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I packed a rucksack with essentials. Water, snacks, extra gloves in case we got cold. I felt like some deranged mother hen, but then he didn’t know my plans. To be honest, neither did I. I just wanted to spend time with him, however that would look.
We made it out into the sunshine, the air smelling of spring. London was buzzing with traffic and people, the buildings around us just coming alive. The sun warmed my face as I turned to him, tucked the scarf around his neck into his coat, grabbed his hand and then froze.
“Is hand holding okay?”
“You want to hold my hand?”
I nodded, my heart fluttering as he grinned next to me, his hand firmly tucked into mine.
I took him to Anna’s because it was the obvious place to go, where I would usually go on a Saturday morning. We’d barely pushed the door open—the CLOSED sign was on, of course, but this was Anna’s—when the call of, “BENJAAMIIIIN!” rang through the air, making me grin like a small child at a birthday party.
“Hey, babe,” I murmured into her hair while she assaulted me with French-style kisses and too much touching.
“Is this…?” She gasped.
“Yeah. Anna? Meet my Hugo. Hu, this is Anna. Went to college with Mark and me. She’s a nutcase but in a good way.”
“In a good way?” she mocked, descending on Hugo with all the kisses. “Merde, Benjamin, he is cute! I can’t believe you have a boyfriend. Finally! Man! How long did that take you?”
“Rude!” I mocked her right back.
“Boyfriends?” Hugo smiled, and I loved…that he did.
“I hope so?” I tried to say it quietly, but Anna was staring right at me and heard loud and clear.
“You’d better be,” she warned Hugo, “because I’m not having to mop Benjamin off the floor if you break up with him. Don’t break up with him.” She’d never been subtle.
She sashayed away, her bleach-blonde hair bouncing in its messy bun, her chef whites pristine but covered with a massive filthy apron. Everything here was the way it usually was, and I waved to her team of people busy in the small kitchen.
“Anna?” Hugo asked, watching his feet as I made my way around the small bar and grabbed two cups from the shelf.
“One of my best friends. This is her Champagne and Oyster bar. Does really well and is usually packed on the weekends.”
“We do okay.” Anna re-joined us, sitting on one of the barstools and placing a plate of pastries on the counter. “We’d do better if I didn’t need to feed you breakfast every other weekend.”
“I think you owe me.” I grinned, explaining to Hugo, “Anna was always broke at college, and I am not talking having money and spending it unwisely. She tried to live off noodles and crackers—at a culinary college!” I shook my head and tutted at the woman in front of me, who laughed.
“Ben and Mark were like my parents at college. They fed me and sobered me up and cured all the hangovers. Looked after me and took me on nights out and got me drunk all over again. So yeah, I probably owe them. But hey, that was years ago. And I’ll let you into a little secret.”
She beckoned Hugo closer, dragging his arm until he was sitting on the barstool beside hers. “I was so in love with your Ben in college. Tried to get him to go on a date with me, tried to seduce him…all of it. I may have been slightly overbearing. You have good taste. I one hundred percent approve of your taste in men.”
“Anna,” I warned, but she flipped me off.
“I knew why, Benjamin, didn’t I? Because you didn’t fancy me.” She roared with laughter, and it took me straight back to happy times. “Kept saying you were straight, but look at you now. Was I right or was I right? I always told Mark we needed to get you laid.”
“I got laid, plenty, thank you very much.” The usual lies tumbled out of my mouth automatically, and my face went all hot. I had to turn away and fiddle with the milk steamer to calm down. Ugh.
“He didn’t,” Anna said, presumably to Hugo. “Don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.” She was speaking far too loudly, but like Mark, she knew all my secrets, even those I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself. And Hugo knew too, so it was all fine.
“I need you to tell me everything.” Hugo laughed. “I want to hear all these college stories. Dish the dirt, girl!”
I made the coffees, like I always did here. I was that friend, the one who would pop in after a shift, when Anna would stick a glass of red in my hand without asking and I would sit in the corner and quietly sip it, then, onceshe closed, I would get up and wipe down the tables and run the water through the coffee machine and take out the trash.
I didn’t go out. I worked and lived my life, but now I had Hugo in it, and I realised I didn’t actually know how to socialise. How to go out and do the normal things other people did. But then I wasn’t normal. Hugo wasn’t normal. Nor was Anna…and I’d zoned out with my thoughts, only to be rudely brought back to the room as Hugo laughed loudly.
“What?” I said dazedly. God, he was beautiful.
“Did you really promise her your firstborn?” he asked.
