Exactly thirty-eight minutes later, I collapsed on Patrick’s floor in a tangle of arms and legs, discarded clothes and condom wrappers.
‘I have to admit,’ I panted, staring up at the ceiling and searching for patterns in the plaster swirls. ‘This is not how I’d expected today to end.’
‘There are worse things you could be doing with a Saturday evening,’ Patrick pulled me in towards him as I repositioned myself to rest my head on his chest. We were only a few feet from the bed we hadn’t made it to but the floor seemed like the safest place to be right now. I didn’t trust my legs to carry me.
‘Like arguing about sausage cooking times with my friend’s dad?’ I yawned, slinging one leg over his legs, stretching my arm over his chest, taking as much territory as I dared. He looked at me, confused. ‘Long story,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m very happy with where my Saturday evening ended up.’
He kissed the top of my head and laughed.
‘You knew this was on the cards as soon as you sent me that text,’ he accused. ‘Don’t pretend this wasn’t your evil plan along.’
I lazily traced my fingertips down his collarbone. He had the best collarbone. ‘Evil plan?’
‘Hi everyone, I’m back, I have a new number? Let’s hang out? You know, you could have just called me.’
‘That wasn’t an evil plan, it was a stupid group text,’ I said, rolling onto my stomach and discreetly tucking my left breast back into my bra. ‘I sent it to everyone in my phone.’
‘OK, Ros,’ he closed his eyes and smiled. ‘I believe you even if thousands wouldn’t.’
‘You can believe what you want,’ I replied primly, slightly annoyed to have my postcoital glow tainted. ‘It was a mistake, I deleted you from my phone years ago but it must have been saved in the cloud. I never would have messaged you otherwise.’
‘And why not?’
Resting my head back in his nook, I looked around his flat. His bed was in his living room, in the place of a settee, and what would have been the bedroom was set up as an office, his huge, cluttered desk taking pride of place next to the dormer window that looked out onto the street below. It was a new place but he had filled it with all the same stuff. Worn leather armchair he’d got from his dad, framed maps all over the walls and bookcase upon bookcase upon bookcase. I’d have guessed it in a heartbeat had we been playing Through the Keyhole. Who would live in a house like this? Absurdly expensive custom-made shoes? Eight different vintage editions of Jane Eyre? Enough single malt whisky to get an elephant bladdered? It’s got to be Patrick Parker.
‘Because we haven’t spoken in more than three years and, the last time we saw each other, it didn’t go that well?’ I reminded him. Now that the sex seal had been broken, my words were coming thick and fast. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
Patrick gently shifted my head and sat upright.
‘Do you have any idea how hard it was on me when you ended things?’ he asked, standing up and walking over to the front door to retrieve his pants. I was both proud and uncomfortable in equal measures. ‘I never got in touch with you because I didn’t want to hear all about your new life and your new friends and – at the risk of sounding pathetic – new men, while you left me behind.’
I opened my mouth to speak but had no idea what to say. When I ended things?
He slipped into the bathroom, ran the tap for a moment then returned in his boxer shorts. ‘I’ve been wondering ever since if I’d hear from you.’
‘I didn’t end things with you,’ I said slowly. ‘I told you I had been offered the job in DC, then you said I should take it and it would be better for us to have a clean break.’
‘Yeah, because I’m a shit man with a massive ego and I couldn’t stand the rejection,’ he said, looking at me as though I was the one who was being obtuse. ‘Christ, Ros, I thought you might suggest we try long distance or something but no, you agreed with me straight away. You wanted to leave without the baggage. I get it, that’s fine, but don’t make me out to be the villain when you’re the one who left.’
I felt as though I’d been punched. Had I agreed with him? I didn’t remember it that way. I certainly had not said I wanted to leave without baggage. I very much wanted baggage, I wanted Patrick-shaped baggage more than an Away suitcase and I wanted an Away suitcase so badly. Bloody Facebook advertising. What I remembered, was the feeling that the world was ending and, as I recalled, I didn’t say much of anything. I told him about the job, he told me I should go and I ran out the door, only stopping to cry in the street before I flagged down a cab.
‘You could have told me you didn’t want me to go,’ I said. I reached for my dress and draped it over my body, too vulnerable to be so naked.
Patrick sat down on the edge of his bed and sighed. ‘And tell you not to take the job? What kind of a shit would that make me?’
‘You said it was good timing because you were going travelling,’ I reminded him. ‘You said it was for the best.’
‘I did go travelling,’ he confirmed. ‘And then I came back. Alone.’
