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There was a pause, and he knew if Mairi had been in front of him, her face would have been as red as her hair, which would have been his signal to run. “Do you get room service?” she demanded. “Can you use the hotel housekeeping?”
“Uh, yeah.” It was his turn to turn red, but it wasn’t from anger.
“Then you’re living in the freaking hotel!” she shouted, before muttering, “Deep breath, take a deep breath.”
Jonas hit the mute button and glared at his friend, who was now eating leftover pizza while lounging on the black leather couch. Yeah, he was that much of a cliché. He’d bought black leather because he was a guy who didn’t know what else to buy. And because you could wipe beer off it.
“You set Mairi on me?” he demanded.
Sebastian shrugged. “She phoned me. She was shouting before I even said hello, convinced that you were holed up in here, hiding from your date. She wasn’t wrong.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Jonas! Are you there?” the phone screeched.
He unmuted it and put it to his ear. “Yeah, I’m still here. And I’m really sorry, Mairi, but I can’t go on this date. I can’t go on any dates. Your services are no longer needed because I’ve resolved to die a lonely old man.”
“Of for goodness’ sake. That’s it. You have only yourself to blame for what happens next.” With that, the phone went dead.
He stared at it for a minute before tossing it onto the sofa beside Sebastian. “She hung up on me,” he said.
Sebastian’s eyes went wide. “Oh, you’re in trouble now.”
“Probably. But let’s face it, there isn’t a whole lot she can do from Scotland.” He headed for his laptop, which was sitting on the breakfast counter that divided the kitchen from the rest of his open-plan living space. “I need to tell Sadie and tell her the date’s off.”
“You’re an idiot. That girl is cute.”
Sebastian wasn’t wrong. Jonas brought up the photo Sadie had sent him. She’d taken it at work, surrounded by the smiling old folk she helped. She was an art therapist, working for several nursing homes throughout the city, and she loved her job. And, if the smiles of the people she was with were anything to go by, the job loved her too.
He trailed a fingertip over the outline of her face. She had a perfectly oval face, with exactly the same number of freckles each side of her nose. He’d counted. And if that made him even weirder, he could live with it. Her golden hair sat in a messy bun on top of her head, her eyes were a pale green, and her top lip looked significantly thinner than the bottom one. He hadn’t measured to be sure. Although, he’d wanted to.
Sebastian was right; she was cute. She was also outgoing, funny, and full of life—the exact opposite of Jonas. What did he have to offer her? How could they date when he even struggled to talk to his doorman? And he’d known him for years. Crippling shyness and social anxiety. That was the definition of his particular brand of weird. And the older he got, the worse it became. He’d been joking about spending the rest of his life locked in his apartment alone. But he feared it was closer to the truth than he liked to admit.
He opened his email and typed his apologies. There was no point in making excuses. How did you explain you were terrified of meeting someone face to face? When he was done, he shut the laptop and headed for the fridge.
“Want a beer?” he asked Sebastian.
His friend frowned at him. “What I want is for you to put on your shoes and go downstairs to meet the pretty girl.”
“I’ve called it off. She won’t be there even if a miracle happens and I make it out of the apartment.” He grabbed two bottle of beer and headed over to the armchair beside his friend.
Night had fallen over Montreal, and the lights of the city blinked through the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up a wall of his apartment.
“I don’t get it.” Sebastian took the offered beer. “What’s keeping you in here? I mean, look at you. You’re classically handsome, and I say that as an enlightened metro-male and not because I’m into you. You’re rich, you’re smart, you know a ton of useful trivia, and you’re a huge Star Wars fan. You’ve got it going on, man. You could have any woman you wanted. But instead, you’re stuck in here, drinking beer with me, while your date finds a backup. What are you so scared of? What’s keeping you from living it up?”
“If I knew the answer to that, you’d be sitting here alone.”
He’d had therapy. All the therapies—cognitive, group, and exposure. He’d taken medication to relieve anxiety, but all it’d done was make him fall asleep or puke. He’d tried meditation, flotation tanks, acupuncture and about a million other things that he thought might cure him. The truth of the matter was, he was naturally shy to begin with, and having social anxiety on top of that made it even more difficult to face the world. Unless he was hiding—online, or in costume—social situations made him panic or pass out. Although, dressing as a Wookiee helped a bit. At least in his costume, he didn’t have to talk. He just opened his mouth and a warble came out.
His doorbell rang as he took as sip of his beer, making him swallow the wrong way and almost choke to death. Of the three people allowed to come straight up to his door, one of them was already inside his apartment.
“Dude,” Sebastian said with sympathy, “she called your mom.”
The doorbell rang again, reminding Jonas of one of the downsides of living in a hotel. If he’d been in a regular apartment block, and hadn’t given his mother a key, she wouldn’t be able to get in. But in his block, all she had to do was call down to housekeeping and someone would open the door for her. She’d done it before when he’d been working on a game design for days straight and she was worried he’d died.
She’d walked in to find him sitting in his underpants, and nothing else, eating Cheerios from the box on his breakfast bar while tapping at the keyboard on his laptop. He hadn’t showered or combed his hair in days.
“Oh good,” his mother had said. “You’re alive. Although, you smell like a dead body.”
It had gone downhill from there.
