He may as well have hit me with a hammer. My head feels as though it has split in two. The guillotine swipes down and misses the fatal arteries, leaving me with a pain that can never heal.
‘Missed me?’
The food speared on my fork is no longer appetising. Nothing matters now but this moment, his next words. Even the jazz music fades to oblivion.
‘I miss you a lot,’ Ollie says.
‘I missyou, Ollie.’
Fuck ethics. Fuck my moral compass. This is Ollie. I’d risk it all for Ollie.
The look we share stretches like elastic, and I swear if I could I would let it last all night. We finish our food, our wine, pay the bill, mostly in silence, only speaking when we rise from the table.
‘How’re your parents?’ I ask.
His hands slip in his pocket as he laughs. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Hey, they may not have liked me, but I care.’ Kind of.
His laughter is stunning. Not even the Acropolis on the hill is as beautiful as this moment.
A familiar dread that I could fuck all of this up lingers. I need to move slow. My intention isn’t to startle Ollie, like one of the stray, skittish cats.
I could take Ollie back to my hotel room.
Privacy, all barriers dropped.
But the idea remains on the rooftop as the elevator descends.
Instead, we head out of the hotel, Lydia seeing it all, and we walk.
We sit on a wall, tucked away from the world. Our own little sanctuary in the city’s heart.
He’s close. He smells the same.
‘I’m glad we can be friends,’ Ollie finally says.
‘Friends?’
Ollie doesn’t look at me, but I can see the muscles of his jaw tense. ‘Friends. I’m glad I can have you here.’
‘As your friend.’
‘Right.’
My hands cover my stomach, and for one horrible moment I think I might throw up. But it’s just queasiness. It’s just the death of my hope. It’s the feeling of guilt about everything I’m willing to do, if he’d just give me a sign that I could.
‘Do you want to help me with some of the wedding planning?’
I could think of nothing worse. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we were lucky to get the date when we did. Alec knows the right people.’
‘Why is it happening so fast?’
‘Because we want it to. Our relationship has felt like a whirlwind, and why slow down now?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe to savour it?’
