The Piano Man Project (16 page)

Sleep, sobriety and coffee threw fresh light on things. It was a hideous plan.

She could hardly march over there and demand to be kissed, and Honey wasn’t prepared to try to inveigle him into it. If Hal ever kissed her again she wanted it to be because he wanted to, not because she’d artificially seduced him in order to conduct a very unscientific experiment.

Honey thought of him as she went through the motions of eating leftover bolognese for dinner – he’d been right about it being better the day after, thankfully. She could of course try taking some over to him again, but he’d probably ignore her or insult her. She swung between being spitting mad at him for being so pig-headed and feeling compassion towards him because if she didn’t call on him no one else would, which ultimately led her back to being pissed off at him because he was such a royal pain in the ass that he’d most likely driven away anyone who cared about him. Hal hadn’t just landed here from the moon. He was a man; a man who must have friends, family, a past, yet none of it seemed to have followed him here. How could that be? Did they even know where he was? Christ, he could have a wife and children for all she knew.

Honey thought about him some more, decided sobriety was overrated, and poured herself a glass of red. The man lived here under the same roof with her, for God’s sake. Surely she was entitled to know more about him than just his first name.

Was he asleep over there? Or was he awake, drinking whisky straight from the bottle? Would he be mad at her for not knocking today, for denying him the chance to yell at her to piss off? Or would he be lonesome? The thought of Hal being lonely over there because she’d neglected him had her glancing at the boxed-up razor that had been sitting on her living room shelf for days.

It was as good a reason as any. She wouldn’t sleep unless she at least tapped his door. Did that make her an interfering neighbour? Was Honey the wannabe girl guide he accused her of being? Perhaps, a little. But the bigger part of her couldn’t resist the chance to see him. Maybe he’d answer. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way she found herself suddenly between their doors, the floor tiles cool beneath her bare feet.

‘Hal.’ She spoke quietly without knocking, sounding like a teenager at her forbidden boyfriend’s bedroom window. ‘Hal, are you awake?’

It was only a little after nine so she was almost certain he must be. When he didn’t answer, she tapped lightly on his door.

‘Hal, please. Talk to me.’

The lengthening silence made her sigh and lean her forehead against his door. There was no sound from inside his flat. Talking to him had become rather like writing a diary, cathartic but solitary.

‘Please, Hal. Open the door. Or at least let me know you’re alive in there. Throw something at the door or something.’

He didn’t, but Honey didn’t panic. This had happened regularly enough now for her to know he was most likely listening and choosing to ignore her, which pissed her off beyond measure. She glanced down at the razor box in her hand.

‘I have something for you, though I don’t know why I’m bothering seeing as you can’t be arsed to answer me. I’m getting pretty sick of this, for the record.’ She banged her forehead lightly in the silence. ‘Is this it, Hal? You’re going to keep giving me the silent treatment until I give up and go away forever? Is that what you do to everyone in your life? To your family, your friends? Treat them like crap until they stop bothering anymore? Because I’m there too now. Just so you know, I’m right on the edge of never knocking on your door again.’

Honey knew that she was probably overstepping the mark, but then wasn’t that the whole point to this conversation? To push his boundaries, to force him out of this interminable, painful silence? She wanted her nightly companion back. She wanted her five minutes of Hal-ness, that precious time that had all too easily become the highlight of her day. How had he even done that? He certainly hadn’t charmed her into wanting to spend time with him; he was borderline offensive most of the time. He called her Mother Teresa and mocked every aspect of her life, and then he kissed her until she saw stars and wanted to rip his clothes off. So yes. Maybe she did want to offend him a little. To piss him off the same way he pissed her off, to rile him out of his goddamn complacency and back into the real world, a world where people took risks and sometimes hurt each other and sometimes kissed each other until they felt better again.

At some point during these thoughts she heard him moving along the hall, and her heartbeat inched up several notches.

‘Open the door, Hal. I know you’re there.’

‘Don’t ever mention my family again, you hear me?’ He bellowed at her full force, making her step back from the door in shock. ‘You know fuck all about me, or my family, or my friends. You hear me, woman?’

