Al was paying me well for this job but I was hardly on Pretty Woman money and Kekipi wasn’t about to pony up any cash in return for my sexual favours. In fact, he’d probably chuck me a few quid to keep my clothes on. In this version of the story, I was the one who had made the huge mistake.
‘Any dessert?’ The waiter popped back up with an impressive display of elaborate cakes and a “please buy these, I’m on commission” smile.
‘We’ll take one very fruity thing and one very chocolatey thing,’ Kekipi replied without looking. ‘You need some sugar, you look tired.’
‘I need my head looking at,’ I mumbled, eyes on a particularly lovely and especially expensive stripy, teal Missoni dress. I could always take it back, I thought, reaching down to stroke it gently. Although, it was very nice … Maybe prostitution wasn’t the worst way to make a living if it kept me in pretty things.
‘Right, I held my water while we took care of business,’ Kekipi waved towards the bags, still looking very pleased with himself, ‘but enough is enough. Spill. I want all of it.’
‘All of it?’ I asked, wondering how quickly I could heterosexually gross him out. ‘Really?’
‘Right up until something goes in somewhere I never want to think about,’ he confirmed. ‘But as soon as it comes out, you can pick up the story again.’
I pulled a hair tie out of my handbag and wrapped my hair up and away from my face before I started my story. It was absolutely roasting out and I was thankful that Kekipi had chosen this place for our coffee stop. We were inside what I had to imagine was the world’s most beautiful shopping centre, all high glass-domed ceilings and intricately tiled floors. Where Meadowhall had a Paperchase, this place had a Prada. It was fancy.
‘You can skip over the part where you fell out of a window but leave in the bit where you got arrested, Amy filled me in on all of that,’ he said as our coffee and cakes arrived. ‘I want all the stories about boys but remember to leave out the actual penetration. I know, I’m such a prude.’
Such a prude?
Whatever Kekipi and Amy had got up to the night before had exhausted her to the point of turning down our shopping-slash-gossiping trip in favour of an afternoon on her arse. Without her to interpret, I was able to get through my story relatively quickly. Kekipi, for all his dramatics, really was a great listener. He shook his head, gasped and nodded in all the right places, sneakily encouraging me to reveal far more than I had originally intended. No wonder Al kept him so close over the years: he must know where all the bodies were buried.
‘And that takes us up to this morning, which I suppose takes us up until now.’ I stuck a tiny silver fork into a giant chocolate-covered pastry and tried not to drool as a mountain of cream oozed onto my plate. ‘So what do I do?’
Kekipi speared a glazed strawberry on his fruit tart and chewed thoughtfully.
‘Tell me why you slept with Charlie,’ he said, moving on to a raspberry.
‘Because I love him,’ I replied automatically.
‘But why did it happen when it did?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you rush straight from the airport and into his arms? Really think about it.’
I inhaled a forkful of cream while I thought about my answer. ‘When I was in the police station, I called Charlie because I knew he would come and get me without being all dramatic about it. He makes me feel safe and comfortable and it’s easy. He knows me.’
Kekipi flicked a packet of brown sugar before ripping the top and dumping it into his coffee.
‘Fine,’ he said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Now tell me why you slept with Nick last night.’
Eurgh, I thought.
‘Eurgh,’ I said.
‘First thing that pops into your head,’ Kekipi said. ‘Don’t overthink it.’
‘That’s the problem,’ I replied, shifting from thigh to thigh in my seat. ‘I didn’t think about it at all. If I had, I wouldn’t have bloody done it.’
My fairy gayfather smiled into his coffee cup and sipped. I frowned at the chocolate pastry in front of me and helped myself to his fruit tart.
‘Someone wants to have her cake and eat mine?’ He rapped my knuckles with his pastry fork. ‘I think we’re uncovering a major character flaw in you, young lady.’
Harsh, but fair.
‘Once upon a time, I was involved with two men.’ Kekipi pushed his plate towards me and took a forkful of chocolatey goodness in exchange before starting his story. ‘One was older than me, such a smart man. Educated, considerate, caring … All he wanted was to take care of me, start a family, be together. I don’t think anyone has ever loved me as much as he did.’
‘What about the other one?’ I asked. I couldn’t imagine Kekipi with a sugar daddy.
