He gets to his feet with a groan. Clearly his head feels about as heavy and aching as mine does. I think of the three whisky shots he managed almost simultaneously before the verbal assault; at least I had stopped drinking at the café.
‘On paper we would have been good together,’ he says as he reaches the doorway.
I nod furiously in agreement. ‘On paper we would have been the best.’
‘Just that “on paper” isn’t exactly what romance novels are made of, are they?’
‘No.’ I manage a little smile. ‘No, I guess they’re not.’
Chapter 25
‘What’s happened now then?’The American asked, straightening the napkin onto her lap and nodding an appreciative thanks as the waiter at the hotel restaurant places her martini down in front of her.
‘How do you know something’s happened?’
‘Ava darling, I would love for you to have come here out of the goodness of your heart, to trust that you just wanted to treat an old lady to lunch, but I think I know you a bit better than that by now, and by the look of you…’ she takes me in from my unbrushed hair to my un-ironed shirt that I had picked up off the pile on the floor, ‘you’ve had an interesting weekend.’
I chew my cheeks a little, nod slowly, weighing up how much I want to tell her, how much she needs to know.
‘Shall we start with your London lover?’ She swirls the olive around in her drink not looking up at me.
‘Left this morning.’
‘Amicably?’
I cringe. ‘Not quite.’
‘And Florian?’
I bite my lip. ‘Even less so, if that’s possible.’
She leans back, her hands thrusting theatrically into the air. ‘Well, well, well, did bringing the man from home to the man in France backfire in your face? Who could see that one coming?’
‘Yes, thank you for that.’
‘So.’ She goes back to swirling her olive. ‘I’m assuming that you figured out that Florian might like you more than you anticipated?’ I stiffen a little at the realisation of quite how obvious it had all been. Archie had felt it, Inés too, and this entire time my closest friend had watched me try and fail to navigate my way around it.
‘I figured that bit out just as he was taking off my shirt.’ The American chokes a little on her martini.
She leans closer to me. ‘Not with them both…?’ she whispers, her eyes the size of saucers.
‘No!’ I exclaim, horrified that she could even suggest such a thing.
She looks relieved but plays it off with a shrug. ‘Who knows what you young people are up to nowadays; all I ever see when I open up my magazines are articles about open relationships, threesomes, people fancying saucepans.’
‘Pans…’ My mind wanders. ‘Look, it was going fine, Archie was here, we had a nice time, a really nice time – just us two. Then Florian turns up and invites me to the river the next day, except he doesn’t realise Archie’s here, so ends up inviting both of us.’
The American chuckles. ‘How marvellous.’
‘Well, Archie’s just trying to be nice, make friends, and he suggests that Florian comes to dinner with Inés and all of a sudden last night there’s all four of us, around a table.’
‘Now that’s a dinner party I would like to have attended.’
‘Well, I wish you had because maybe you could have persuaded me not to go to the café alone with Florian for a bottle of whisky, where he basically told me that I wasn’t in love with Archie and never would be, which apparently is a massive aphrodisiac because five minutes later I had my legs around his waist.’
During the juicier details, The American has managed to lean in a little closer, her necklace swinging into her salad. ‘So you… consummated it?’
‘Consummated?’ I screw my face up at the officialness of the word. ‘We’re not Tudors, and no, we were interrupted by Archie ringing me asking where on earth we were.’ I feel the residual shame of that evening set back in. I have thought of all of the different ways I could have handled things, been more honest with Archie, been more honest with Florian. Quite frankly, honesty would have got me through pretty much unscathed, but it’s hard to be honest about something that you don’t entirely understand yourself.
