Rowan met me from work and we walked back to mine together. It had always been the scene for our biggest discussions, for the sake of privacy, I guessed. But I wondered whether his friends knew about this suggestion of his. Christ, it occurred to me as we rounded the corner to my street, did they encourage him? He went in two distinct and different directions with the apologies – implying remorse – and the justifications – implying nothing like remorse or regret. By the time I was putting the key in the door, I had no idea whether Rowan was taking back his suggestion or trying to add further support to it. I listened to the next round of speeches, though, while I filled the kettle and set it to boil. Then I leaned back against the work surface and watched him yammer until he came up for breath. Which he eventually did when the kettle clicked off.
‘It would have to be something we were both comfortable with,’ he said. Which seemed to me one of the daftest comments for anyone to have made during a discussion where the other person – me in this scenario – was so blatantly not comfortable with it. I bit back on speaking, still, while I added water to teabags. When Rowan came to stand behind me, though, and he wrapped his arms around my waist, I jumped so much that boiling water leapt over the side of his mug. ‘I’m sorry.’ He pulled back and reached for a towel. ‘I’m so sorry, Edi, are you okay?’
No. No, I don’t think I am. I nodded all the same and quietly cleaned up his mess, before I slid the mug across the counter to him. See, it didn’t matter whether he wanted it now; he’d wanted it then, when he’d suggested it, and that was enough to cause a clump of something sordid and hard-edged in the pit of my stomach. I pulled in a big breath like I was about to launch into a speech but then swigged my tea instead.
‘Edi, have I totally fucked this?’
The question shocked me. But so did my answer. ‘I hope not.’ When I looked up at him, then, I realised he was about to cry, and I couldn’t remember a time before when I’d seen him moved to actual tears. This was the man who, when his own grandmother died, had said what a good innings she’d had anyway! Meanwhile, I’d sobbed along with his cow-bag mother. ‘The thing is,’ I started to explain, without fully knowing yet what explanation it was I was about to fling at him, ‘even if we don’t do this, like, even if I say, actually Rowan, the thought of you fucking around with other women makes me wildly uncomfortable …’ And that was it, it was out there. I’d thrown the words into the air between us and, as though breaking a charm that came from hearing it from other people, hearing it from myself hurt a fraction more.
He opened his mouth to speak and I held a finger up to pause him. ‘Even if I tell you it makes me uncomfortable, I’m always going to know that a little bit of you wanted this. Maybe not even a massive bit of you. But … I don’t know, a chunk of the I-Love-Edi in you must have broken away, at least, to wonder what other women are like.’ He looked deeply ashamed and I wanted to comfort him. I hated that. ‘Now, if I say, sure, let’s do it, I have to deal with you sleeping with other women. And if I say, hell no, are you crazy, I just have to deal with knowing you wanted to sleep with other women. And!’ I felt as though something had been uncorked. ‘The other variable, I say no, and you do it, anyway.’
‘Edi, I wouldn’t do th—’
‘What, again?’ The colour slipped from his face. I opened my mouth, as though I could suck the words back in, but I swiftly realised I didn’t even want to. Instead, I added, ‘You have to go into this with eyes open, Rowan, you know that?’
His shame shifted to worry. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If you’re fucking around, then I’m fucking around too.’ I managed to muster a tone that implied much more confidence than I felt. ‘And if one of us meets someone else, the other is just going to have to accept that it’s happened, and that it’s a risk we took.’
‘Edi, we won’t meet someone else.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
He nodded. ‘One hundred per cent sure.’
Then why are we doing this? ‘Well, I hope you’re right. But the venue deposit is refundable?’
‘I mean …’ There was a long beat of silence. ‘I guess, sure, partly refundable.’
‘Christ.’ I rubbed at my forehead. ‘Why did you even book it?’ Before he tried to explain, I started again, ‘Whatever, it’s part-refundable, so it’ll all work out. I’d say we need some ground rules, though, before we start.’ I pulled a notepad out of the junk drawer in the kitchen and then searched through my handbag to find a pen. ‘Right.’ I sat down at the table and clicked the biro to life. ‘First of all, are we having sex or are things limited to sexual contact …’
*
Rowan tried to act normal in the days after, but it was hard. I couldn’t stop thinking I’d made a massive mistake. ‘He’s the one who’s made the fucking mistake, Edi,’ Betty snapped, when I shared the worry with her – but I was dangerously close to telling Rowan that I took back any permissions I’d given him during our talk. Still, it felt like going back on a spit-shake after the deal was in motion, and I remembered enough of the playground politics to know that was bad form. So, I kept a healthy distance from him – which was a strange thing to do while I was still wearing the engagement ring, which had somehow lost its shine already.