My interest was officially piqued.
‘He was younger, my age, and just about the most wonderful man I have ever known.’ He loosened his tie and cleared his throat, his elegant fingers lingering on the buttons that fastened his collar. ‘I had never loved someone the way I loved him. We were young and reckless and all the other words older people use to describe two people in love when they know it won’t work out. But I couldn’t bear to be away from him. Every time he was near, it was like I had rolled around in poison oak. He didn’t make me feel alive; he made me feel immortal. I thought we were invincible, him and me.’
It was strange to think of Kekipi as a young man in love. It was hard to think of Kekipi as anything other than Al’s sidekick and my confidant. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and suddenly felt terribly guilty for never stopping to ask questions.
‘If you were so in love with him, where was the competition?’ I asked. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘He was married.’ He tightened his tie again and turned his attention to organizing the sugar bowl by packet colour. ‘To a woman.’
‘Bit of a road bump,’ I said. Kekipi let out a quick, hollow laugh and nodded.
‘Every time we were together, me breaking my heart over him going back to his wife, his family, I told myself it was the last time. I knew the other man was better for me. He loved me, he cared about me …’ He paused his sorting and looked me in the eye. ‘He made me feel safe.’
‘But you didn’t love him, did you?’ I said, seeing exactly where this story was going. ‘He was just a rebound, wasn’t he?’
‘No, I did. I did love him,’ Kekipi countered. ‘In a different way. He was like the ocean: when he left, I knew he would come back, I knew he was forever. The other man, he was a volcano: explosive, unpredictable. That kind of relationship sounds more exciting but it can burn, will consume you, if you let it.’
‘Nice Hawaiian metaphors,’ I smiled and sipped my coffee. ‘What happened?’
‘Everyone said the same, don’t mistake passion for love.’ He looked off down the arcade. It was strange to watch someone tell a story that still caused them such upset after so long, especially someone so generally positive and happy. ‘And after many hours of contemplation, many conversations with our friend, Mr Bennett, I made my choice.’
I slipped my camera out of its case and took a few quick pics while he wasn’t looking. His expression was so beautiful, something I’d never seen on him before and I couldn’t help myself.
‘Who did you choose?’ I asked.
‘I chose the ocean,’ he said, shaking his head back into the present. ‘I wanted to be with someone who would take care of me. I wanted to be with the man who said I love you every night when we fell asleep together.’
I couldn’t wipe the surprise off my face. ‘Then what happened?’
‘What always happens when you aren’t true to your heart,’ Kekipi replied. ‘We were happy for a while until I began to resent him. And then the arguments began, arguments, drinking, cheating. That was the beginning of the end, really.’
‘You never thought about going back to the other man?’ I asked softly.
Kekipi gave a decisive shake of his head. ‘He left the island. Moved his family to California, I think. When I told him it was over, he went crazy, threatened all kinds of things. It was only when I ended it that I really understood that he loved me just as much as I loved him but it was too late.’
‘And he was married all that time?’
‘Yes,’ Kekipi nodded. ‘But you have to understand, this was a different time. Our community was very conservative, it wasn’t easy to be out back then and not that long since it was illegal to be gay in Hawaii. I never blamed him for getting married, and I was never angry with his wife, the poor woman. She knew all about it. It must have been awful for her. But in the end, he wasn’t the one who made the decision that kept us from being together, I was. Now stop taking my photo before I Britney you with someone’s umbrella.’
I pursed my lips, camera in hand, and considered his story.
‘So you if you could do it all over again, you would choose the volcano?’ I said, rolling my aching shoulder and squeezing my sore thighs. ‘Even though it seemed like the dangerous decision?’
‘I wouldn’t want to do it all over again, at any cost,’ he said. ‘But I do know you shouldn’t make decisions based on what makes you feel safe. Make your decisions on what makes you feel alive. Life might be too short for regrets – but it’s far too long to live with a compromise.’
It was a fair point. It felt like a lifetime since I’d first seen Charlie sauntering across the university campus with a sticker-covered guitar strapped to his back, but when I thought about how quickly a whole decade had gone by, it made me catch my breath.
‘Just out of interest,’ I said, scooping up the last bits of pastry with my fork. ‘What did Al say? When you broke up with your boyfriend?’
