There’s still no spare chair, so I settle the glasses and crouch between you and Becca. You make to move, but I gesture that you should stay seated.
‘All right, come on, share,’ you say, patting the seat beside your thigh. ‘You can get half a bum on there.’
We sit slightly back-to-back in a halfway sort of way. Sustained contact.
‘So what do you do then,’ you say, ‘seeing as you’re evidently making enough to splash the cash?’
‘Well, that’s me wiped out for the night,’ I say, the one-eighty making a neat but blatant rectangle on the thigh of my jeans.
‘Has it? Oh dear! Well, don’t worry, I’ll buy you one back,’ you say. ‘So how do you know Becca?’
I explain. ‘Oh, I see. Ah, I bet all you boys are madly in love with her, aren’t you?’
‘Ah, she’s lovely,’ I say, ultra carefully moderating my tone. ‘Not my type though.’
‘No? I’d have thought she was everyone’s type.’
I shrug. ‘I’m not everyone then, I suppose.’
Do you hold my gaze for a second longer than normal? I’m sure–
At this moment Becca leans across the table. ‘Cheers ears!’
‘Cheers!’ I say, and turn to you. ‘To a really good gig.’
We all strike glasses, but you pull me up short.
‘No, no, you’re not doing it right. You’ve got to maintain eye contact when you’re clinking glasses,’ you say.
‘Oh, is that what you’re supposed to do?’ asks Becca.
‘Wasn’t I?’ I say.
‘No, come on, do it again,’ you say. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheeeers—’ I say and malcoordinatedly proffer my glass. ‘This is hard. I should be looking at the glass.’
‘Nope, then it doesn’t count,’ you say. ‘Try again. Cheers!’
‘Cheeeer—’
The glasses knock together: t-tinggg.
‘OK?’ I say.
You scrunch your nose up. ‘Well, technically it needs to be a cleaner ding.’
I try again, looking deep into your eyes. ‘Cheers.’
Tingggg.
‘Perfect!’ you cry, and grin at me.
‘It’s the spontaneity, I think, that really made it special,’ I say.
Definitely a lingering look there. Definitely.
My phone, trapped between us, buzzes once more in my pocket. You jump.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, sorry,’ I say, hopping up from my half of the chair. ‘I keep — I keep being phoned.’ I look down at Mal’s flashing name, and cry, ‘leave me alone!’ rather weakly at the screen.
Feeble. Feeble.
I look down at you, and you’re watching me with amusement. ‘You must be very popular.’
And still, your look sustains.
I don’t know what it is about you, but for the first time in — in years? — I can feel a little of the anxiety beginning to slip away. I’m able to keep your gaze. And it’s only now I realize how unconfident I’ve become lately.
My phone ceases vibrating.
I say: ‘You have lovely eyes.’
There it is. I have said it. Matter-of-fact.
‘Well, thank you,’ you say, a little taken aback. ‘That’s a sweet thing to say.’
No! It’s a terrible thing to say! Everyone will have said this to you!
But you smile.
And I smile too.
‘Ivo—’ calls Laura.
‘What?’ I look up at her, and she’s holding out her phone.
‘Mal wants you.’
And I can’t stay. I can’t fucking stay.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s been lovely to meet you, but I’ve got to—’
‘Ivo—’ Laura’s shaking her phone at me.
‘Tell him I know,’ I snap at her.
‘Oh, right,’ you say, disappointedly. You look instinctively away, and I can feel the disconnect.
‘You coming?’ says Becca to me, as she gathers up her bag and coat.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, trying hard to think of some way to pick up again on what we just had. ‘Hey, listen — I know we’ve only known each other for about three minutes, but would you maybe fancy coming out for a drink with me at some point? Unless …’
‘Oh—’ you say, surprised. ‘Well, yeah, yeah. That would be nice.’
‘Brilliant. I’ll get your number off Becca maybe, and—’ My phone starts again. ‘I’ve got to go, I’ll ring you, OK?’
‘OK.’
I stumble my way across the pub, trying to answer my phone and catch up with Laura and Becca.
‘Y’all right, our kid?’ says Mal on the end of the line. ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing for ages.’
I feel a tug on my arm, and I turn round to see you holding on to my sleeve. I mouth ‘what?’ at you.
‘Sorry,’ you say, ‘I was forgetting — I’m going home tomorrow. I mean home home, back to my mum’s up in the Lakes for Easter.’
‘Ah shit.’
‘You what?’ says Mal.
‘But, you know, after then perhaps?’ you say.
‘Yes, definitely,’ I say.
‘Here, let me get a pen, and I’ll write down my mum’s landline. Maybe give me a call there?’
You root around in your bag while Mal’s voice in my ear demands to know what’s going on.
‘Just hold on,’ I say to him, testily. ‘Here you go,’ you say, pulling out an old biro. ‘Have you got some paper?’
‘Write it on here,’ I say, offering the back of my hand.
You twist my wrist round with your palm, and write the numbers out nice and clear, and render a very professional-looking treble clef at the end.
‘So you remember who it was in the morning,’ you smile.
Ears
Ears. I haven’t thought about this for years.
It’s you again: it’s you, just after that Easter, on the railway station platform, surrounded by all those people.
Hours we’ve spent, talking on the phone this holiday. And it’s been so comfortable and warm, talking about anything and everything, how you missed your mum all term, but five minutes was enough to drive you round the twist. And we’ve got the tragic dad stories out the way too. And it feels — it feels right with you. I’ve told the dad story a thousand times, and I always find people embarrassingly back-pedalling. I constantly have to reassure them everything is fine and so on and so on. But when you told me about your dad, I was struck by how matter-of-fact you were.
‘Yeah, my dad left — what, back when I was fifteen? He was a drinker — still is, I think. And he couldn’t give my mum what she needed. I mean, for years they stuck at it, but it was never going to work. They were a real mismatch.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘I don’t blame him for it, though — he’s had some rough times, made some bad choices. But it doesn’t make him a bad man.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘I don’t see that much of him, because I think it sends him off the rails a bit. I think he feels bad, and I don’t want to cause that. It’s sad. But, you know, I don’t let it define me.’
I was almost able to hear your shrug on the phone. So I embarked on the thousand-and-first version of my dad story, and sort of found myself mimicking your matter-of-fact tone. It felt for the first time like I was telling it in a way that I wanted to tell it.
So now I know: I don’t have to be Laura about it. I don’t have to amp up the melodrama, because it’s a thing that has happened. It was sad, and it remains sad. No one’s going to take that away, for good or bad.
You called it sad-dad top trumps. ‘Ah, dead dad beats non-violent alcoholic every time.’
After weeks of talking almost every night until the early hours, I can’t believe we’ve only met once before.