Page 50
Alice
Why the hell am I nervous?
I have no idea, but I’m pacing outside the entrance to my apartment like I’m trying to wear the flagstones down.
Are the nerves because of Owen? No, I didn’t feel nervous when we went shopping on Sunday. Meeting Smithy and his wife, Romana? Surely not. I meet new people all the time and normally take these kinds of things in my stride. So why does my stomach feel like it’s spinning cotton candy?
The only thing I can compare it to is those rare moments in relationships when I made it far enough to meet the guy’s parents or family. Back in my younger days, that happened quite often, but not so much lately. In the last few years, no one’s made it past a couple of dates before they either binned me or I binned them.
Yesterday, Lori and I met up after work in one of our favourite coffee houses, Manuela’s Beans, and she’d asked me how Operation Wedding was going. The last thing I want to do is gossip about Owen. He’s such a private person, and I feel he’s shared a lot with me, possibly things he hasn’t really shared with anyone else, so I kept it to the bare minimum, telling her I still don’t know much about him. Lori eyed me over her yet-untouched cappuccino because she never liked to spoil the heart motif Manuela artfully designed on the top of the foam.
“So, we know he isn’t gay and isn’t currently in a relationship, and we know he’s worked at Kitchen City for the past year, but what about before that?” Lori asked.
I dipped my finger in my latte, skimming the frothy milk from the top, considering this a rhetorical question.
“How old is he?” she pushed.
“Thirty-eight,” I replied with the glow of a child when a teacher puts them on the spot and they get the answer correct.
“That’s a whole lot of years to have lived and to have loved. Have you considered that he might have a sordid past?” Lori blew gently on her cappuccino, the love heart rippling on the surface as if it were beating.
I hadn’t liked the word sordid.
“I haven’t told him about my checkered past,” I countered.
“Which is?” Lori raised a heavily pencilled eyebrow.
“Okay, so I haven’t done anything sordid, but I’ve been with guys—too many guys, to be honest—and had some pretty serious relationships.”
“Name one.” She cradled her cup, an inquisitive look on her face.
I quickly went through my backlog of boyfriends. “When I was twenty-four, I dated Jerome for almost a year. I met his parents and his sisters, and we went on holiday together, and I thought he was The One.”
“But he wasn’t.” Lori’s eyebrow arched.
I sank a little further into my seat. “No, and especially not when I found him in bed with the woman who waxed his chest.”
“He got his chest waxed?” Lori almost spat out her coffee.
“That’s the bit you’re surprised about?”
She held her hands up. “Sounds to me like you were rescued from that one. I don’t think I could commit to a guy who spends more time at the salon than I do.”
“Are you telling me Zichen doesn’t get his chest waxed or his legs?”
“No. He’s naturally quite smooth. But he makes up for it with the amount of time he spends in the gym.” She rolled her eyes. “What I’m trying to say is that thirty-eight years is plenty of time to have gone through some heavy shit.”
“Well, he’s obviously not comfortable talking about it.” I shrugged.
“But you need to know he isn’t going to break down at a moment’s notice. It’s like driving blind, not knowing when you might hit something.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s none of my business,” I told Lori.
But, of course, it’s been playing on my mind.
What has Owen been through, and why did suit shopping trigger a bad memory? Has he survived a house fire that burned his favourite brown tweed suit? Did his dad fall off a ladder and die, and his last dying wish was to be buried in his favourite brown tweed suit, which his mum had taken to the charity shop years before? Did Owen once get struck by lightning while wearing a brown tweed suit and see his life literally flash before his eyes before the suit burst into flames?
Okay, maybe not the lightning, but something happened to him. But as much as I want to know what this awful thing might have been, I have to respect his privacy.
