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She does a snotty laugh and reaches for her phone by the side of the tub.
‘You know you can’t get an Uber out here? We’re literally in the middle of nowhere,’ she says, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks which I dab at with some loo roll.
There’s a gentle knock on the door before Joe’s face pops around the doorframe.
‘Hope you don’t mind but I did overhear some of that,’ he says diplomatically. Given the volume with which Frankie has been speaking, I’d be surprised if she wasn’t heard across the water in Ireland. ‘And I could drive you back tonight. I didn’t drink this evening. Wanted to keep a clear head …’ The briefest glance at me sends a jolt of energy through my body. ‘If you’d like I can take you home?’
Frankie cries harder. ‘You’d do that for me?’
‘Of course,’ Joe says, and I’m touched by his thoughtfulness.
‘And you don’t mind leaving early, Soph?’ Frankie adds.
‘I’d rather make sure you’re okay,’ I say, holding out my hands and pulling Frankie out of the bath.
Joe and I are in dire need of a debrief after The Kiss but a late-night car journey back to Bristol turns out not to be the right place for it. After throwing all of our things into a bag, apologising profusely to Tally and hopping into Joe’s car, Frankie promptly falls asleep in the back seat. The silence between Joe and me is deafening and I’m scrambling to process my thoughts, knowing that I need to say the right thing, and well, or I could mess this up even more than we already have.
Because the thing is, on a purely physical level, that kiss felt like we’d melted together and I could no longer tell where I finished and Joe began. It was, in short, as sexy as hell. The kind of kiss I’d happily dedicate days to.
But we aren’t here on a purely physical thing. Quite the opposite. The whole point of Joe and I spending time together is to get people off our backs. To smooth things out and to make life simple. This feels very much un-simple.
That kiss felt meaningful in a way that makes things incredibly complicated. How do we unpick that? How have we got ourselves into this mess? I’ve said all along that romance is completely off the cards for me. How could I be so stupid? I’m now facing the very real fear that Joe might not want to do this anymore. What if he’s feeling the same way that I am? What if he’s been taken over by this lust and can’t think straight, either? I think back to Joe saying he’d like a partner to spend his life with. Back when we went for that first drink at his local pub, he’d talked of finally having the headspace to date again. It feels, if I’m honest with myself, painful to think about Joe meeting someone new, but I know I can’t offer him that.
I shake my head, try to steady my thoughts. Maybe I’m reading way too much into this. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything? Joe and I made a simple mistake. We got caught up in the moment. We’d been performing so well all weekend, acting out the perfect ‘relationship’, so perhaps a momentary slip-up isn’t so bad. Except deep down I already know that this wasn’t a slip-up. The kiss, the chemistry, the wanting more – it all happened on our parents’ night out and we’ve already chalked it up as a blip. You can’t use that excuse twice, can you? Once is a mistake but twice is the beginnings of a habit. A definite decision. And this decision felt conflictingly good.
As the car weaves along the M4 past Cardiff, I finally pluck up the courage to speak. Because we have got to clear the air.
‘Joe, can we talk?’ I begin, glancing across at him as he stares straight ahead.
He looks nervously at me and takes a deep breath.
‘Sophie—’
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Frankie, who is developing a terrible knack for interrupting deep and meaningfuls, bolts upright in the back seat and pushes her head into the front of the car. ‘That was a good nap. I feel marginally less drunk.’ And as she begins to tell Joe how much of a legend he is for coming to her rescue, I look down at my lap. I guess the chat will have to wait.
Frankie’s sister Vicky is less than thrilled to be woken up at one in the morning by a still-tipsy Frankie. It’s so late that my eyes feel heavy with tiredness and I yawn as Frankie turns to wave us goodbye on her sister’s doorstep.
It’s just the two of us again, stifled conversation weighing heavy on the atmosphere in Joe’s car. He turns to look at me with a small smile.
‘About that talk,’ he says, almost shyly, and my stomach lurches. ‘How about tomorrow? We’re both exhausted, Soph, and I’m not sure my brain’s working at full capacity right now. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to get some sleep and hopefully some clarity before we say whatever it is we have to say?’
‘That makes perfect sense,’ I reply. ‘It’s been a long day. I can’t believe we were eating fish and chips on the beach earlier. That feels like a lifetime ago.’
‘Where to?’ he asks, starting the engine.
‘Would you mind dropping me at mine? Lila’s out at Mum and Dad’s so I think I’ll just crash at home.’
‘Sure,’ he replies, driving to my house and watching from the car as I unlock the front door.
I step into my empty house, leave my bag in the hallway and climb straight into bed.
Chapter 22
Crisis talks call for neutral territory, I have decided, so first thing this morning I booked a table at my favourite café and texted Joe to see if he fancied meeting for breakfast. He replied with the thumbs-up emoji, explaining that Sid was furious he’d returned home early from Wales and made it quite clear that he wanted to hang out with Denise and Jim all day today, too.
So, awkward Sunday brunch for two it is.
I’m the first to arrive. This coffee shop is one of my favourite places in the city to come and work from when I feel like I need to be around people, rather than stuck in my home office. There’s a copper-clad coffee bar and warm, neutral colours throughout which give off the impression that you might just be sitting inside a giant flat white. The mocha-coloured soft chairs and wood-panelled walls add to the calming atmosphere.
