I’m not shocked that this is where the conversation has headed. I think I’ve been waiting for him to say something since I had bought it up the night I kicked him out. He is pretending like it isn’t happening; I think in some way he actually thinks it won’t.
‘You don’t?’ I keep my voice soft and measured.
‘No.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘I think you’re happy here.’ He brings his shoulders up to his ears.
‘You never saw me in London, maybe I’m happy there too?’
‘Are you?’
‘No, but that’s beside the point.’ I scoff at how stupid it all sounds. Of course I wasn’t happy there, but I had survived it by convincing myself that it was the grief talking, that I could be anywhere in the world and it would feel just as terrible. The reality of how wrong I had been was starting to set in. Besides, the one distraction I had tried to make in London was now back in his glossy apartment, probably trying to forget about the ordeal I had put him through. Over here, grief still woke me up in the morning and followed me around until I went to bed, but in the day when I was having drinks with The American or cooking a meal in the apartment or spending any period of time with Florian, then that feeling dulled, it became manageable.
He turns around then. I am unsure if he did ever find the thing he was so desperate on fishing out of his dinner.
‘Don’t go,’ he says simply, sadly. I know now that he has grasped the magnitude of the situation, the reason I had been so unwilling to see where things might go in the first place.
‘I have to!’
He looks slightly disgusted at my inability to stretch my little imagination to a place where I could want to stay. ‘You don’t “have” to do anything.’
‘I have commitments, my parents, I mean I don’t have anywhere to live here when my lease is up.’
‘We can sort something out. The American loves you, I’m sure she’d let you have the apartment for longer.’
‘It’s not that simple!’ My voice frays at the edges and it’s enough to loosen Florian’s dogmatic resolve. He comes over to me, taking my hands in his. He chases my eyes around with his until I can’t avoid looking him square in the face.
‘Ava, I cannot accept that I only have four days ofthisuntil you go… it’s simply not enough time.’ He brushes some stray hairs out of my face, his thumb resting on my lips. ‘Delay your flight, stay at the hotel… stay here?’
I shake my head at his last comment. He doesn’t mean it. He’s grasping at straws. He pulls away.
‘I’ll come back.’
He scoffs, crosses his arms like a petulant child. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Hey, come here.’ I hold onto his shoulders and then lock my hands together behind his neck, keeping him close to me. ‘I promise I’ll come back.’
He relents, relaxes a little. ‘When?’
‘Soon. I need to do some things, tie up some ends…’
‘What are you doing back there that’s so important?’
‘I… I can’t say, not yet.’ I don’t like lying to him. Especially when it feels like Florian’s ‘thing’ is radical honesty. But I also don’t like the thought of my life without this book. It is the only thing that I have truly done for myself and before there was Florian, before there was even Archie, there was a bashed-up diary with blank pages ready for me, all of me.
And I will tell him soon, when everything’s finalised, when there’s a final approved manuscript, I will hand it to him, let him see for himself what it really is. Not my attempt at profiting from Ettie’s death, but something that has meant that I could keep living in a world without him in it. He can’t hate me for it then.
‘So many secrets,’ he murmurs into my ear. I slacken. Unravel. His breath is warm at the crease of my neck. I can feel his steady breaths, thinking about what to do next. I want him to kiss me. I want him to press his lips into my neck in long drawn-out pulses. I am bereft when instead of doing that he pulls away and looks at me with a wink. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
‘Dinner tomorrow,’ I tell him.
‘I think that might be a good idea,’ he smirks and then a timer goes off and we jolt back into the reality of why we are here, of who is sitting in that room next door, most likely pretending to be watching something on the TV.
I am been prepared for dinner to turn into many things. I’m not prepared for it to be a relatively uninteresting and normal affair.
The food is delicious, and we eat it in a polite and comfortable silence, offering around the various accompaniments to each other, filling up our plates, thanking Florian. I am mainly a bystander in the conversation, and I am grateful for it. We choose Florian as our neutral middle ground, his art and upcoming commissions proving a fertile ground for a few minutes of distraction until we are finished, and I offer to take the plates.
