I did consider Dev’s suggestion for a long moment in the museum, but then I thought about how very much I loved Callum and just knew that I couldn’t do it to Dev; it would be unfair not being able to offer him my whole heart.
I order a latte and a glass of tap water and then I get my Kindle out.
I sit and read (I say read, I stare at the screen and do not take any of the words in) and look at the door at the same time.
When Callum arrives, I see him immediately.
Again, I have the instincts of a teenage idiot: I’m very tempted to pretend to be incredibly engrossed in my Kindle.
I am, however, as I have already reminded myself a few times this afternoon, an adult, and I do not want to behave like an idiot.
So I put my Kindle back in my bag and smile at him as he crosses the room towards me.
My heart’s beating at a hundred miles an hour. Callum’s wearing worn-in jeans and a navy quarter-zip jumper under a jacket and I can’t imagine anyone ever looking better in any clothes ever. I noticed last week that he hasn’t bothered recently with the super-tidy haircut that he had in the summer; his lovely thick hair’s curling over his collar and it very much suitshim. His eyes are fixed on me and his smile seems personally targeted, as though I’m the only person in the vicinity, even though he actually has to step over a couple of toddlers and dodge round several other people to reach me.
I stay seated when he gets to the table, really because I don’t know how to physically greet him. If I don’t hug him, maybe that would be odd. But if I do, maybe that would be odd too. Basically, I’m not sure where we’re at hug-wise.
He hovers for a second and then pulls the chair opposite me out. He sits down and leans his arms on the table.
‘Hi,’ he says, as my stupid mind fixates on the obvious latent strength in his forearms and how much I like his hands.
‘Hi.’
‘Thank you for agreeing to meet.’ He sounds very formal.
‘It’s nice to see you.’ I’m just as polite.
‘Would you like to order something?’ the woman who served me asks him.
‘An espresso would be great, thank you.’
The woman simpers a little under the force of Callum’s smile (to be fair it’s truly lovely) and then leaves us to it.
We sit there in silence for a long moment and I begin to wonder whether there was actually any point in us meeting today. We’re good at small talk, but I think we have to do more than that now. I have nothing beyond inanities to offer, and to my disappointment Callum doesn’t seem to be rushing into explaining himself. Perhaps we’ll have a half hour of careful chat and then just go our separate ways.
I’m beginning to feel very disappointed – I couldn’t help hoping that he might say something big – but then, just as I’m about to comment on the unusually wide range of cakes available here, Callum suddenly says, all in a rush, ‘The reason I asked you to meet is that I wanted to apologise for my incredible stupidity and tell you that I love you and I’ve never stoppedloving you, and I wanted to ask you again if you’d be happy to go on a date with me.’
‘Um.’ I’m frowning, trying to interpret what he just said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, after a while.
I nod, for no good reason. My brain’s still struggling to process his words.
‘Could you explain?’ I ask eventually.
‘Of course. I mean, I can try.’
I wait.
‘Basically.’ He stops and while I’m waiting for him to carry on I watch his face. I love the shape of his jaw. ‘I have always loved you. The day we met, the moment you resigned from the café and then immediately gave me this huge, gleeful smile, I was just hit with this incredible certainty that you were the girl I needed to marry one day. Like, I just wanted to be with you and make you happy forever. Obviously, I didn’t actually know you atallat that point, but as we got to know each other I just loved you more and more. It was as though on that first day an artist had painted on a canvas an outline of love, and as I got to know you the middle of the love shape got filled in.’
I sniff and wipe under my eyes. Callum’s rarely poetic like this, and it’s gorgeous. Also, now he says it, that’s exactly how it happened for me too. The filling-in-details thing.
‘Obviously, though,’ he continues, ‘I was – as we both know – wild. When I proposed and you told me that I needed to sort myself out, you were right. And as I told you before, I intended to get my life back on track and then go back to you, but in the end I didn’t. And then fast-forward to when we met again in Italy, and clearly, from my side, the love had never gone, and I stupidly, while thinking I knew that we shouldn’t be together, allowed myself to fall into that week-long romance with you. And then I told you that I didn’t think we could ever be together because I thought I’d hurt you again.’
‘Yes?’ I encourage, because finally we’re getting tonow, and he’s bloody stopped talking.
‘Last weekend at the party, I don’t know,’ he says, finally getting going again, ‘I just felt – and I could be wrong; I could be the most arrogant idiot in the world and please tell me if that’s the case – that you looked as though the sight of me made you hurt and I just suddenly thought that if us not being together hurt you what was the point in me saying let’s not be together in order not to hurt you? If that makes sense.’
