‘Fair enough,’ he says, grinning back. ‘Just checking you weren’t being made to push the Colombian or I’ll have to have words with Phil. Phil owns this place,’ Finn says to me as an aside. ‘I have to keep him on his toes about treating my students with respect.’
He and Asha fist bump.
‘Are you really a professor?’ I say as we take a seat up against a wall, where all the tables are crammed incredibly close together.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I am really a professor. I even have theround-rimmed glasses for work. Joke.’
‘Wow,’ I say.
He hasn’t added any sugar to his coffee. No sweet tooth, then. I’d really like one of the pastries they have on the counter, but I feel a bit shy about getting food. Shy but not tensed up. That’s something. Maybe I can do this once and never do it again. Block his number, something like that.Get a grip, Sid. Just think of him as a work colleague.
‘Are you hungry?’ he says. ‘You have that hungry look about you.’
‘I was working through lunch, though I had a bit of a sandwich,’ I say.
‘What do you want?’ He gets up quickly. ‘I’ll get us something sweet, savoury? I know you have only half an hour, but let me feed you.’
‘I’ll have one of those Portuguese tarts,’ I say.
‘Nice choice, I’ll have one too.’
He’s back in a moment and we start biting into the tarts.
The glory of the creamy lemony filling lets my lungs expand and warm feelings flood me.
‘That’s lovely,’ I say. ‘Sometimes sweet things are the answer.’
‘I agree,’ he says.
‘I thought you cyclists were very careful about what you ate?’
‘We are, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have something nice now and then. Go on, tell me about your day; you wanted to talk work.’
‘Well, what else are we going to talk about? We don’t know each other.’
‘We could discuss our childhoods.’
‘New friends don’t normally get on to their childhoods until at least the third or fourth meeting. So let’s go with work OK? Pretend we are colleagues.’
I blink at him, hoping that didn’t sound as mad out loud as it does in my head. I’m not normally like this. I’m a professional, can have professional conversations, but, right now, I feel a little unhinged.
‘OK. So, tell me about your work, maybe?’ Finn leans in, nodding in encouragement.
I sit a bit more comfortably into my chair now we’re on solid ground and I start. He does that lovely thing of listening, of not interrupting every five moments, which was what Marc did, but then, that was different.
‘And the people?’ he prompts, when I’ve finished telling him about my new project.
‘The people are great. Adrienne is our boss and she’s fearless. I really admire that about her.’ I pause, tart gone, halfway down my coffee. ‘She’s genuinely afraid of nobody.’
I realise suddenly that I’ve let all my protective barriers down and I can feel the stinging in my eyes signalling that without immediate intervention, my eyes are going to fill with tears.
Startlingly, I get the sense that he has picked up on this too.
‘That must be cold,’ he says in kind tones, looking into my cup. ‘I’ll get us more.’
He’s back in a minute but it’s enough time for me to have recovered, to have dabbed at my eyes and bitten the inside of my mouth, which is a painful but effective ‘come back to the here and now’ technique they don’t teach in cognitive behavioural therapy.
He sits down and says lightly: ‘Now, my work. Can’t have you hogging the limelight. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into. My oldest friends don’t ask me about work anymore because they say I get carried away...’