I folded myself up like a deckchair, arms wrapped around my legs, hands knotted together around my shins. Even though it was still hot and sticky in his flat, I suddenly felt a chill.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I admitted.
With a deep breath in and a heavy breath out, Patrick joined me back on the floor.
‘Then don’t say anything,’ he said, kneeling in front of me. ‘I missed you, Ros, and now you’re here again, I think that’s enough. Can we agree that the past is the past and take it from here?’
Something lifted inside of me, a weight I’d been carrying around for so long, I’d almost forgotten how heavy it was. I felt so light, I could have leapt up and touched the ceiling.
‘I feel like such a dickhead,’ I said, pushing all my hair back out of my face. ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t got that stupid text?’
Patrick took my face in his hands and kissed me softly. ‘But I did.’
‘OK,’ I breathed, wrapping my hands around his wrists to lock him into place. Patrick missed me. Patrick wanted to try again. Before I could stop it, a tiny laugh escaped from my mouth.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked with a curious grin.
‘Nothing? Everything?’ I replied. ‘This, us. I feel like I need to know everything that’s happened since I last saw you. I’ve got about a million questions.’
He kissed my forehead then broke my grip on his wrists before standing up to stretch.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’ I scrambled semi-upright and placed myself on the bed, hugging one of his pillows as he wandered off into his study. Everything felt bright and electric and like it wasn’t quite real. ‘What were you doing two years ago today?’
‘Two years ago today?’ he called back from the next room. ‘I believe I was in Bhutan.’
‘Bhutan?’
‘Yes.’ Patrick reappeared with a bottle of whisky in his hand. ‘It’s in South Asia, near Tibet.’
‘I know where it is,’ I replied. I didn’t, but I could have.
He climbed onto the bed and stretched out. His body looked more muscular than I remembered, not that I was complaining. I pulled the covers over my body, wondering what comparisons he was drawing about me.
‘Of course you know,’ he said as he opened the bottle. ‘I was just answering your question. Your turn. Where were you two years ago today?’
Thanks to Facebook memories, I knew exactly where I had been. Two years ago to the day, I was beside myself with joy because I was on my way to Ikea to buy my very own Klippan sofa.
‘Um, I think I was at a lecture,’ I lied, nodding to myself. ‘Salman Rushdie in conversation with Malcolm Gladwell.’
‘Wow,’ Patrick replied with raised eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘Two very interesting men,’ I confirmed, hoping he had absolutely no follow-up questions. ‘What were you doing in Bhutan?’
‘Living? Existing?’ He breathed in deeply. ‘Whatever it was, it was better than this.’
I sucked the air in through my teeth. ‘Could you at least wait until I have my knickers back on before you start insulting me?’
Actually that was a good point, I thought, peering around the room. Where were my knickers? I had a horrible feeling they might be on the wrong side of the front door …
‘I didn’t mean literally this, I meant living in London,’ he rapped my arm with a tap just the wrong side of playful. ‘I miss travelling.’
I considered this news with a quiet nod. Patrick could absolutely go travelling. We would FaceTime every day, he could get an Instagram account so I could follow the stories. Maybe I’d even be able to meet up with him for a couple of weeks. Or maybe I’d take a sabbatical and go for a couple of months. Not that I was rushing anything, of course.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to Thailand,’ I said as I rolled onto my stomach, pulling a sheet with me as I went. ‘Have you been?’
‘I’ve been to Thailand so many times,’ he said, taking a swig of whisky straight from the bottle before handing it to me. ‘But you should go, you’d like it. It’s a good starter trip. They’ve got some nice hotels for people who don’t want to rough it.’
‘And I do not,’ I confirmed before I took the tiniest sip. I couldn’t stand the taste of whisky but I knew he wouldn’t have anything else in the house. Patrick was exclusively a whisky drinker. ‘Out of everywhere you’ve been, where is your favourite place in the entire world?’
Patrick sat up and looked at me with an odd look on his face.
‘What?’ I asked as he bounced off the bed and into the kitchen. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Stay there,’ he commanded.
What was he doing? Why had he left the room? I turned over and cursed myself for asking so many questions. It was late, he was tired, I was totally pushing my luck. He’d probably gone to retrieve my pants and call a taxi, not necessarily in that order. From the bed, I could hear cupboards opening and closing, cans clicking and fizzing and the occasional muttering from Patrick.