‘He didn’t say anything,’ Kekipi replied. ‘But I wished I had listened to his advice in the first place.’
‘He told you to choose the married man?’ I asked, not sure whether to be surprised or not. Al had an unnerving tendency to be right about things.
Kekipi nodded and tapped the table twice.
‘Now, have you finished? There’s a lovely mosaic of a bull over there and if we stand on his testicles and do a shimmy and a spin, it’s meant to be good luck.’
‘We have to shimmy?’ I asked.
‘I added the shimmy,’ he said, standing and brushing off his immaculate suit. ‘No one has any flair these days.’
‘This is really beautiful,’ Amy said, pulling a white silk sleeveless blouse covered in delicate polka dots out of a stiff cardboard carrier bag. ‘Kekipi has the best taste ever.’
‘How do you know I didn’t choose it?’ I asked, hanging up my new clothes and trying very hard not to look at the price tags.
Amy raised a dismissive eyebrow and handed me the shirt. ‘Do you think he would take me shopping? Do you think he would pay?’
‘Do you?’ I stroked a baby blue T-shirt that was softer than the basket full of kittens I would inevitably grow old with and yawned. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah.’ She draped herself over the arm of the big squishy chair closest to my wardrobe. ‘Charlie called me while you were out.’
‘He did?’ My heart stopped for a moment. He hadn’t called me. Or texted. Or emailed. Or faxed. Or carrier pigeoned. ‘To say what?’
‘Just wanted to know if we’d got here all right,’ Amy said, stretching and arching her back like one of my future cats, her minuscule bum rising off the seat as she did so. ‘He said he hadn’t heard from you.’
It was fair, he hadn’t. I wasn’t quite sure what to say and I couldn’t imagine he was desperate for me to FaceTime him to give him the double guns again.
‘What did you tell him?’ I asked, terribly interested in the hanging loops on a pair of white denim Rag & Bone shorts, covered in tiny motorcycles – an incredibly practical purchase on my part.
‘I said we were so fine that you’d shagged Nick all night long and now you were too knackered to bother texting him so he should probably go and throw himself off Tower Bridge,’ she said, kicking me in the arse. ‘What do you think I said?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, closing the wardrobe and rubbing my bum cheek. ‘I don’t want you to be in the middle of all of this. You didn’t actually say that though, did you?’
‘I told him Al had been working you like a slave and that I’d knocked you out with Night Nurse last night because you weren’t feeling very well,’ she replied. ‘He bought it, obviously. But yeah, you owe me.’
The number of times we had exchanged those words.
‘Anything from Mr Miller?’ she asked.
I folded in on myself, collapsing onto the floor like a grumpy giraffe and lay flat on my back. Things always looked better when there wasn’t any further to fall.
‘I still can’t get over how offensively sexy he is,’ Amy sighed.
‘Don’t call him sexy,’ I said with a wince. ‘No one says sexy any more. It sounds so nineties.’
‘But he is sexy,’ she argued, twisting upside down so that her head dangled down in front of me. ‘He’s not just handsome; he’s got that “grr” thing. Like when Daniel Craig came out of the ocean in James Bond, only fully dressed. Imagine him in swimming trunks. Oh God, imagine him naked.’
I held my breath and waited.
‘Oh my God, of course, you’ve seen him naked!’ Amy shouted, holding her hands over her face. ‘It’s too much for my tiny mind. You have literally blown it to pieces.’
‘But you have seen what a twat he is,’ I said, stretching my arm out for my handbag. I couldn’t quite reach it, meaning the universe didn’t want me to text Charlie just yet. I’d text him later, just as soon as I could reach my bag without having to move – and just as soon as I had worked out what I wanted to say. ‘So you know why it’s a no go.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, rolling down onto the floor at the side of me, ‘but there’s definitely something going on with you two. You’re all jumpy and sketchy around him.’
‘I am not sketchy.’ I didn’t bother to try to refute jumpy. ‘He makes me uncomfortable.’
‘Yeah he does, all night long,’ she replied, snapping her fingers and singing what I knew for a fact was her favourite Lionel Richie song. ‘When we were in the car on the way to that weirdo’s place, he was just, like, staring at you. The whole time. Didn’t look out the window once. He just sat there, really enjoying the back of your head.’
