This time, when Dominic walked Claire home, it took a lot longer. Mainly because they stopped at every other street light to kiss. She kept smiling at him. A smile he hadn’t seen before. A smile that made him want to start dancing like that guy from Singing in the Rain, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the warm summer night sky. He frowned for a moment. Was Doris Day in Singing in the Rain? He wasn’t sure.
They talked as they walked too. ‘Forget your father,’ he told her. ‘The man obviously has mental problems if he doesn’t want you in his life. If he doesn’t get down on his knees and beg you for forgiveness, he’s a goddam fool.’
Claire responded to this by grabbing hold of his T-shirt and pulling him towards her and kissing him again. He grinned stupidly back at her. He liked seeing her happy, and it made his chest swell a little – and his head, maybe, but he wasn’t going to admit to that – to think that he’d helped lift her mood. It wasn’t often that he managed to say the right thing to a woman at the right time, but with Claire somehow it was getting easier and easier.
Even with all the unplanned stops, they reached their shared front gate way sooner than he wanted to.
He very much wanted to tell her everything, he realised. This pretence felt like a heavy winter coat he was stifling under, one that he couldn’t wait to shrug off.
But not tonight. He was going to respect her wishes. She needed a breather, time to think and regroup. Tonight he would be the perfect gentleman. He walked her to the gate, kissed her thoroughly but didn’t push for an invitation inside, and this time, when she finally closed the door behind her, instead of sneaking in after her he kept on walking.
Ten minutes later, he was back at Pete and Ellen’s. Pete answered. He was wearing his pyjamas. ‘Sorry, buddy!’ Dominic said, looking at his watch. Crikey! Was that the time?
Pete yawned but motioned for him to come inside. ‘No problems,’ he muttered. ‘I hadn’t gone to bed yet. Ellie’s gone up, but I was watching Die Hard.’
Through the backs of your eyelids, by the looks of it, thought Dominic, but he didn’t say so. Pete grabbed him a beer from the fridge and they sat down in the dark, only the flickering blue light from the TV screen to light them, and watched in silence while Bruce Willis took on a tower block full of terrorists single-handed. And barefoot.
When the adverts came on Pete, still staring at the screen, said, ‘It didn’t go to well, huh?’
Dominic swigged his beer bottle back. ‘What makes you think it went badly?’
Pete turned to face him. ‘Mate … You’ve arrived unannounced at close to midnight and you’re being awkward as hell.’
Dominic allowed himself a small smile. ‘Well, if by badly you mean kissing her, then I suppose it went terribly.’
Pete slapped him on the back. ‘All right!’ Then the grin slid from his face as he took a long hard look at his best friend. ‘So why aren’t you doing a Tom Cruise and jumping up and down on my sofa?’
‘I am excited, it’s just … I still haven’t told her everything and I promised myself I would before I let anything happen between us.’
‘Hang on, rewind,’ Pete said, suddenly looking very serious. ‘You haven’t told her everything?’
Dominic shook his head again. ‘I tried. I got as far as debunking the mythical girlfriend and then she kissed me, and then she asked me not to tell her any more. So we just kept on kissing.’
Pete sighed. ‘You tell a woman you’ve been lying to her for weeks, inventing a fake life, and her first reaction is to kiss you? Mate, if I could bottle what you’ve got I’d be a rich man!’
Dominic frowned. ‘You’re making it sound worse than it is. Anyway, do you think I’ve overstepped the mark?’
‘Nah,’ said Pete, who now had one eye on the TV screen, because the adverts had finished and Bruce had made a reappearance. ‘She kissed you first. Not your fault. End of.’
Dominic nodded. There was that. Technically, he was in the clear.
Then why did ‘technically’ make him feel a little bit slimy?
‘Wanna crash here the night?’ Pete asked.
‘Could I? It would be much easier than trying to creep around and not bump into Claire in the hallway.’
‘Sure. You can have the sofa.’ Pete turned to him and grinned. ‘But not yet, right? Cos Die Hard II is on straight after this.’
Dominic grinned back and they clinked beer bottles.
