This is a Love Story (21 page)

But I wasn’t going to put a kiss. She put a kiss, but I wouldn’t be sucked in so easily. I was going to play hard to get. I had tried playing by my own rules and avoiding office romances, but this would just be a bit of fun – so I told myself.

Wow, she had replied already.

A capital kiss this time, nice work.

I leaned back in my chair and looked at my latest illustration. I was quite happy with it. It was a far cry from my frustrated scribblings at the start of the year. In fact, I was quite happy with life.

Just lately I had been feeling really inspired, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I thought a lot of it might be down to just accepting the way things were and having fun. I had spent a lot of time panicking about how my pre-thirty vision was not quite going to plan, and how much I loved Sienna. But somehow, I’d managed to cast all that aside and learned to live in the moment.

It was probably all about enjoying the journey. That’s what a stranger told me on a bus some weeks ago, and although it seemed ironic at the time, I really understand it now. Do I really want to hit eighty and regret how much time I spent worrying about the future in my twenties and thirties, when actually everything worked out just fine anyway? I can’t think of anything worse. What I’m learning, and slowly, is how to get the balance right. To work really hard, to be ambitious, to be a go-getter, but also to give myself a break when things aren’t quite going to plan. If you’re trying hard and working to improve every day, then what more can you do?

I still can’t help but love Sienna, though. I adore her. Looking at her still makes me melt somewhere deep in my soul. Her presence lifts me up more than anyone else I know. Thinking about her fills me with happiness. What we have is unique. But I have accepted that she will never be mine, so I have to just love her from a distance and move on. It’s working. It really is. I am finally achieving peace.

It was tough at first, weaning myself off something that I was so addicted to. It started off strangely. I had all these crazy dreams about her; I could be anywhere – a train station, a supermarket, a shopping centre – and I would see her. I could tell it was her so I would try to tap her on the shoulder to talk, but when she turned round her face was blurred out. Once we were in a library and I could see her through the gaps in a bookshelf. I would try to tell her I loved her, but she didn’t know who I was.

So many nights I woke in a cold sweat. So often my finger hovered above her name on my mobile contacts list. I even wrote a letter once, but I screwed it up and threw it away. I felt like I was losing my mind.

Now I realise that I was sweating her out. And she’s gone now. Not literally, obviously – I still see her, and we still hang out, but less often. When I do see her, I go and have dinner with her and George at the flat. It’s less intense that way, and her father loves it.

The yearning is more of a quiet nagging, rather than the raging fire it once was. I can see other women now. I can look at them and appreciate them. It’s like the blindfold has been pulled from my eyes and I’ve been set free – and I love it. I can actually
want
someone else.

And right now, I want Chloe Rogers. Not in a ‘Let’s play chess, go for a stroll round a National Trust property, and have a latte and a toasted teacake’ kind of way. I want Chloe in a naughty weekend in the country kind of way, one that doesn’t involve stepping out of the hotel room unless a fire alarm goes off. Oh no . . .

It was eleven o’clock, my turn to make the coffees and also time for Tom’s weekly prank. It had been a long while . . . A promotion was on the horizon so I was behaving myself more than usual, and working crazy hours to boot.

I rose from my desk and stalked out into the office, my bright blue trainers shuffling against the scratchy polyester carpet. The sound of hurried typing and quiet phone calls could be heard across the room; everyone was deep in concentration including Sienna, who was leaning so close to her computer screen I wondered if she wasn’t due for an eye appointment.

Chloe was sitting opposite her; she grinned at me then looked down at her keyboard. I gave her my special smile, the one I reserve for girls I fancy. It’s often met with a look of disgust and horror, but she tucked her hair behind her ear and her fingers lingered around the bottom of one of the strands. That’s supposed to be a good sign, right? Girls play with their hair when they like you. Fact.

‘Boo!’ I dug my index fingers into Sienna’s shoulders and she almost headbutted the screen in shock.

‘For fuck’s sake, Nick!’ she shrieked, slapping me hard across the stomach and frowning.