‘Oh, I hear you, Hal,’ she shouted back, feeling her temper snap. ‘Is it even Hal? Or have you lied about who you are? Not that I’ve any right to ask, of course. I’m just the idiot who likes you enough to bring you food and whisky and take your shit when no one else does. Well. Excuse. Bloody. Me.’ The wine had loosened her tongue just enough to reach the point of absolute honesty, and it felt treacherously good to let the words out. Liberating, in fact. She considered storming back to her own flat, but because she knew with one hundred per cent certainty that he wouldn’t follow her she stayed where she was.

His door opened. Not the way she’d grown accustomed to; inch-by-inch, just enough to hear her. This time it was thrown wide on its hinges, and Hal stood there in the doorway, seeming to tower over her tonight in her bare feet.

‘What do you want from me? A potted fucking history?’ he blazed, his body stiff with anger. ‘What exactly is it you’d like to know, eh? My name? My name is Benedict Hallam, and yes, I have a family. A mother, a father, a sister. And yes, I have friends. Or else I thought I did, until the fuckers decided a friend who couldn’t see anymore didn’t quite fit in with their party image. I had a life, Honeysuckle, and it was a fucking good one. I was
someone
. Someone with a girfriend, with my own fancy fucking restaurant and my own fancy fucking customers, okay?’ His chest heaved. ‘And now I’m no one, just some sad bloke who can’t see and relies on the charity of his do-gooder neighbour for scraps from her table and schoolboy fumbles. Fucking pathetic, in other words.’

Honey stared at him, trying to process everything he’d said around the hurt of his dismissal of their kiss as a schoolboy fumble.

‘I don’t see pathetic when I look at you,’ she said quietly. ‘I just see someone in trouble.’

He laughed harshly. ‘And you just can’t resist the urge to jump right in and save me, can you? But who are you really doing it for, Honey? Me, or so you can feel good about yourself when you close your eyes at night?’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you, if that’s what you’re getting at,’ she said, wanting to shake him. ‘I mean, of course I’m sorry that you feel so … so shit, and that something awful happened to make you lose your sight, but don’t for one minute think that I knock on your door and bring you things because I feel sorry for you.’

‘Then why, Honeysuckle? Why don’t you just leave me the hell alone?’

‘Because for some unfathomable reason even I can’t identify, I happen to bloody like you! You make me laugh when you’re not being downright rude to me, you’re randomly sweet when I don’t expect it, and your smile does weird stuff to my brain, probably because it’s like one of those endangered animals that you have to wait forever to see at the zoo and then you stare really hard at because you know you might not see it again for a really long time. Or ever. Okay? I just like being with you.’

Okay, maybe that wine had loosened her tongue a little too much. She felt as winded as he looked.

‘Don’t treat me like your pet fucking project, Honeysuckle. I’m not some endangered goddamn panda that you get to come over and visit with bamboo sticks to tempt me out of my hut.’

She glanced down at the razor in her hands. Not bamboo sticks, but was he right? Was she here with an offering to tempt him out? And if she was, what was so sodding wrong about that anyway? She didn’t see anyone else queuing up here for no other reason than to brighten his day.

‘You know what, Hal? You’re absolutely right. About everything. All of it. I don’t know what I was thinking bothering to come over here and bring you a gift you so blatantly don’t bloody want!’ She thrust the razor into his hands hard enough to catch him in the guts with the corners of the box.

‘Here. Stick your bamboo where the sun doesn’t shine.’

She turned on her heel before he had a chance to respond, stomping across the hallway and slamming her door.

‘Honey? Open the door.’

She was still standing with her back against her front door when Hal’s voice vibrated through it a couple of minutes later.

‘Thank you for the bamboo.’

His gentle tone caught her off guard, too close to her ear. She swallowed hard.

‘It’s a razor,’ she mumbled, opening the door.

‘So I gathered,’ he said, turning the opened box over in his hands. ‘You better come over and help me work out how to use it then.’

He said it oh-so-softly, then he held his hand out. Honey stared at his hand for a second, her breath lodged almost painfully in her throat. It was such a simple, powerful gesture, impossible to ignore or resist. She knew that she would get herself into all kinds of trouble really fast if she went into his flat, yet she placed her hand in his anyway and let him lead her across the hallway.