‘Tell her tomorrow,’ Pete said matter-of-factly, more of his attention on Bruce Willis – who was tying up a bad guy, dressing him up as Santa and sending him down in the lift with a message to the baddies written across his chest – than on his best friend.
‘That’s what she said … just about. I want to, but I’m just not sure it’s the right thing.’
‘Really?’ Pete mumbled, not taking his eyes from the screen.
Dominic nodded. ‘There’s this whole thing with her father.’ He glanced across at Pete and decided going into detail would be a lost cause. ‘It’s complicated. I don’t want to make things worse for her. I think she’s going to be upset when I come clean, and she’s got enough on her plate to deal with at the moment, you know?’
Pete grunted his agreement.
‘But not telling her could be a huge mistake. What do you think I should do?’
Pete didn’t answer for a moment.
Dominic stopped watching the TV and looked at his best friend. ‘Pete? Are you listening?’
Pete nodded. ‘Of course.’
Dominic raised his eyebrows. ‘Then what did I just say?’
‘Don’t tell her and save her feelings or do tell her and make her upset,’ Pete reeled off.
Dominic glared at him. He hated it when Pete did that. He knew it drove Ellen nuts as well. Pete had a point, though. His no-frills summary had clarified things very nicely. ‘So you don’t think I should tell her the rest, then? Not yet?’
Pete shook his head and flinched as another bad guy took a bullet.
Dominic nodded to himself. Okay, he felt better about it now. While he didn’t like lying to Claire, he was doing this for her, and that was what she’d been teaching him, hadn’t it? To think about what the woman in his life needed and act on it?
‘Got any leftovers of that bolognese?’ he asked Pete.
Pete nodded. ‘Fridge,’ he all but grunted, and Dominic got up and headed towards the kitchen.
Upstairs, Ellen lay sleeping, the sheet thrown off her, totally unaware of the advice her husband was dispensing in her absence. Had she been privy to it, though, she might well have rolled her eyes and said, ‘Oh, Pete … What on earth have you gone and done this time?’
*
Claire couldn’t sleep. She was sitting up in her bed, pretending she was reading a book, but actually she was just sitting there, grinning. She couldn’t keep this to herself any longer. She picked up her phone and fired off a quick text to Peggy. Thankfully, there was a good chance she’d get a reply. Peggy was a bit of a night owl. There was no point disturbing Candy, because she had probably fallen into bed not long after her kids.
You’ll never guess what! she typed, knowing Peggy would never be able to resist such a text, even if she was sleepy.
What?!! came back, almost instantly.
Claire grinned to herself. The lovely warm feeling inside kept on growing. I saw loverboy tonight.
The next text was pure Peggy. !!??!!? While she was still chuckling about it, another one arrived: Is that good or bad?
Good, Claire replied. Definitely good. And then she decided to put poor Peggy out of her misery. He hasn’t got a girlfriend.
She could feel the stunned silence at Peggy’s end. She recovered a few seconds later, though. He chucked her?
Claire inhaled. There was no easy way to explain the conversation she’d had with Nick this evening via text, so she decided to leave the explanations for later and just stick to the juicy details.
Long story …
But he kissed me.
Peggy sent back a string of characters that Claire couldn’t understand. She twisted her phone ninety degrees to see if that helped, but eventually she gave in and just sent a message back saying, Huh?
I was trying to do an emoticon version of me fainting, Peggy replied, but it obvs lost something in translation.
But OMG!!!
Claire just grinned at her phone. Indeed. She waited, knowing the full inquisition would soon start.
Was it good?
Is he still gorgeous?
Did you ask him inside?
And there it was. Yes, yes and no, she replied, and then they spent the next ten minutes messaging back and forth until Claire was yawning hard and going cross-eyed trying to focus on her phone screen.
She said her goodbyes to Peggy, turned off the light and snuggled down into her pillows, still smiling, but after a few seconds she sat bolt upright again, her eyes wide.
Oh my goodness!
She’d been so caught up in walking home with Nick and all that delicious kissing that she’d totally forgotten she’d left her car parked down the road from The Glass Bottom Boat!