‘What’s this?’ He comes to stand behind me, a hand on each hip.
‘A television set,’ I reply. He laughs.
He turns my body to face him, ignoring my protests about the scrambled eggs. ‘You didn’t have to do this, you know.’
Sudden panic. ‘Oh, did you need these eggs for something else? I can go out and get you some more now.’ I start to moveaway, completely forgetting that the stove is still on, but he stops me.
‘No, no, no,’ he says. He takes me by the shoulders and sits me down at the kitchen island and walks back to the stove, giving the eggs a stir. ‘You didn’t have to cook me breakfast. I should be cooking for you in my house.’
I shrug. ‘I was already up.’
‘Or you felt like you owed me for last night.’ His eyes are looking right through me as he spoons eggs onto toast and avocado. There’s really nowhere to hide from him. He cracks on some fresh pepper and passes a plate over to me. ‘You don’t, by the way. I’m not keeping score.’
Tears threaten to fall again. ‘You don’t own a hairbrush!’ I cry out. Because I’m not well. That’s the only explanation. Definitely not that I need a timely reminder of some small imperfection while he’s showing me up being all perfect.
He just smiles and hands me a fork. We eat opposite each other, not talking, him leaning against the bench.
I make him let me clean the dishes, which he allows because he has a dishwasher and it’s already been emptied. ‘What are you doing today?’ I ask.
‘Well, I was going to hang out with this girl I’ve been seeing.’ I totally forgot about that. I love that he has phrased it like that. I’m a girl someone’s seeing. ‘I was really looking forward to it, too.’
I take a step closer to him. ‘Hmm, she must be fun.’
He takes one too. ‘She is.’
Another. ‘Not at all an emotional wreck who calls at all hours of the night crying and dribbling snot all over you.’
We’re close enough to touch now, so we do. My arms around his neck, his around my waist, scandalously low. ‘She is, but I like her that way. She’s got a lot of personality.’
I grin, and we don’t talk much more after that.
It seems to be an unspoken decision that we’re spending the day together. Arthur doesn’t even let me panic about overstaying my welcome. At least, that’s what I think the point is when he says, ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ like four times in the space of an hour.
I, for one, am very glad when we take a shower together. And not just because I still stank of work gunk. And other gunk. Finally clean and armed with mugs of tea, we sit on opposite ends of the couch, legs entwined in the middle. The cricket is on in the background, but we’re only half watching, instead talking quietly from behind our mugs. Just getting to know each other. Like normal people do.
Around six o’clock, he broaches the subject of dinner. I suggest pizza and learn that Arthur doesn’t like cheese. I stare at him in shock, abandoning the takeaway app on my phone. ‘Wow, we’ve really glossed over that, yeah? For all your new-agey ally emotionally available man schtick, you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us.’
He laughs and nudges my calf with his foot. I kick mine back. We’re foot wrestling, which is inherently gross because feet are gross, but also kind of cute. After a few minutes, his head falls to the back of the couch. He’s panting. ‘You’re too far away,’ he says. So I put my empty mug down on the coffee table and lie down in the spoon of his body. We order burgersso I can have the kind with cheese oozing everywhere, and he can have a gross nude one.
The forty-five-minute wait starts to give me ideas.
‘Man, our bowling really sucks this year,’ he whispers in my ear. It really does. I don’t actually care. His hand is gently stroking my thigh, so I think he might have ideas too.
Ding.
I move to get off the couch to reach for my phone, but his arm darts out to keep me flush against him, nowhere to run. Not that there’s any world in which I want to. So I settle back into him.
Ding!
We ignore it again. Arthur grabs the remote and turns up the TV.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Jaunty music rings out.Bee calling.I let it go to voicemail, but my heart is starting to beat faster. When the music starts again almost immediately, I pull his arm off me and get up.
Answering the phone on speaker, I barely get out a passive-aggressive hello before I hear breathless crying on the other side of the phone. It’s hard to translate, but some parts are clear.
‘William…South-East Asia…One month…Single!’