‘I think this is the quickest way to deal with this,’ he said as he strode back into the bedroom, laptop under his arm and a tray full of food in his hands. Ooh, food. Snacks were my love language and he knew it. He pulled a map down from the wall and laid it on the bed in front of me, placing the tray in my lap and opening up the computer.
‘What’s all this?’ I asked, poking in what looked like a bowl of brightly wrapped sweets. He slapped my fingers away and smiled.
‘This is the last three years of my life.’ The laptop sparked into life with a familiar chime and Patrick pointed over at the map. ‘All the countries in purple are the places I visited while I was researching my book.’
I glanced down and saw a lot of purple. In the last two years, I had been to exactly two countries, the one I was born in and the one I ran away to. Patrick had been to places I couldn’t even pronounce.
‘And on the tray, you have some of my favourite foods from said countries,’ he said, handing me a cold red can of fizzy pop. ‘That is Future Cola from China.’
‘Future Cola is good,’ I confirmed after taking a sip. ‘What’s this?’
‘Awadama, from Japan,’ Patrick replied, unwrapping one of the sweets and holding it out for me. ‘It translates to “foamy balls”. Very popular.’
‘Thank you,’ I muttered as it fizzed up in my mouth. ‘Very foamy.’
‘Probably shouldn’t have given it to you at the same time as the Future Cola,’ he replied with a grimace. ‘We’ve also got Vietnamese sesame rice balls, Tapita from Costa Rica, Doña Pepa from Peru and Chinese Ore No Milk Candy.’
‘Ore No?’ I replied, opening one of the little white packages to find a hard, white ball that looked like any other boiled sweet. ‘What does that translate as?’
‘It’s milk-flavoured,’ Patrick said as I put it in my mouth and almost immediately spat it back out. ‘It roughly translates as milk candy for tough guys. Or tough guy’s milk.’
‘I really didn’t want that in my mouth,’ I said, taking another swig of Future Cola to wash away the taste. ‘And don’t you dare say that’s what she said.’
He held his hands up to protest his innocence but with a huge smile on his face.
‘And what’s on the laptop?’ I asked.
‘Photos,’ he replied, climbing back onto the bed and pressing his body against mine. ‘Lots and lots and lots of photos.’
‘You’re going to show me your holiday photos?’ I asked, utterly delighted.
‘I’m going to show you my holiday photos,’ he confirmed as he rested his chin on my shoulder. ‘Shall we start with China?’
I nodded, far too excited for someone about to endure someone else’s travel pics. But this felt very different to Lucy and Dave’s three-hour-long honeymoon video from their trip to Sandals St Lucia. This felt like discovering they’d made three new seasons of your favourite TV show and bingeing on them all at once.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as Patrick began flicking through the photos.
He skipped back to a shot of himself, posing with his arm slung casually around the shoulders of a beautiful blonde woman. He was smiling into the camera but she was gazing at him with an expression I knew all too well.
‘That’s Judith,’ he replied.
‘She looks nice,’ I said in a bright, tight voice.
‘She is nice,’ Patrick said, matter-of-factly. ‘We met in Beijing. She teaches English out there.’
I took a sip of my Future Cola. It was already flat.
‘She still in Beijing, is she?’
‘She is,’ he confirmed, amused with my response. ‘And yes, we were seeing each other for a while but no, we’re not seeing each other now. I’m sure you haven’t been living like a nun for the last three years, have you?’
‘Nun-like,’ I replied. ‘Nun-adjacent.’
‘Nun-adjacent, I like that,’ he laughed lightly, sliding his legs underneath the covers. ‘When you get to the photos of the pretty brunette in Mongolia, her name is Shana and we went on three dates before she binned me off for an American footballer called Brad.’
‘You’re making that up,’ I muttered, clicking through the photos faster and faster. He stroked my hair, nuzzling into the back of my neck.
‘Does it matter?’ he asked as he slid his hand down my back until he reached the hooks of my bra. ‘She’s not here, eating my tough man milk sweets, is she?’
Quietly, I closed the laptop and placed the tray and the map down on the floor beside the bed before turning to face him.
‘I really did miss you,’ Patrick whispered when we were nose to nose, the oxygen burning out of the air in between us.
‘I really did miss you too,’ I whispered back, closing my eyes as I lay back against the bed.
One minute we were just talking, the next, we were together. There was no precise moment or second on the clock you could point to, we weren’t and then we were. His hands were hot on my skin as they followed familiar paths around my body, touching me in ways I’d only dreamed about for so long. The light seemed to fade, the bed got bigger and the room got smaller and everything became hazy at the edges as my body took over and my mind let go.