This

I parked his car in the driveway and turned off the ignition. 

“I’m sorry I ruined your date.” He looked across the car at me, eyes glistening, the contrition barely visible through his drunken haze. 

“It’s okay. I think it was better off ending, anyway.” We sat in silence for a while. I thought of a million things to say and nothing all at once. 

“Do you want to come inside?” 

I paused for the briefest moment, imaging how the scene might play out. “No, I don’t think that’s a smart idea.” It was barely a whisper, and it said everything that had not already been said. I got out of the car and walked up the three stairs. He followed behind at a much slower pace. I looked back, worried about the effect it would have on the garden beds if he toppled into them, but he shook some of the fog from his brain. I used his key to unlock the door. 

As I put the keys in his hand, he leaned slightly forward. “Thank you, but I don’t want you to walk home alone. I’ll walk you to your gate.” 

I tried to protest, but he interrupted. “Please, just let me make sure you are home safely. The walk will do me good.” Seeing that it was pointless to argue, I snatched the keys back, locked the door and stalked out of the garden. 

He caught up and we walked in silence. There was nothing more that either of us could say. The sound of the city at night was enough. Water trickled down the gutters and there was a steady drip from the trees which lined the road. The last hints of the storm that had blown through while I was on my date. 

We reached the gate to my building, and I faced him to say goodbye. Before I could get a word in, he reached out and pulled me closer to him. Taking my face in his hands, he bent down and kissed me with so much force that I tottered and gasped. His lips felt their way around mine and they softened. I made a split second decision. My brain tried to wade through its own fog now, but I returned the kiss.

Encouraged, he kept one clasped around the back of my neck and pulled me with the other. His palm on the small of my back was warm and firm. Through the smell of the bar and the taste of alcohol, I caught the scent of his soap. It was soft and crisp. The stubble on his face was rough against mine and my neck tingled where his hand pulled me closer. 

At last he paused for breath and I stepped away from him, shaking. I reversed more, widening the gap between us. But he caught my hand, stopping my retreat just before I backed into the gate.

“Say something.” He said, stepping forward, eyes begging mine for a sign to continue. 

I said the first thing that came to my mind. “You’re so drunk, and tomorrow you will wake up and all you will taste is regret.” Before he responded I keyed in the combination and slammed the gate shut behind me. Not daring to look back, I walked away, terrified of what would happen if I turned and saw him standing there in the darkness. 

I woke up tasting regret and it was bitter. I pulled myself out of bed and looked in the mirror.  Stef’s expert make-up had smudged down my face well before the time I made it back to my flat, and I was still wearing my shirt from the night before. Based on outward appearances, make up aside, I was the same girl who had stood looking into the mirror the day my brother had helped me carry my boxes into the flat almost three years before. I had put on a little weight over the time, but my eyes, hair, freckles and height had not changed. The changes I was expecting to see reflected were solely internal. I couldn’t process what they were exactly, but I felt them as physically as if I could see them in the mirror. 

My phone rang on the bedside counter, and I walked over to look at it. It was him.

 I let it ring off and saw that there were four other missed calls from his number. Trying not to think about last night, I deleted each one. The last notification on the screen was a message from Steve, sent last night. I hadn’t checked my mobile when I got home. I just climbed into bed and desperately tried to sleep. 

Hey, please let me know when you get home safe. I had a great time tonight! I’m sorry the date got cut short. Swing by the store today for a chat if you want. Xxx. S

I stared at the words on the screen, revulsion for what I had done swelling up inside. Looking at his words, I knew that I should not have agreed to the date. I went against my better judgement, desperately trying to make Steve and everyone else happy. They all wanted it so badly and I wanted to believe that they were right. But looking at the message, I knew that I had already done irreparable damage.

 I could feel my anxiety beast, it had been there since the moment I opened my eyes, not pushing, just giving me a reminder he was still alive, no matter how dark the cage was that I tried to keep him in. But the anxiety gradually gave way to an unfamiliar feeling. Instead of clawing at my heart to get out, it sat on my chest, heavy and stifling. It was not completely new, but I’d never experienced it with such force. 

I knew I would have to tell Steve the truth about how I felt. The right thing to do was to go to the store and let him know the date had been a mistake. I’d like to say I got dressed and did just that. That I addressed my newfound moral deficiencies with a speed that immediately retracted my moral decay, but I didn’t want to think about Steve or anything to do with him. I didn’t even bother to reply. 

Less than twenty minutes later he called for the fifth time. The man who should not have interrupted my date. I knew that I could either turn it off and delay the inevitable, or answer and let him have his say. At which point, I would crawl back into my bed and try to forget anything that had happened between us as he would surely beg me to do. The photo of me sandwiched between his sons looked at me from my bedside table. I knocked it facedown. 

Taking a deep breath and desperately trying to rebuild the walls that Stef, Steve and now he had chipped away at, I answered. “Hello.” It was a breath and nothing more. I felt like the terrified girl who couldn’t find any words to speak her mind, the way I had felt the first five times I met him. 

“Thank God.” He said as soon as I answered. His next words come spluttering out so quickly that he had to pause and repeat himself. “I don’t regret it. I’ve been up most of the night and I’ve felt a lot, but I don’t feel regret. Not a single bit of it.”

 I sat down heavily on the bed, willing myself not to believe it. Willing myself to stamp out the flicker of hope that his words were fanning, hating myself for even feeling it a fraction. “Please, just come over for some breakfast and we can talk. That’s all, just to talk. Please.” 

I agreed to be there within thirty minutes. 

