Chapter Thirty-Two

'How long will you keep this up for?'

I'm thirty-one years old, independently wealthy, and have for many years been allowed to choose my own haircuts, but this question makes me seventeen again. After all, Paul used to tell me what to wear, how to think, who to speak to. Paul used to remind me that, if I didn't look perfect, no one cared if I was good. And Paul was right.

Now he's sitting opposite me, looking a little older but even more confident, and he's telling me what to do again.

It doesn't matter that I shiver when I see him. Those dark memories are locked away and I won't open them again. That's why I'm meeting him for lunch, to discuss his newest projects: because I'm a professional, not a teenager, and this is what professionals do.

'You're not even the best commissioner in your team of two, Nas,' Paul continues. 'How many years left before she kicks you down the ladder?'

I roll my eyes at this. Paul doesn't know Ellie. She might eventually put me down, like a sick dog, but she'd be heartbroken over it.

'Come back to acting,' Paul begs. He stirs his drink—his second pint, noon, early start—and tries to catch my eyes. I won't look at him. 'Commissioning takes people skills, and that's not your strength. Pretending: that's what you're good at.'

Damn it. He's right. I hated it, sure. But no one did it better.

I brush off Paul's insistence with a few curt words. I won't perform in his stupid new idea, which is somehow even more racist than the last. I may be insecure and a little aimless, but I'm not stupid enough to return to the producer who hurt me.

Yet as I walk back to the office, I know I met him for a reason. I wanted to feel this small. I wanted someone to remind me that I can't do this, because for months, I've felt that.

A few months ago, the director of Pendleton suggested that I should act in the next season. I hated the idea. I never mentioned it to Ellie, mostly because I hated it, but partly because I thought she'd be delighted. It would be the perfect way to get rid of me.

But why not?

My entire body is trembling with something: fear, maybe, or courage.

I stride up the stairs of the cinema screening, because even heartsick, tired, and indecisive, I can't leave her waiting for me.

I hated acting, but I was great at it. Why shouldn't I return to it?

I could leave her alone, like she so obviously wants. She could watch me on her laptop and turn her ring around and around, wanting me, missing me.

Wasn't it so good to be perfect? To be admired and lusted after and handsome, to have everyone look at me like they wanted me, to never show weakness? Wasn't it good to know that no one knew I was afraid?

What has goodness gotten me? A dead-end job, no real friends, trapped in love with a woman who despises me.

She despises me because she knows me. But she'd want me if she saw me onscreen. Everyone did.

And she's engaged. She's fucking engaged. A good man wouldn't want her at all.

But I do.

Be perfect.

Be good.

Be perfect.

Be good.

In the flickering light, she looks at me and I know, with absolute certainty, that she wants me. Nothing else is clear, but I know this.

Fuck it.

I kiss her.

For one horrible moment, she freezes. I have just destroyed my entire life. I'm accosting my colleague in our office, for God's sake. It's over.

And then her fingers tangle in my hair.

My mind short-circuits, walking a tightrope between dread and joy. At first, she's hesitant, pressing her lips softly against mine. All I can think is that I need her closer. It's like my entire body coils around her, into a perfect knot of anticipation, until she opens her lips and I can finally taste her. I hum and there's that hiccup laugh I know so well. There's those long, delicate hands, brushing against my leg. It's her, it's Ellie, just like I imagined.

She moans into my lips. Where is my hand? I'm halfway down her buttons, she's nearly on top of me, we—she's engaged.

We're at work and she's engaged.

I rip myself away.

This is why I never touched her. It's not because I'm a good man. It's because I knew she'd kiss me and then I'd lose her, forever.

This is what that feels like.

I don't know what she's seeing on my face but her hand reaches for me, like she can staunch the wound. Too late, of course, much too late.

'God, I'm sorry,' I tell her, but that doesn't matter. All too late. 

*

Chapter Fifty-Three

I have never been so simultaneously happy and anxious. The two feelings feed each other.