I drew a chair up next to hers and started indiscriminately closing all the windows on her computer, one of which seemed to be a heated eBay bidding war for a pair of leather boots.

‘Nick, stop it!’ she whispered, pushing my hands out of the way and knocking over a small glass of water in the process. She started to laugh.

I tried to help her mop it up but accidentally wiped the majority of it onto her lap. She gasped in shock as the cold water soaked into her dress, giving me another evil look that soon melted into a grin.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, pushing her smiling face towards mine and flicking great blobs of water into my hair with her left hand. Sienna could never really be angry with me.

She looked lovely today, in a close-fitting flowery dress with tights and ankle boots. Her hair was even longer now. It struck me how much it had grown since I’d first met her.

‘Nothing really, Si. Just wanted to annoy you a little and I think it worked. When can we do some city exploring? It’s been ages . . .’ I gave her my best sulky face. I had learned it from my grandmother’s dog, Suki, who was quite literally a spoiled bitch. The queen of getting what she wanted, Suki had skills I wanted to learn.

But I wasn’t kidding about it being ages. It really had been. I was all for the giving it some space theory, but this was possibly a bit much.

‘Hmm, let me have a look.’ She pulled out her burgundy diary and started frantically flicking through the pages. A few receipts fell out, then some guy’s business card. I wondered who that was . . .

‘Looks like I’m busy for . . . well . . . the rest of my life . . . Sorry, buddy!’ She shrugged her shoulders, a cheeky smile painting her features. I dropped my head towards my lap and sighed.

‘Just kidding, sweetheart. I’ll text you a couple of weekends I have free and we’ll get something sorted,’ she added, her hand on my arm. ‘I do miss you a bit,’ she whispered in my ear, looking like she instantly regretted it.

I noticed Chloe surreptitiously peeping over the partition; as soon as her eyes met mine she looked back at her screen.

I shifted away from Sienna a little, aware that our closeness was a bit odd. It was hardly giving off the right vibes if I wanted to get involved with Chloe.

As I started to stand up I leaned towards Sienna, moving a great drape of glossy brown hair away from her perfect little ear. ‘I miss you too, Si,’ I said so quietly it was almost a breath, and walked away.

A deep and tangible emptiness was returning. Come on, Nick. Be strong, please. You’ve been doing so well, I told myself.

‘Nick!’ I heard a familiar yell as I walked towards the kitchen. The call of the Tomcat distracted me from my sudden downward spiral.

My gangly friend put his arm around my waist as we walked into the kitchen, wiggling his bottom like a woman. It was so embarrassing when he did that. It was a wind-up for the sake of a middle-aged lady called Delia, who is something of a homophobe and is convinced that Tom and I are embroiled in some kind of love affair. Delia, who was standing by the kettle, threw her spoon into the sink and stormed out in a huff. Obviously discrimination was still alive and well, then . . .

‘Fancy going for a burger at lunch?’ asked Tom, pulling out a series of mugs from the cupboard.

‘I can’t mate, really sorry,’ I responded, picking out the green one for myself. I loved that mug. Sienna’s dad gave it to me.

Tom threw teabags into the line of cups from a distance, missing most of them.

‘Meeting?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Wank?’

‘No.’

‘Dump?’

‘No.’

‘Doctor’s appointment?’

‘No.’

‘Girl?’ came his final guess, hitting the nail on the head.

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on. It must be a girl,’ he probed, running a bony hand through his floppy hair, which was about to envelope his face if he wasn’t careful.

‘No, not at all. I might, actually, just want some peace and quiet away from babysitting you. By the way, speaking of girls, have you scared away that Fiona or whatever her name is yet?’ I laughed, prodding him in the side with a fork.

‘No, Nick. It’s going really well, actually,’ he retorted, flouncing out of the kitchen with one of his shoelaces undone. He was such a weird one.

I grabbed the bag of sugar from the bottom shelf and filled his mug three quarters of the way up with pure sugar granules, then disguised it with a teabag, milk and a tiny bit of water. He was going to love this.

I delivered the sickly sweet concoction to Tom’s desk a few minutes later. ‘There you go, pal,’ I said, careful not to thump the mug down on his desk through the sheer weight of it.

