Page 49 of People In Love
You’re such a lawyer, you say, and he says he doesn’t want to put his foot in it, that’s all. Or maybe he does. Maybe it’s good fodder for his speech.
Unease in you, then, but he says I’m kidding, Robin, chill. It might just hurt her ego, a little bit, if it comes out later down the line.
The word ego stirs something in you, and you remember a personality test that did the rounds at art school. Picture a room. In that room is a cube. Describe that cube. Yours, sort of standard sized, like the box you’d use for jump squats at the gym, Nora’s small as a sugar cube, Shay’s so big it filled the room. That represents the size of your ego, you were told, and you’d all cracked up, amazed at the accuracy.
You reckon? you say, but Goose says hey, you know her better than I do. You’re just always straight with her, usually, so why keep it a secret?
Why, indeed. The question hangs heavy in your chest as you hang up and pay the deposit, shoot Jed an email to say it’s done, can he confirm receipt as and when, cheers, exciting! Unease transferring to panic, just briefly, asyou close your laptop, because maybe you should have checked with Nora first. But you’re sure it’ll be fine. You’d agreed to be spontaneous, after all. It’ll be a surprise. Like when you first asked her out for a coffee and she said make it a croissant and you’ve got yourself a deal.
Unexpected, you’d thought, and irresistible. The start of something good.
And there have been many more surprises like that, since. Your shared love of animation and show tunes and hot, drinkable Marmite.
The launch of her art café, which left so little in your joint bank account you couldn’t afford champagne, to celebrate; instead bought her a bottle of Shloer, astonished at how good it tasted, of pipe dreams turned sparkling success. Because, against the odds, that dream turned a profit two years later: real champagne then, shared with Shay, all three of you drinking it out of plastic cups on the shop floor, thrilled and tipsy and triumphant.
Surprise gifts, too, like oil paintings or embroidered socks. Surprise special dinners simply because it was a Thursday and more recently, you think, as you tidy your laptop cable away, something that surprisedyou, as much as her.
The biggest surprise of all, Goose had called it.
Which worries you, more than this impulsive wedding date you’ve just booked, as you check your watch, knowing she’ll be out of the dress shop by now.
It was innocent, though. This thing you have not told her. Which is not what you’d lead with, if youdidtell her, because that suggests that it’s not, so you’d just have to launch straight in. Tell the whole story.
Tell her you were doing your client a favour one day for his antiques store; Myke with a Y, remember? Anyway, he’d acquired this vintage ring he’d asked you to collecton your lunch break because you’d be passing by the auction house – course, sure thing. Happy to. So you took the paperwork and had a chat with the man at the desk who checked it over then handed it to you in a leather box, which you put in your pocket to take back to the shoot. And you texted Nora because her café was nearby. You bought her a bagel, she bought you one back, and you had a glorious half-hour by the water and the memory is so vivid it’s like you’re back there as you kiss her goodbye. As she warms her hands in your coat pockets, pulls the ring out and looks at it as though you’d meant it to be hers.
You see it all cross her face, like this memory, now, crossing your mind.
The surprise – that word, again, that feeling, that fork in the road – and her stunned, slow-dawning comprehension.
You see the crease at the bridge of her nose and then you see the joy, the unbroken wash of it as she looks up and says yes when you didn’t even ask the question; had agreed you never would, because she didn’t want that, and all you wanted was her, ring or no ring, so it had never occurred to you to argue.
But all of a sudden it seemed like she did want it, and who were you to take that away?
Who were you to say, you’ve got this all wrong, because actually, she’d got it right, as ever. And it seemed so obvious as you stood there with that centuries-old ring that you’d need to buy off your client now, but he’d love the story, would see it as a romantic blunder come good, turned life-changingly charmed, you’d figure it out, somehow, seeing as she’d answered three times, yes yes yes, to a question you’d wanted to ask but hadn’t.
So you did not let it go.
You took it, and ran with it, and now you’re getting married. Soon, now that there’s been a cancellation. Now that the twenty-second of April, your wedding day, is only six weeks from now, which you’ll text her, right now,surprise.
Mad, how these things happen.
What life throws at you. If you’re ready to catch it, and run.
NINE
They leave the shop without buying anything. Without speaking to the beige woman, even, who is still on the phone in the back room. And then they’re out on the street and it is dusk, and Bren feels warmed through, and spaced-out, like he’s knocked back a shot of whiskey.
Thanks for coming, Nora says to him. Which feels formal, he thinks. Like she, too, senses what has passed between them, and is trying to pretend nothing has. A taxi drives past; a runner with a reflective headband, puffing into the early evening air. Bren watches these things moving fast, wonders if he should tell her what is rushing through him, as well. If he should stop her on the street while she is still wedding-dress-less – wedding-ring-less – and tell her what just happened. What he’s realised.
He is just drawing breath to say her name, when she makes a noise of surprise.
Well, she says, looking at her phone. Looks like we should go back.
Back where?
Twelve years, he thinks. Or even further. The moment I met you, or you gave me my St Christopher; the moment I got on that plane or made that phone call at the airport, whichever moment I could go back to and change this, just tell me, and I’d do it.
To the dress shop, she says, so I can buy something, after all. Seeing as we’ve now set a date.
