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She held on tighter around his back, her hand finding its way to touch the skin on his neck.
‘Helen …’
‘Yes?’
Ish took a deep breath. ‘Can I kiss you now?’ He blurted the words out.
‘You didn’t have to ask …’ Helen slowly answered, studying Ish’s face like she’d only just met him.
‘No Helen, you always have to ask.’ Ish was confident again, and pulled her up to his lips.
Sometimes time seems solid and concrete: like when you’re waiting in a queue for the doctors, on hold to HMRC, or taking a train journey to Cornwall after your boyfriend breaks up with you. Other times it runs through your fingers like water, and just when you want to catch the individual, perfect moment in your hands, it runs right by you.
Helen wasn’t sure how long she’d been kissing Ish for, but she knew it started out tentative, their lips barely grazing each other, then slowly deepened. The song faded out, until she was in another time and place, as if her body, disconnected from the world around them, already knew his. His hands were in her hair, and she tilted her head back to receive him deeper.
His intensity faded into smaller, lighter kisses, and she found herself fighting for them back again, letting her body relax into his arms.
Slowly, like she was coming out of a deep sleep, she became aware of being in the room again. The notes of the next song became gradually more pronounced, it wasn’t the same one that was playing when they started kissing. Helen flicked her eyes open and saw the small dotted lights on the ceiling, then Ish’s kind, beautiful face looking at hers. He relaxed his hold and Helen returned to her feet. Gradually she took in the room around her. They were in the middle of the dance floor, and people were facing them?
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Ish and Helen!’ Frank announced on the mic, and the crowd exploded into applause.
Ish squeezed Helen’s hand, and then they started to applaud right back.
Chapter 45
Helen rattled her keys into her apartment door, why weren’t they working?! Okay it was probably the two (or was it three?) extra glasses of champagne she’d poached.
Ish and Helen had danced more that night; time went quickly and dizzily by. Soon Elle was making her excuses to leave, giving her (and Ish) a big kiss on both cheeks before she ran off into the night, messaging furiously on her phone. Helen and Ish kept finding themselves in the same place together: shaking hands with Mr Wu, getting their coats together, moving towards the door. There was an unspoken language between them that night, and like an ocean current they were pulled together in the same direction.
They’d stumbled out onto the Edgware Road together, hand in hand, kissing, stroking each other, happy, so happy. A passer-by called out ‘get a room!’ and Ish had flagged down a black cab. He held open the door. Sophie mimed for Helen to message her as she waved them off.
‘The Kingsland Road please!’ Helen called to the driver with surprising confidence. I guess this meant …?
She wasn’t sure, and couldn’t concentrate. Her head and heart were fizzing, like she wanted to hurry up back to her apartment, and yet stop to enjoy every second as it was passing. That’s really when it started. It was the end and a beginning. The end of days feeling lonely, down, ignored. The belief that she couldn’t be loved, that she’d always be let down, was being swept out of her mind; her fears had shrunk into shadows of their former selves. Now a precious new moment in time had opened up: one where she knew everything had changed. Not just in the present, where she felt Ish’s hand pressing firmly into hers, but in the future and in the past. The story she’d lugged around with her of being terrible with men, that she’d never find love, was evaporating like a fine mist. Instead, everything she’d done whilst she was alone felt necessary to bring her to the place and time when she wasn’t.
The dizzy buildings of central London unfolded into the ramshackle array of hipster bars, graffiti and fried chicken shops of East London. Helen leaned into Ish more as they went hurtling over a speed bump. Her apartment was just down the street.
‘I’ll just make sure you get home safe,’ Ish nodded, though they both knew that he wouldn’t be carrying on to his own apartment.
‘Do you perhaps want to come up for just one more drink?’ Helen offered, knowing full well she only had one lonely half-drunk bottle of gin in her cupboards.
‘Yes sure.’ Ish blinked at her, his tie slightly undone.
Now they fought their way into her apartment, kissing as they moved down the hallway, kicking off their shoes. Helen made herself pull her body away from him: somewhere in her mind, she had to actually make Ish a drink, otherwise … Well otherwise it meant Ish was just there because …
‘So, gin?’ Helen optimistically pulled the mostly empty bottle from the back of her cupboard and threw open the fridge door. ‘And tonic!’ She announced triumphantly seeing a flat bottle of tonic water hiding at the back of her fridge behind some gherkins.
Ish was leaning against her kitchen table, just like he had yesterday afternoon, though his presence felt loaded with intent now. ‘You’ve got some grapefruits?’ Ish handed her some fruit from the bowl. Helen wasn’t one hundred per cent about how long they’d been there.
‘Great, I’ll make gin and grapefruit cocktails,’ breathed Helen, trying overly hard to be composed. ‘Can you put on some music?’
Of course, a drink and music made everything more civilised. Helen struggled some ice cubes into the glasses.
‘Some music: okay I can do that.’ Ish started shuffling through John Mayer (too smoochy), Goldfrapp (too intense) and INXS (too old-fashioned) before playing some Drake.
‘Shall we sit down on the sofa?’ Why did Helen now need to narrate everything they were doing? Worst of all she was doing it in her overly polite voice, the kind her mum used when guests were unexpected.
Ish sat down next to Helen on the couch. Helen put her undrunk cocktail down onto the floor, and reached back towards Ish, feeling a burn of urgency to kiss him again.
