“No, he’s...” I shake my head. “Dean’s nice. I always liked him.”
“So,” Max says, “what did happen to that novel? You ever write it? Can I read it?”
“Ha! No.”
He smiles. “Not about me, is it?”
I jab him gently with my elbow. “Nope.”
“Think you’ll ever pick it up again? Writing novels was all you talked about, at uni.”
“Probably wasn’t realistic. I mean, at least at Supernova I’ll get to write on an actual salary.”
“Well, will you at least show me your traveling photos sometime?” Max says. “Be nice to see you again... as I knew you back then. If you know what I mean.”
“Oh.” I swallow. Now’s not the time or place to go into why I don’t have a single photo, no evidence at all that I was ever even there. “Yeah, okay.”
Max smiles, sips his drink. “Luce, have you had a chance to think yet... about what I said?”
Last weekend, I stayed with Max until Monday, when he was up early to catch the train to Leeds. I walked with him through the warm morning, beneath a milky sky, to the tube at Clapham Common.
“I want you back,” he whispered, as we paused on the pavementoutside. He smelled lovely, of aftershave and mouthwash. “I’ll do anything to make it work with you again.”
I said nothing, just hugged him back and kissed him, told him I’d see him Friday. And it didn’t seem right to discuss it over the phone while he was away. We stuck to lighter topics, like Max’s big case in Leeds and my final week of freedom, Jools and the house and Reuben’s narrow escape from a psychotic van driver after the pair of them got into a slanging match as he cycled along the Holloway Road.
I look up at Max now, into those storm-gray eyes. And I nod, just once. “I want to see where this goes. I want to give us a try.”
And in an instant, it is as though I have been momentarily dropped into my old life, because Max is scooping me up and whirling me round, whooping and laughing, just as he would have done in the students’ union all those years ago. And people are looking over and laughing too, even though they’re not in on the joke, and I’m grinning, my face braced against his shoulder, thinking,Yes. This is our time. It’s finally come.
—
The next morning, we go for brunch in a café close to Max’s flat. He tells me he stops there most days for espresso on his way to work, and sure enough, they greet him by his first name when we walk in. I wonder, fleetingly, how many women he’s come here with, the morning after the night before. I’m paranoid the waitress’s smile is partly code forYour secret’s safe with me.
The café’s nearly full, but we get the last table for two by the window, overlooking the road. The space is sunny and high-ceilinged, its chalkboard scrawled full of brunch offerings, the scent of coffee beans spiking the air.
It’s a warm day, and Max is weekend-casual in shorts and a T-shirt, sunglasses propped on top of his head. I keep catching sight of him andthinking,We’re really together. This is finally happening. We actually were meant to be, after all.
His skin is gleaming, his eyes bright. He snuck out for a run first thing this morning, even after all those cocktails last night and barely a couple of hours’ sleep when we got back to the flat.
“I feel guilty, Luce,” he says out of nowhere, as I’m dipping a sourdough shard into the molten middle of my poached egg.
“Guilty about what?”
“That you never got your degree. It was my fault you left uni, wasn’t it?”
I pause, leaving the toast speared into the egg like it’s been slayed. “I guess if we hadn’t broken up, I wouldn’t have quit. But it was my choice. Nobody forced me. I made that decision.”
“Have you ever thought about going back?”
“A degree’s just a piece of paper,” I say, though I’m not sure that’s true. Being a dropout affects everything—your CV, your self-confidence, your prospects—if you let it, which for a long time I did.
“What did your parents think?” he asks, raising his voice slightly above the pneumatic pulse of a coffee grinder.
“They were sad for us.”
“I meant about you dropping out.”
“Actually... they weren’t really thinking about that. And neither was I, at the time.” I stop short of saying it was my broken heart that everyone was worried about, to retain some level of dignity if nothing else.