‘That’s because Milan can’t compete with my incomparable beauty,’ I said, sniffing my armpits and wondering if I could get away without a shower before dinner. ‘I am a goddess.’
‘Yeah,’ she nodded, ‘definitely that. Also, he can’t put his dick in Milan.’
‘As eloquent as ever,’ I said. ‘Did anyone say anything to you about dinner tonight?’
‘Nope,’ she said, rolling onto her front and dragging herself up to her feet. ‘I got the car back, I saw the lovely Domenico, confirmed for the millionth time that we had everything we needed and then came up here for a nap. Now you’re back.’
‘I was gone for five hours,’ I pointed out. ‘And that’s all you did?’
‘It was a hell of a nap,’ Amy said, pumping her hands over her head and swinging her hips. ‘Can we go out tonight?’
‘I should call Charlie,’ I said, staring sadly at my handbag. ‘And I need to look at the photos from this morning. And talk to Al about what we’re doing next. And God, look at the Perito’s pitch.’
She lowered her arms slowly, sadly. ‘So that’s a no, is it?’
‘We’ll go out tomorrow night,’ I promised, the words sounding awkwardly familiar. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Fine, I’ll go and find out about dinner, I’m rav.’ She patted her flat stomach and trotted out the door. ‘Go and have a shower, you stink.’
You couldn’t put a price on the value of an honest friend, I told myself, as I rolled to my knees and crawled into the bathroom.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
After a very long, very hot shower, I’d found a note from Kekipi shoved under my door, telling me that dinner would be in the dining room at eight before giving very explicit directions as to how I was to prepare. I did as I was told, worried that if my efforts weren’t up to scratch, he’d withhold food, and since I hadn’t eaten anything other than a few bites of breakfast and the pastries at lunchtime, I really wanted my dinner. And so I dutifully made sure I’d shaved my legs below and above the knee, dried my hair properly, put on make-up, and, as the note explicitly instructed, slipped into the little black dress he had chosen for me in the Valentino boutique. There was no way I could have ever afforded it if he hadn’t flirted his way to a sixty per cent discount, and for that I would be eternally grateful. It was the most perfectly fitting dress I had ever owned. Short but not too short as to show my knickers, it was nipped in at the waist and had a perfect straight-across slash of a neckline that tethered my unmanageable boobs in place without making them look like they’d been bound down for netball practice. It was a miracle.
I assumed I was being preened by proxy so he could show off his fabulous styling to Amy and Al over dinner but instead of finding a table full of friendly faces, there was only one guest at the table and his face wasn’t friendly at all.
‘I take that look to mean you were expecting other people to be here as well.’ Nick poured himself a glass of red wine from one of the four open bottles of booze on the table and kicked his feet up on one of the empty chairs. ‘Excellent.’
His bare feet.
Although I was annoyed at being set up, I couldn’t help but take a little perverse pleasure in the fact that Kekipi had got one over on Nick the genius. Even if it did mean I had to sit through dinner with him, all on my own. Immediately I felt my skin begin to prickle.
‘You don’t have to stay,’ I said, striding over to the table as confidently as my untested new heels would allow. At least I was bloody well wearing shoes. ‘I’m not forcing you.’
Nick watched as I reached for the white wine, moving extra slowly so as not to knock anything over, break anything or somehow manage to set myself on fire. I suspected Amy had had a hand in the table design: there were candles everywhere and she was a little firebug. Swirling the wine in his glass, he didn’t say anything, just sat and watched while I poured out an inelegant quantity of Pinot Grigio and took a massive swig. Placing the glass back on the table and out of easy reach, I crossed my legs and folded my arms, wishing I hadn’t put my hair up. It would have been nice to have something to hide behind while he continued his famous silent treatment.
‘So you’re going to sit there and stare at me all night, are you? Fine.’ I refused to be drawn into his mind games again. ‘I’ll just entertain myself.’
Happily, the table was loaded with enough bread, cheese, meats and salads to cater every one of Kim Kardashian’s weddings and all of it looked divine. At least I had something to distract me while I was busy ignoring him.
Halfway through my attempt to saw a particularly tasty looking loaf in half, Nick gave a loud, violent sigh before knocking back his entire glass of red and slamming down his glass. It wobbled for a moment as he stood up and stared at me across the table while I stared back at him, one paw full of cheese and the other full of bread. Without so much as another grunt, he stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind him.