On autopilot, I showered and washed my hair, trying desperately to get the stench of the bar from the night before out of my pores. I smelt it when I woke up, and it was nauseating. I did not want to think. I counted the tiles on the wall in front of me, carefully measuring the broken ones to see how many of them would make a whole. 68. I didn’t bother to dry my hair or do any makeup. I brushed my fingers through the wet curls and the strands left wet patches on my shoulders. Pulling on a pair of jeans, I looked back into the mirror for a split second, wondering who would stand in front of it when I returned.

I parked my car and walked up to the front door in exactly the same way I did every single time I arrived to look after his children. The door was open before I got there, and he smiled at me. It was a nervous, half-smile. I mirrored it. 

The lounge had not changed since I was there two weeks before, doing homework and playing games with Will and Noah. I stood immobile, a predator caught in a night flashlight, conscious of the fact that pictures of his family surrounded me. I turned away from the frames and looked at one of few photos of him by himself. He looked about 15 years younger. He perched on a white wall in what I guessed to be Santorini; the Agean stretching out behind him. He was looking dead at the camera. There was such genuine joy on his face I could almost feel what that moment had been. He stood behind me. I tensed, remembering how strong he had been when he pulled me closer..

“I took that trip with my big brother, six months before he died.” It wasn’t a statement to gain sympathy or comfort, it was just the context of the photo. “I’ve made some French toast. What do you want on it?”

“Do you have any Heinz ketchup?” I mentally went through the bottles I knew were in the fridge, but I couldn’t remember. 

He pulled a face and went to check. He set the meal up in the breakfast nook at the end of the kitchen and I preferred it that way. I had never had a meal there before. In fact, I had never seen it used as anything other than a dumping ground for unused sport items or cleaning materials. I watched him closely as he made the tea. He didn’t even need to ask anymore, he just did it. He wore a dark grey T-shirt and a lighter pair of tracksuit pants. They tapered in at the legs; his feet were bare. Pyjamas. His hair was unbrushed, and the waves fell across his face as he bent down. Today was a glasses day. He looked more relaxed than I had seen him in months. The lines of worry which were so out of place, but had formed on his brow, smoothed out. 

He put the tea and the ketchup in front of me and slid into the booth. Cutting his toast into pieces, he ate using his fork. His left hand was on the table opposite mine. It was such a small space between us.

 I don’t know who bridged it first, but we sat with our hands intertwined while we ate. His was bigger than mine and it felt strong and reliable. I didn’t want to speak and break the spell. He had invited me to talk, but we sat in silence. 

I finished my toast, and I looked at our hands. He was absent mindedly running his thumb along my palm, tracing the lines. But the line of his wedding ring was visible and gently pressing into my fingers on either side of his. I broke away. 

Standing up to wash my hands and taking my mug with me, I leaned against the counter to finish the tea. He cleared the plates and put them next to the sink. He spoke, using words designed to fill the air, but not to say anything. “The boys love staying with my parents. They went to a farm yesterday and got to milk the cows. You should see the look on Will’s face in the video.” I willed myself to believe that this was just another normal conversation between the two of us. I wondered when our conversations first meant more than they should have. 

 “Listen, I know this a bit of a mess.” He finally began, naturally choosing the path of understatement and running both hands through his hair while he spoke. “But I can’t bring myself to regret what happened last night. I don’t know the way forward from here, but I know I want you to be wherever forward is.” He was saying words which could never be unsaid, making a declaration that he should never have made. The frown lines were creeping back; it looked as though he were heading for the same grim place I had watched him sink into over the past 6 months. 

I couldn’t bear it and I crossed the space between us. I leaned into him, burying my face in his shoulder. The smell of his soap was stronger now. It blended with the tea he had brewed. I wondered if he felt the same sense of safety that his arms offered me. I pulled back and craned my neck up. “Tell me what you want from me?” His voice was hoarse with emotion as he spoke. He had put me in a place of power and I had never felt more powerless in all my life. 

I rested my head against his chest, listening to the rhythm drumming out, and I spoke a single word. With a single word I overturned 20 years of self building. I overturned everything I had thought I knew about myself. I overturned every single lie I had ever told about how I would act in certain situations. 

They say you never plan these things. They say it can just happen without premeditation, without forethought, without malice or contrivance, almost as if it were an accident. They say that and you never believe them. At the back of your mind there is always someone to blame, at least one guilty party and for the morally upright, definitely two. Something you never count on is seeing yourself on the other side of “they say”, counted among the guilty who never planned to do it, but nonetheless finding yourself on trial. When I think back to how it happened, I can’t even pinpoint a beginning, let alone a premeditated plan. But the truth of it is that regardless of planning or not, it happened.

I spoke a single word. 

“This.”

The first time I saw him, the planets did not stop, and the world continued to spin. Although from my unique vantage point on Earth, I wouldn’t have been able to tell even if they had. I saw him the same way that hundreds before me had seen him and hundreds would see him again. He stood poised to begin his lecture in a room of two hundred and fifty students, most of whom were sitting the course for an easy, throwaway credit. Some, like me, were there for a visit. 

Stef dragged me along, insisting that I come and see him, but not because he was a spectacular lecturer or particularly god-like. In fact, based on my first impressions, I’d say he was, at the most, unassuming. 

“You have to hear his voice. It’s incredible.” She said, getting up and leaving me sitting on the grass outside the building. 

I dutifully followed her into the lecture hall and sat down with my arms crossed against my chest. I could think of no excuse to avoid it, but I resolved to do it with as little enjoyment as possible. Stef laughed as if she knew better. 

“Just wait, you’re gonna love him!”