On the Saturday of our first weekend together but not, Rowan asked whether I wanted to have dinner. He called, rather than texting, which made me think he must be nervous of asking. He’d always hated waiting for a response to things he was nervous about; phone calls were much more immediate. Still, I’d lied and told him I had plans with the girls for the afternoon and it would probably spill into the evening.
‘Are you going out?’ he asked, and I couldn’t decide whether he had a right to know. Despite having drawn up a sexually explicit guidebook, the simple feelings of the matter were turning out to be more complicated.
‘No, we’re having a night in. I think I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago?’ I lied, knowing he wouldn’t remember either way, so he’d likely just agree. I hurried him off the call after that, knocked my phone into airplane mode and headed for the door. I wasn’t seeing the girls; I wasn’t seeing anyone, and I had designs on keeping it that way.
Instead, I navigated my way through the city and enjoyed the sensation of being lost in the bustle of people. The place was loud enough to forget your problems, but they caught up to me soon enough when I bumped into none other than Hamish – ‘Hey Edi, look at you! Glowing. Engagement suits you’ – and I needed something to counteract the blunt force of his throwaway comment. The nearest sanctuary I came to was the city centre’s museum and I ducked in, reasoning it would at least be quiet. I had to walk past the café to get to the main entrance of the portrait gallery – but I didn’t quite make it that far. The stench of sweet cinnamon and steamed coffee caught me by surprise and, led by my stomach, I decided that the four-hundred-year-old paintings were probably okay to leave for an hour longer.
‘What’ll it be?’ the young lad behind the counter asked. He was spotty and toothy and altogether geeky, and I thought back to a time when one of the popular girls would have probably described Rowan in exactly the same way.
‘Flat white and a toasted cinnamon …’ I pointed. ‘Whatever that is.’
He laughed. ‘Sure thing. Someone will bring that over.’
I found the quietest corner by a window, so there were distractions close by. But in a bid to be brave, I pulled my notebook out of my backpack. I skipped past the first three pages, to avoid the bulk of rules that Rowan and I had come up with. I knew them by heart now; I hardly needed a copy. So, I flicked to a clean page halfway through the pad instead. At the top of the page I wrote ‘Ways to meet people’ and then I wrote the number one and then I put the pen down, and looked around the busy space. It had never crossed my mind that people who didn’t find their soulmates at an early age might have to actively look for them. The poor bastards. I looked out of the window, then. How many of you haven’t found them yet? Alongside the first bullet point I wrote ‘through friends’, then followed that with a second: ‘through work’. The bullet points after were populated by ‘blind date’, ‘speed dating’ and ‘online dating’, the latter of which sent a cold chill running over me. I’d watched enough Catfish episodes to know what a terrible idea Tinder could be. How Faith did it so often was beyond me.
‘Where do people even meet each other?’ I said to no one at all while I looked back through the window.
‘Ah,’ came the beginnings of an answer, ‘your order.’
My head snapped round, and I caught sight of the waitress. She was my age, I thought, maybe a little older. Her hair was a deep brown, tied up in a stylishly messy bun that was balanced in a gravity-defying way on her head. She had a cup and saucer in one hand and a plate in the other.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I pulled my notebook back to make space. ‘Researching something.’
She laughed as she set down the items. ‘So I see. Will that be everything?’
‘Yes, thank you, that looks great.’ I tried to avoid eye contact but the only other place to look was down at the list, and I wasn’t keen on seeing that either. ‘Thanks again.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She dropped a slip of paper onto the table. ‘That’s your ticket, so just take that up when you’re ready to pay.’ She made to walk off but then turned back to me. ‘At a museum.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I looked up in time to catch her nod to the paper in front of me.
‘Places to meet people. At a museum.’