‘Thanks, Nick,’ he replied, staring at the computer.

I skulked back into my office.

Seconds later I heard a cry of ‘Pah!’ and a loud slamming noise, which resembled the sound of a mug full of sugar being bashed onto a wooden surface.

‘Right, that’s it!’ he shouted, storming into my office. He was laughing already. ‘This, Nick, is for you.’ He thrust his arm forward and a sudden wave of water washed over me, covering my face, hair, T-shirt and worse, my lap. I didn’t even have time to move away from it. The cheeky sod . . .

Tom stood there holding an empty plastic cup with a lot less water in it than there had been a few seconds earlier. He had a look of pure joy on his face, a smile of shock, pleasure and fear all at the same time. Like he couldn’t quite believe he had done it. It was a little like the first time you stood up to the school bully, although the first time I did that I got socked in the mouth in the changing room before I had the chance to smile. You had to hand it to the boy. He’d put up with a lot of my wind-ups for quite a long time. It was a good job Ant was out at a meeting though, since as unprofessional as he can be, I doubt this would have thrilled him.

A small crowd had assembled outside my office door; there was a lot of nervous giggling. ‘Nice comeback there, Tom.’ I rose to my feet and shook his hand. He looked decidedly nervous. Then I picked up my bin and slammed it on his head, sheets of paper fluttering onto the floor and a banana skin hanging over his nose. Ah, that was better . . .

Sienna

‘Right then, are you sure you’re ready?’

Pete stood opposite me, his hands on both my shoulders. The hair on his chin was growing thick and fast. His bottom lip was cut from where he had tried to bite open the plastic casing on a padlock he’d been given for his backpack. He looked like he had been in a fight.

‘Yes I am. Ready as ever. I have a two-hour lunch today, so no pressure.’ I started to walk, pulling his arm until it was linked with mine.

We’d had a very hot summer this year, which I hoped had made things a bit easier. He told me he spent most of his nights on his favourite common in Balham, under the biggest tree, with his most cherished books by Dan Brown and Bill Bryson. While I would still rather have my double bed, it was a great comfort to know he was relatively happy, under the circumstances.

We walked quickly, side by side. I was wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans, with high-heeled sandals from Topshop and a black, skinny-fit shirt. He was in his usual get- up of faded T-shirt and brown combat trousers. There was a huge hole in the right knee.

‘Aren’t you embarrassed to walk with me like this?’ Pete asked me. I could feel his arm tense up as I gripped it close to my ribs.

‘No. Of course not. Why on earth would I be?’ I pretended not to know what he meant. I really wanted his time with me to be good. He hadn’t had much of that lately. I didn’t want him to feel like an outcast – I wanted him to belong.

‘Well, because I’m homeless and I look awful. And it’s just a bit unusual, really. People like you, well, they don’t tend to hang out with people like me, that’s all,’ he said quietly.

‘But here’s the thing. People like me and people like you are the same,’ I replied, smiling at him as the sun beamed down on our heads.

Pete chuckled and smiled back. ‘I don’t know about that, Si. Not any more. But thank you,’ he finished, throwing a lump of gum into a bin as we walked past.

‘So what are you going to show me, then?’ I asked. I had no idea what on earth it could be. Some might call me a lunatic for going somewhere alone with a homeless man I barely knew. But I had a good feeling about him.

‘I can’t say yet. But I promise, it’s just a ten-minute walk from here.’ He looked so excited, traces of what looked like youth creeping into the grey skin on his face. For the first time ever, there was a rosy glow to his cheeks.

They had given him quite a few new outfits at the centre he goes to on a Thursday, but his T-shirt was still pretty tired and for some reason he was wearing these ripped trousers when I knew there were much nicer ones in his backpack. On the other hand, he was also wearing the almost new pair of Merrells I’d found at the charity shop, which looked much smarter than the boots he used to wear.

‘OK, I’ll take your word for it . . . I got something for you earlier,’ I said, digging my hand into my bag. Now this was good food.