‘I’m glad you did.’
Anna didn’t reply with words but with a smile that started off small and just grew bigger and bigger, seemingly of its own accord.
‘Back in the summer, you told me you weren’t ready.’
Anna nodded. ‘I know.’
‘But you are now?’
Anna could see the questions in his eyes, but they didn’t annoy her like those of her friends and family did. These questions belonged there. He had a right to them after all the mixed signals she’d been giving him. If Anna was a traffic light, she’d been flickering between amber and red where Jeremy was concerned. ‘I am.’
‘What changed?’
‘I have,’ she said simply, realizing that this was the truth. She no longer felt like a zombie stumbling through life in a haze.
‘I want you to know I’m not just after a fling. I’m looking for something more serious.’
Anna sighed. ‘You might have already guessed this, but you’re the first person I’ve dated since Spencer passed away. It all feels a bit new and bit strange…’
She looked up and he didn’t seem fazed or perplexed, just accepting. It gave her the courage to carry on. She needed to be honest with him from the start, give him a chance to back out if they weren’t on the same page. ‘I’m not sure I can promise you forever, Jeremy, especially not on a first date. I’m not even sure I believe inforeveranymore. I mean, the ‘till death do us part’ bit still looms over that concept like a large black thundercloud.’
‘I’m not asking for that,’ he said, his eyes crinkling as he gave her a gentle smile.‘Just that you’re willing to see where this goes. And I know this isn’t easy for you, that we might have to take things step by step.’
Anna understood what he was asking for. A green light. Not to the end of a road that stretched out forever, but he was looking for a sign. Something. She reckoned she was ready forsomething. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see where this goes too.’
IT FELT STRANGE walking down the road with a man, a man who wasn’t Spencer. Strange, but not awful.
Anna had deliberately left her car at home, partly because she’d wanted the fresh air on the twenty-minute walk to La Cucina to clear her head before the date, and partly because she suspected a couple of glasses of wine might bolster her courage. She’d been intending to call a cab at the end of the evening, but Jeremy had suggested walking her back and they’d been having such a good time she hadn’t been ready to end the evening yet. However, as she got closer to home, she started to wonder if this had been a mistake.
What is he expecting?she thought as they turned into her road.
She wasn’t ready to ask him inside her house. Not even a little bit. Not even for ‘coffee’ that actuallymeant‘coffee’. It would be too weird. This was the house she and Spencer had planned to build a life in, and she couldn’t imagine another masculine presence inside it.Baby steps, she told herself.Baby steps.
And those baby steps eventually brought her right outside her house. Anna opened the gate and glanced at Jeremy as he released her hand and let her walk up the path in front of him. She couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t get any hint of what he thought the next five minutes – or longer – might hold. It unnerved her and her heart began to thud. When she got to the front door, she stopped and turned. Her voice came out thin, her tone patchy. ‘It was a lovely evening.’
He stepped in closer, until their faces were only centimetres apart. ‘It still is.’
Not Spencer!her little internal alarm squawked. It was the first time she’d heard it that evening, but even now it was weak and half-hearted. Instead of reacting to it as she normally did, she turned and faced it. Replied to it.
No, he’s not Spencer,she told it, both firmly and gently, like a primary school teacher explaining a basic rule to a new batch of rosy-cheeked four-year-olds.But maybe that’s okay. Maybe I just need to jump over this hurdle and it won’t be such a big thing going forwards.
And just to prove it she leaned in and kissed Jeremy. As soon as her lips touched his, his arms came around her, pulling her closer, deepening the kiss a little. It was strange – he kissed differently from how Spencer had kissed. It wasn’t all tingling skin and fireworks like it had been with her husband, but it wasn’t horrible either. It was a nice kiss, a perfectly fine kiss.
When he pulled away, he said, ‘Would you like to do dinner again – next Saturday, if that’s not too soon?’
Anna nodded once more, and then realized that talking might help her seem less of a wet lettuce, and added, ‘Next Saturday it is.’They kissed again, and then he turned and walked down the path.
She watched him for a moment, then slipped inside, closing the door softly behind herself. She shrugged off her jacket and dropped it on the chair in the hallway, then went into the living room and sat down in the corner of the big sofa and stared straight ahead.
Did I just do that? Did I actually just kiss another man?
It all seemed a bit unreal.
Are you okay with this?she silently whispered into the air, once again wishing more than anything that Spencer could answer her. She was pretty sure, logically speaking, he’d want her to be happy, to take life by the horns the way he had always done, but thinking it in her head and feeling it in her heart were two completely different things.
She reached over and turned on a lamp, and as she did so, she realized she was sitting in the spot she always nestled in when she phoned Brody. Instinctively, she reached into her bag and pulled her mobile out, preparing to dial his number.
A missed call? From Brody? Anna blinked and checked the time. The call log said it had gone unanswered at ten thirty-eight. About five minutes ago – about the time she’d been standing on her front doorstep kissing Jeremy. She prepared to hit the button to call him back, but then hesitated.