His glass wobbled again, before falling over and rolling off the table, shattering the instant it struck the courtyard floor.
‘Fucking hell,’ I whispered, breathing out for the first time in what felt like forever. As quickly as it had closed, the door flew open again, Nick striding back over to the table, his forehead all creased and his jaw heavy and tense.
‘What I want to know,’ he said, noisily pulling out his seat amongst the shards of broken glass, grabbing the bottle of red and starting the process all over again. ‘Is where you get off, being angry with me.’
‘What?’ I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.
‘You’re the one who lied about your name, your job, who you are. You’re the one who lied about everything to everyone and now you’re angry with me because I didn’t return your fucking phone call?’ he said, his voice getting louder as he went on. ‘Well, I’m very sorry, Tess or Vanessa or whatever your name is, but I’m not an eccentric old man who did so many drugs in the Sixties that he’s confusing giving someone a chance with letting someone take advantage of him. I don’t let people take advantage of me. And I don’t like liars. And you’re a liar.’
Well, that was me told.
I placed my bread and cheese on my plate, making a silent promise to come back to them and picked up my wine glass with a shaky hand. I wanted to come back with something really snappy, something searing and brutal and personal and vicious. But it was hard to get up on my high horse when at least half of what he had said was true. Or that was to say, factually accurate.
‘You didn’t seem to mind me last night,’ I said, as calmly as possible, after I had drained the last drop of wine in my glass. ‘Or do you have an evil twin I should know about?’
Nick ran a hand over his face then reached around to rub the back of his neck. I watched his white T-shirt strain against his bicep and felt nothing other than the desire to pull the T-shirt off his body and strangle him with it. Enough was enough. The prickle of anger was enough to remind me why I was mad at him.
‘And more to the point, how could I explain if you wouldn’t let me?’ I asked, folding my arms over my perfectly positioned bosom. This dress was incredible. ‘I tried to talk to you. I tried in Hawaii and I tried to call you. I emailed you, I sent you texts.’
Still, he said nothing, his grey-blue eyes empty.
‘You told me to call you and then you didn’t call back. And then last night …’ I spoke slowly, not sure what my voice was going to do. Balanced and even might have been the goal but I was only ever seconds away from incredibly shrill or desperate sobbing whenever I spoke to him and neither of those had ever done a woman any good in an argument. ‘And then last night happened. And I woke up and you weren’t there. What do you want me to say? To do? You’re going to have to tell me because I really don’t know.’
I heard the last word fade off and was proud of myself for getting it out without losing it. This was progress. Old Tess would have dissolved into an emotional puddle shortly after showing him an incredible PowerPoint presentation that explained, in ten slides or fewer, why he was the most offensive dickhead on the market for English women aged twenty-eight and over.
Without anything else to add, I turned my attention back to the cheese and hoped there would never come a day when dairy turned on me too.
‘I emailed you because I needed an explanation,’ Nick said, pushing pieces of crystal around on the floor with his toe. ‘But then when I thought about it, I couldn’t see what use there would be in getting one.’
Wonderful, reliable, noncomplex cheese. I chewed while I worked out what to say, tearing my chunk of bread into tiny little pieces.
‘What now?’ I asked, chasing the cheese with a big gulp of wine – the internationally recognized dietary choice of scorned women. ‘Are you going to keep on punishing me? Keep saying really horrible things to me in public? Because that’s been brilliant so far.’
‘I don’t know you,’ he replied without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I don’t know anything about you. As far as I knew, you were a photographer called Vanessa Kittler who had shagged at least half of London but for some reason, you decided to show another side to me, and then I find out that you’re not Vanessa, that you’ve lied to me the entire time, but I still see that other side to you and that’s got me really confused.’
‘That’s what this is about?’ I felt a little bit sick and it had nothing to do with the cheese or the wine. ‘You thought I was some massive slag and that you were the only super stud who could get through to me? And now what, you’re angry that I’m not actually that slag?’
‘No.’ Nick leaned forwards, resting his arms on the table, shuffling a salami out of the way. His being surrounded by cured meat did nothing to dispel the tension or the queasy feeling in my stomach. ‘I just don’t like being lied to.’