She’d never been inside the flat before, but it was a mirror image of her own place across the hall, or as hers had been when she’d moved in. Pale walls, simple, uncluttered spaces designed for the rental market. Over time she’d made her place her own; bright, primary-coloured coat hooks, a pretty blind that had come into the shop, a string of fairy lights woven into her bedstead. Small touches that made a big difference. Hal’s place lacked any of those things, but then he hadn’t been here long and it was pretty obvious that soft furnishings were meaningless in his life right now. His earlier speech had told her many new things about him that she needed to mull over, but not right now. Right now he was giving her that ten per cent of fabulous, and she didn’t want to waste a second of it.

‘In the lounge?’ she said.

‘It’s more conventional to do it in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Assuming we’re still talking about shaving?’

Honey appreciated his attempt to make light of this unexpected turn of events and followed him along the hallway to the bathroom. He pulled the cord and illuminated the room with a wash of bright light, and then lowered the lid on the loo and sat on the closed seat.

‘So have you ever shaved anyone before?’ he asked.

‘You want me to do it?’ she said, surprised. She’d sort of figured on unpacking the razor and passing it to him to do it himself.

‘I’d think twice if it were a cut-throat, but I’m assuming it’s an electric safety razor. I’m fairly certain you can’t kill me.’

Honey picked open the seal on the box and slid the razor out into her hands.

‘Is there a trimmer?’ he asked. ‘You’ll need to take off the length with that before using the razor.’ He skimmed his hand over his jaw. ‘It’s too long to go at with a razor right away.’

Honey located the trimmer using the instruction leaflet and slotted it together, then plugged the cord into the socket beside the bathroom mirror. The tiny room felt as if the walls were closing in, pressing her closer to Hal. He turned his head to one side, exposing his neck, and then sighed and dropped his head.

‘Hold on, Honey. There’s something I need to do.’

After a couple of still seconds he lifted his face and reached for his dark glasses. Honey froze, realising what he was going to do a second before he slid them slowly off, folding them and placing them carefully beside the sink. Honey drew in a quiet breath and looked at him, really looked at him. He sat as tense as a man in the dock waiting for judgment. This was the first time he’d allowed her to see him without the protection of his shades, aside from the few seconds when he’d fallen in the hallway when they’d first met.

Hands down, Hal had the world’s most beautiful eyes. Warm brown flecked with golden amber shards, fringed all the way around with long dark lashes. Eyes to melt in, and it hurt her heart to know that such incredible eyes could no longer see.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed, thinking,
thank you for trusting me
.

He turned his head in profile again. ‘You could hardly do it with them stuck on my face. Start at one side and work your way around.’

Honey buzzed the trimmer into life in her hand, getting a feel for it before putting it anywhere near his face.

‘Are you sure about this, Hal?’ she said, suddenly apprehensive as she moved the razor towards him and then away again.

‘Relax, Honey. It doesn’t really matter if you balls it up. My social calendar is embarrassingly empty,’ he said. ‘Just do it.’

Honey braced her shoulders. She could do this. Stepping around into the tight space between Hal’s denim-clad legs and the bathroom counter and holding his chin lightly with one hand, she touched the trimmer against the dark fuzz at the side of his neck.

‘Like this?’ she said, uncertain and hyper-aware of the heat of his body close to hers.

‘Like that,’ he murmured as she stroked it up the length of his neck towards his jaw. ‘Try to keep your hand steady. You’re shaking.’

Honey watched as the trimmer sliced away the length from his beard in slow methodical strokes, revealing dark stubble in its place. Dark, sexy stubble. ‘Nice and easy,’ he whispered when she tried to go too fast, and then he closed his eyes. His words. Oh his quiet, sexy words.

The urge to kiss him was overwhelming. Stifling. She wanted to hear him murmur those same words when he was naked and hard in her hand. Was he turned on, too? His eyes were still closed as she pressed her fingertips to his jaw and tilted his head the other way.

‘No one’s ever done this for me before,’ he said, his words gravel in his throat. ‘I like it.’ His arm rested along the counter behind her, and her backside grazed his splayed palm when she squeezed around him.