It's awful to nearly have something you want. So much worse than not having it at all. She's not my girlfriend, or my wife, or even really my friend. She won't hold my hand. But I woke up this morning with her hair curling across my neck and I don't know how to forget that.

Maybe I'm being a little weird, though. I probably shouldn't monitor her coffee intake. I need a better way to communicate that I love her.

She must know that, though. I've been saying it for years.

I'm convincingly staring at my screen as I ponder how to work. Should I just ask her to date me? It's only been a few weeks, but surely that's where this is going. Unless she's dating other people?

Don't think about that. Push that thought way, way away.

She's staring at me.

'You're staring at me,' I say, just to keep things interesting.

'Are you sick? What's going on?'

Maybe I just have to ask her out. Or she has to ask me. Surely the ball's in her court now.

Unless she's old-fashioned? Maybe she wants a traditional relationship? Courtship, or something?

I suddenly understand how quickly her anxiety spirals. It's like I'm contagious. My own thoughts are contaminating me.

'I'm seeing my parents tonight. You'd get along. They also think I'm too dramatic,' I tell her. This feels like word vomit, but the link is clear to me: I was afraid to be close to them, and I'm afraid to be close to you, but I'm starting to think that love only grows when you push beyond the fear.

Maybe I could have been clearer, because she's still looking worried.

And then I say the stupidest thing imaginable. 'Do you want to meet my parents?'

What the hell?

What was I thinking?

We've slept together once. She spell-checked my email this morning. We're hardly at the 'meeting the parents' stage. But also, somehow, I know her so intimately that there's nothing I could discover. No one's ever known me like she does, either. So why not? Whatever this is, it's not early days.

Hold my hand, meet my parents, marry me: say yes. Say yes to it all, or end this. I can't exist in limbo anymore.

My anxiety stops, just like that. It's simple, really. I love her, I will continue to love her, and I loved her when she loved another man, which will almost certainly damn me for eternity but will also be worth it. She just has to push through the fear, too.

She's shaking her head. She's saying something about being colleagues, and this is so transparent that it's almost offensive. Colleagues. Okay.

'I thought you loved casual flings,' she says. I've been objectified before. I know what I look like. But I've never heard it from her, and by the time she says, 'Because we're... us,' I'm hardly a man anymore. I'm just a punctured hope.

I have lost her.

The thought is like an amputation. My mind reaches for her but there is only pain.

I have lost her.

I have lived three years of never having her: I have lived three months of slowly knowing her. And now I have lost her, and for so long I thought that she loved someone else that it is less of a shock than a fact that I have finally learned. Of course she doesn't love me. I have known that all along.

Maybe storming out is dramatic, but it's literally all I have left. 

*

Chapter Fifty-Eight and a Half

Not for the first time, I'm reminded how good things come to people who don't deserve them.

It turns out that if you reach out to old friends, they'll welcome you back. If you admit you have a lot to learn, you can start a new career. And if you love a woman who's hurting, even if you're horrible to each other, she may eventually love you too.

All these thoughts are floating, incoherently, in my mind as I trace circles on her thigh. The coffee I made us is cold and untouched on the kitchen table. Her bra is hanging from the windowsill. Reconciliation is easy.

'I think we need to practise arguing,' she murmurs in my ear.

'Three years wasn't enough?'

'We weren't having make-up sex for three years,' she whispers. 'I didn't know what I was missing.'

'I did.'

Her eyelids flutter against my collar.

When I was a boy, I was always in a hurry. If I didn't decide something quickly, I didn't decide it at all. Ice cream? Love it. The new Imam? Hate him. My mother would tell me, 'Nasir, some things you have to wait for: more than a few minutes, sometimes more than a few days.' I couldn't imagine anything worth that. I couldn't imagine being in one place, doing one thing, for long enough to wait.

But I think I understand now. Hearing her sigh in her sleep? I have waited years for this, and every moment has been worth it.