‘That’s funny,’ I replied. ‘Me neither.’
Turning away and shaking his head at something I hadn’t said, Nick sipped his wine and fiddled with the edge of the white tablecloth. Still stunned into pukiness, I waited for him to say something, utterly out of my own words for the moment.
‘I don’t think I need to explain that I had feelings for you,’ he said, eventually settling back into his chair to look at me. ‘And I don’t think it would be difficult for anyone to understand why I might have reacted harshly when I found out you were lying about, well, everything.’
I sucked in my cheeks and forced myself to nod, even though I felt I would definitely like his feelings explained.
‘But we’re here now and we’ve got to work together, sort of.’ He scratched his nose and took a cleansing breath. ‘Maybe we should agree to start over. I can be professional if you can.’
‘Last night was professional, was it?’ I asked. More wine. I needed more wine.
‘Last night was a mistake,’ Nick replied, his voice smooth and deep where mine was thick and uneven. ‘Sorry about that.’
I had managed to get through twenty years feeling approximately seven feelings: love for Charlie, complete adoration for Amy, tolerance for my family, a bedwetting fear of Vanessa, blind ambition, constant peckishness and the desperate need to sleep. I wasn’t sure if peckishness actually counted as a feeling but it had played a big part in my life, so it felt wrong to discount it now, but here, sitting at the table across from Nick, I had never felt so confused in all my life. I was furious with him for being so self-righteous and embarrassed that he was right about so many things. But at the same time, it hurt me that I could have hurt him in this way and, as much as I tried to deny it, there was a sad, angry sinking feeling that was threatening to overwhelm my peckishness. He didn’t want me.
‘I don’t want things to be difficult for everyone else,’ Nick said, finishing off his wine and pouring more. ‘So we’ll start over, and like I said, I don’t know you.’
‘This is so stupid,’ I said, refolding my arms and looking up to the stars that were just starting to prick through the night sky. I thought back to all the time we had spent talking, all the things I had told him that I had never told anyone else. ‘You do know me.’
‘Just because I know what you want in bed, doesn’t mean I know anything about you as a person,’ he said. ‘And clearly, that works both ways.’
Ouch. Just ouch.
‘But I’ll give it a go. Let’s see how well I know the real Tess.’ The light was back in his eyes but it wasn’t the playful sparkle I liked so much, it was a dark, angry fire. ‘Are you really a photographer?’
‘Yes.’ I really needed to start believing that myself. ‘But before I got my agent, I worked in advertising.’
‘Makes sense,’ Nick replied, his half-smile blossoming into a full smirk. ‘What with you being such a good liar.’
I felt my toes curl inside my shoes. How much abuse was I supposed to take? ‘And this is starting over and being professional, is it?’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve just never liked people in advertising,’ he said with a shrug. ‘They sell lies for a living. You can’t argue with that, can you?’
‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ I said, clutching my wine glass and waiting for something inside to break. ‘All I did was tell you a different name. Everything else I said was true. Everything that happened, happened. You know everything about me, Nick. Please don’t do this.’
He looked at me from across the table, his eyes running over every inch of me. I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat. My dress covered me up from neck to knee but when he looked at me, I might as well have been sitting there in my pants. Not even my pants; I felt like I was wearing nothing but one of those awful candy thongs you saw in Ann Summers. It was worse than being naked. I grabbed a thick linen napkin from the table and laid it across my lap and one of the tea lights near me flickered as I remembered to breathe. The flame guttered for a second before going out.
Nick stood up, slowly this time, and walked around the table towards me.
‘Tess.’
He crouched down until he was bouncing on his toes at the side of my chair, his hands gripping the armrest so tightly, I could see his knuckles turning white.
‘It feels so wrong, calling you that.’
I pursed my lips and screwed my napkin up in my hands.
‘You’re right, I do know something about you,’ he said, his lips so close to my ear that I felt his words before I heard them. ‘I know I don’t trust you. And I could never be with someone I don’t trust.’
He stood up and walked away, grabbing a bottle of red wine from the table as he went.
I watched two big smoky tears drop into my lap, veins of mascara creeping along the fabric of the napkin.
Probably not the most successful date in history, I thought, wiping away my tears and picking up a huge chunk of cheese. But at least he hadn’t taken all of the wine with him.