And if I kept this up, I was going to work myself up into a proper state of first-date nerves, the type where you can barely muster a hello, much less impress the other party with your wit, charm, and long-term entertainment potential. It would be lovely if one could just circumvent the whole process and skip straight to coupledom. No excessive grooming, no wardrobe panics, no blurting out idiotic things and praying the other person will be too busy agonizing over blurts of their own to notice. Of course, then, as my friend Alex (short for Alexa) is fond of pointing out, you miss half the fun of it.
Easy for Alex to say. She's been with the same guy since freshman year of college. It only seems fun if you don't have to do it.
Hurrying away from Belliston Square in what I hoped was the right direction, I found myself smack in front of an array of footware. Like a homing pigeon with expensive tastes, I had gone in precisely the wrong direction, landing myself on New Bond Street, directly in front of Jimmy Choo. Oh well, it wasn't a disaster. At least, it wouldn't be as long as I didn't go in and buy anything. One shoe there could wipe out my stipend for the entire month. A pair would be completely out of the question.
Fortunately, I had made my way to Bond Street before. All I needed to do was follow New Bond Street all the way up past the glossy shop fronts until I hit the grotty hubbub of Oxford Street, and from there it was a straight twenty-minute walk back to Leinster Street and my basement flat. I wasn't taken any chances on the tube. If it knew I had a date, it would be sure to break down.
I was just scurrying off in that direction, when two men stepped out into the street right in front of me. They were coming out of Russell & Bromley, that most veddy British of men's shoe stores, and my first thought was, Ha! So men do go shopping together in pairs, too.
My second was much less coherent and involved ducking around or under or behind things, if only there had been anything to duck around or under or behind. Somehow, I had the feeling that crashing through the plate-glass window of Jimmy Choo would be far more conspicuous than staying put. The fight-or-flight instinct had taken hold, and flight was well on its way towards winning.
Because those weren't just any two men.
The one carrying a shoe box, who looked as if someone had just shot his pet dog, I vaguely recognized from the night of my disastrous blind date with the man of Grandma's choosing. But I wasn't concerned with him. It was Colin who worried me; Colin, who was strolling blithely along beside him, right in my direction. My unshowered, ungroomed, decidedly unkempt, anything but seductive direction.
In the glow of light from the shop windows, cutting against the November dusk, Colin's hair shone like tawny gold of an old coin, back before they started diluting the currency with lesser alloys. Next to his stockier, darker friend, he looked like a Plantagenet monarch with Thomas а Becket in tow, ready to conquer France at a single blow and sweep single heiresses off their feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a mugwump.
Since it was too late to duck or flee, there was nothing to do but brazen it out. "Hey, there!" I called out, waving my arms like a one-woman semaphore competition. "Yoo-hoo! Colin!"
I'm not sure if it was the yoo-hooing or the waving that did it, but his tawny head turned in my direction and his face broke into a great big smile. It looked rather nice that way. He didn't seem to notice that my hair was greasy or that my Barbour jacket was two sizes too big, or that I was wearing pants that had probably been designed for a circus clown. He just seemed genuinely glad to see me.
How very bizarre.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, with real interest.
"I've been archiving in the area," I explained airily. "I was just on my way off home."
"Archiving?"
"I archive, you archive, he/she archives…."
"Naturally," Colin said with a grin. "I ought to have known." Belatedly remembering his friend, he turned and gestured in his direction. "Eloise, have you met Martin yet?"
"No, I haven't," I said pleasantly, rather liking that "yet" and the sense of inevitability that came with it, as though it was a matter of course that I would be introduced to his friends. On the other hand, I was also friends — or friendish — with his sister, so the odds were that I would meet them socially sooner or later, even if not through him.
As you can tell, I analyze way too much, especially when there's nothing there to analyze.
I held out a hand to Martin. "Pleased to meet you."
Martin held out a hand back. It was a nice enough hand, but his clasp lacked conviction. He looked, quite frankly, as though he were somewhere far, far away. Wherever that place was, it wasn't a pleasant one.
"So, I see you've been shopping?"
Martin nodded.
"Shoes," said Colin informatively.
"Useful things, shoes," I commented.
Martin nodded again. His conversational repertoire appeared to be limited.
"Well, if you two are still in the middle of shopping, I wouldn't want to keep you," I said, beginning to edge away. I pointed a finger at Colin. "I'll see you at eight?"
"There's no need for that," said Colin.
I frowned. Did this mean he had noticed the lack of shampoo and rather inadequate application of deodorant?
"We're just finished," Colin clarified. "So if you're hungry now…?"
I could hear my friend Pammy's voice in my head, whispering, "Hungry for what?" I made it stop. Dinner early was an awful idea. I still needed to shower and change and shave — not necessarily in that order.
"I was just off home, anyway," Martin put in, proving he could manage not only words but whole phrases.
I looked at him worriedly. If he were my friend, there'd be some serious "Is everything okay?" going on. But men don't operate that way — at least not in the presence of members of the opposite sex.
"Are you sure?" I asked, looking from him to Colin, which was the closest I could get to an "Is he going to be okay?" without actually saying it.
Martin answered by raising the hand not holding the shoe box. "Cheers."
"Cheers," Colin responded.
Neither of them sounded particularly cheery.
"Is he going to be all right?" I murmured. "He looks like his dog just died."
Colin glanced down at me in complete comprehension. "Not his dog, his girlfriend. She gave him the shaft last week."
"Oh!" I said, as memory hit. "Martin. The one who just had the bad breakup."
Colin nodded. "He's not exactly at his most sociable right now. They were together for four years."
"Ouch." I craned my head back over my shoulder, much the way one might rubberneck at roadkill, but Martin had already been obliterated by the shifting patterns of the crowd. "Poor guy."
Colin looked grim. "She rang him while we were in the store."
Since another ouch would be redundant, I said, "Does she want him back?"
"No. She wants to be friends."
"Poor Martin," I said softly. There's nothing worse than being strung on by an ex. Not that I would know. When I dumped Grant, I had done it cleanly — if it can be called cleanly to fling a ring in someone's face and hang up on all his subsequent calls. But at least I left him in no doubts as to my sentiments. Once you've called someone lying, cheating scum who belongs under the nearest rock, and called him that loudly and in public, there's just no going back.
"So," said Colin, looking down at me in a way that banished both Martin and the memory of evil exes from the horizon. "Shall we?"