Florian reaches over the gearstick and pats my thigh playfully. ‘Just so you know, if you hit another deer then it’s your problem.’
‘Fuck off.’ I put the keys in the ignition and the car spits into life.
‘So where exactly am I driving us?’ I keep my head looking straight out of the windshield, my eyes darting over to his lap where he starts to tug again at the leather bracelet around his wrist.
‘To yours and then I’ll drive back to mine.’ He clips his words at an attempt to sound definitive, entirely sure of himself.
‘And will you be coming in?’ I look over then, allow myself the luxury of watching the idea pass over his face before he steels himself.
He chuckles. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
‘Because I don’t want to give you a reason to freak out on me again.’
‘Freak out on you?’
‘I just think that this, whatever this is, is complicated enough at the moment and there’s feelings involved, big confusing feelings, and I don’t want to rush into something that you’re going to turn around tomorrow and regret.’
I prickle at his assessment. ‘What if you were the one who’d regret it?’
He looks at me, one eyebrow raised so high it disappears into his fringe. ‘I know that simply wouldn’t happen.’ I focus on the road to try to hide the triumph on my face. ‘Look, Ava, I want us to go out.’
‘Go out? Where?’
‘I don’t know, dinner maybe? That feels like a normal thing to do.’
‘We did dinner… didn’t exactly go to plan.’
‘I mean a dinner where both of us are on a date with each other, wouldn’t that be nice? A good, uncomplicated dinner where no one ends up crying?’
‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘Dinner sounds nice. I should probably let you know that I don’t put out on the first date though.’
‘Your track history tells me otherwise.’
I pretend to be offended. ‘I wasn’t going to sleep with you the other night!’
‘Oh, you weren’t? Sorry, must have misinterpreted your hand when it slipped down my—’
‘Yes, very much misinterpreted!’ I shut him down quickly. I don’t need a play-by-play. I had already committed my version to memory.
‘Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.’
‘Me too.’ I let a comfortable silence envelop us. He’s humming a song I don’t know, tapping his fingers on his thigh. He is content; it feels good to know that I have had some part in it.
I indicate off the main road towards Monpazier. ‘So, you want to do Wednesday?’ I ask. His humming stops abruptly. He looks at me a little too long and I wonder if I have managed to land in some parallel universe where the earlier conversation had been entirely imagined by myself.
‘Wednesday?’ he repeats.
‘Yeah…’ I turn to look at him, the way his face is slightly paler than it had been before. ‘I mean isn’t it moules frites night at L’Octave?’
‘You don’t remember?’
I screw up my own face, rack my brain for whether we had already made plans, whether he had told me about some other exhibition he was hosting perhaps. ‘Remember what?’
‘On Wednesday it will be four years since Ettie died.’ He says it slowly, his voice void of any inflections, emotions.
‘No… it’s…’
