‘Well, it’s totally up to you. I think it would be fun to live together! I have a place… you need somewhere… why not?’
‘Okay, let me think about it for a couple of days and I’ll let you know. I’m fairly sure the answer will be yes, but there are a few logistics that I need to work out before I fully commit.’
Lucy felt slightly uncomfortable about the whole conversation but, a few days later, when Alex confirmed that yes, he would love to move in with her, she brushed her concerns about his initial lack of enthusiasm to one side and began to get excited about the prospect of taking this huge step together. She immediately phoned Claudia and Tor to tell them that Alex was moving in.
‘No way!’ said Tor. ‘This is absolutely massive news!’
‘I know!’ said Lucy. ‘I can’t believe it really. After all these years, I’m finally being a grown-up and living with a man.’
‘You’re definitely going to get married if it carries on at this rate… you’ll be up the duff in no time!’ laughed Tor. ‘Bloody brilliant!’
Claudia shrieked down the telephone, ‘I’m coming over immediately. I’ll bring some champers!’ Within fifty minutes they were having a full debrief on the sofa, brimming glasses of bubbles in their hands.
‘How did it happen? Who asked who?’ asked Claudia, desperate to hear every tiny detail.
‘I asked him,’ said Lucy as she explained about the situation with his flat.
‘But he was super keen, right?’ asked Claudia.
‘Well, yes… though I think it might have come as a bit of a surprise,’ said Lucy. She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell Claudia just how unenthusiastic his initial reaction had been.
‘He better be thanking his lucky stars that he gets to live with you!’ said Claudia before toasting, ‘To Lucy and Alex… cohabiters!’ and chinking her glass against Lucy’s.
With the arrangements put in place, Lucy began the countdown to Alex’s moving day, the twentieth of December. October and November flew by, Alex was working hard on his big case and Lucy was inundated with Christmas advertising campaigns from all the big brands. They saw each other late at night and in snatched visits rather than enjoying leisurely lunches and dinners as they had done in the earlier stages of their relationship. Alex’s work meant that he was even working weekends, so Lucy used the time to spring-clean her flat, creating space for Alex’s things and taking endless bags of old clothes and possessions down to the charity shops. With Alex busy working she began to hang out with her work colleagues more frequently, going for drinks in their local bar as she had done so regularly before Alex came along. She realized that she had missed it.
One Friday after work, after one too many glasses of wine, Lucy found herself alone at the bar with Jack. She hadn’t seen much of him lately. He had been running a huge new campaign that had kept him squirreled away in boardrooms and flying off on business trips. Everyone else had drifted off with various weekend plans. Alex was working late and so Lucy had nowhere to rush off to.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ asked Jack. She contemplated this for an instant, deciding that she should be perfectly capable of having a harmless drink with Jack now that she was in a stable relationship.
‘Sure,’ said Lucy. ‘A glass of Chablis please.’
‘That’ll be a large Chablis and a whisky and soda for me please,’ Jack instructed the barman.
‘Thank you,’ said Lucy a few moments later as she took her drink. ‘So, how are things with you?’
‘Not too bad, thanks,’ replied Jack, taking a sip of his drink. ‘It’s been a hectic few weeks.’
‘Tell me about it! Hopefully things will settle down for a while and we can all take it a bit easier.’ They chatted about work for a while, catching up on various bits of news.
‘So how’s it going with the new man… what was his name again?’ asked Jack, swivelling on his bar stool to face her, his knees grazing hers. She could tell that he was drunk. He swayed slightly on his stool, using his hand to steady himself on the bar.
‘Alex. It’s going really well,’ said Lucy. Jack nodded and there was an awkward pause. ‘In fact,’ she hesitated, ‘he’s moving in soon.’ She didn’t know why she was telling him this; they didn’t usually discuss anything too personal. Maybe she just wanted him to know how committed they were.
‘Really?’ Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Must be getting serious then.’
‘Well it’s about time,’ laughed Lucy. ‘I’m getting past it!’
‘No you’re not. I’d say you are anything but past it,’ he said, slurring slightly. He had definitely had too many whiskeys.
She looked down at her drink, unable to meet his gaze. ‘Thanks.’ Desperate to end the awkward silence that followed, Lucy babbled on, ‘It’s about time I settled down though. I spent most of my thirties single and I’m thirty-five now… forty is not too far away.’
‘I suppose your biological clock is ticking?’
‘You could say that!’ said Lucy, laughing nervously. She was embarrassed at the tangent their conversation had taken.
‘I admire you, you know. It takes guts to wait for the right person to come along, not to settle. How my wife puts up with me… I’ll never know,’ Jack shook his head. ‘We were so young when we met. No better than children really. I often wonder who I would have ended up with if I had just waited a bit longer. Maybe I’d be happier now if I had held out…’
Lucy was surprised that he was speaking so candidly to her about his marriage. It must have been the drink talking. She wondered whether he was just saying it to make her feel sorry for him, or whether it was true. Whatever his reason, it was working. She did feel rather sorry for him. In that moment she was grateful for all the single years, for all the frogs she had had to kiss in order to meet her Prince Charming. Alex was worth waiting for.
Jack leant closer towards her, clearly enjoying offloading his marital woes onto Lucy. ‘I guess I wouldn’t have my kids if I hadn’t married Penny though, and they are fantastic. But it’s not always that easy. I mean, I love Penny, I do, but it becomes more like a sort of brotherly affection after a while, not quite how a man should feel about his wife. Do you know what I mean?’ he asked, looking at her intently.
Despite herself she felt her insides begin to fizz at the possibility of him feeling something more than brotherly affection towards her. This took her by surprise, she had thought that her feelings for Alex would have stopped her reacting to another man in such a way. She was now close enough to see the graze of stubble against his chin, the specks of grey in his eyes. He was still looking at her. She felt pulled towards him as though by an invisible magnetic force. He reached out slowly and ran his thumb across her cheek with the lightest touch. She could feel an electric current running through her at the exact point of contact. Her spine tingled. She felt frozen to the spot as though paralysed. This was getting dangerous. He was just drunk, she should know better, and, anyway, she had Alex. Using all her powers of self-restraint, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I think I had better go.’
Jack nodded and took another sip of his whisky.
‘Thanks for the drink,’ she said as she reached down for her bag. As she left the bar, she picked up her phone and dialled Alex’s number. It went straight to voicemail. She listened to the familiar sound of his voice asking her to leave a message then she hung up before the beep. She knew that she had been wrong. She shouldn’t have put herself in a position where she was alone with Jack. She wasn’t as strong as she thought. And clearly, she was still susceptible to his considerable charms.
