Page 54 of Choose Us

“Oh.” She paused. “That’s a pretty name.”

“She’s Italian.”

Why did you say that?

If I could’ve hit myself in the face,I would’ve.

What did her ethnicity have to do with anything?

“And is Francesca still in the picture?” She wouldn’t look me in the eye, but she knewthe answer.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t have. We wouldn’t have, y’know.”

“Had sex?” Brooke asked.

“Exactly.”

Or at least I’d like to think not, but it was Brooke, and anything was possible, including infidelity. Thankfully, I hadn’t been put in that position. There was a strange look on her face. It lookedlike guilt.

“What happened? How did you start dating?”

“Do you really want to know?” I asked.

“Yes,” she saidconfidently.

There was the truth and the real truth. The watered-down version or the emotional debacle that resulted in my untimely end with dating in general. We strolled through the inside of the market. The atmosphere felt wrong for the conversation, but it did help ease the tension. It beat having the conversation over a dinner table with little background noise and nowhere else to look.

“I don’t know if you ever met my friend Jake; he works the bar scene in London. One night he asked if he could set me up on ablind date.”

Brooke’s eyes widened in amusement.

“A blinddate, huh?”

“Yes, my thoughts exactly. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I was expecting this whole uncomfortable ordeal where I’d want to leave immediately, but I wanted to get him off my back, so I agreed.”

From the inside of the market, we headed across the road until we hit a side street. A few doors down we found acoffee shop.

“I was ten minutes late because of traffic. When I arrived I thought she’d left. I couldn’t see anyone single, so I went to the toilet, and there was a woman on the phone. She was speaking Italian. I had no idea what she was saying. We both sort of looked at each other in the mirror; I smiled politely. I thought she was beautiful, but no way did I think she was myblind date.”

I opened the door to enter thecoffee shop.

“Turns out she was myblind date.”

We paused the conversation to order two iced lattes. There was a vacant red bench outside the coffee shop, so wetook a seat.

“Did you hit it off?” Brooke asked.

“Erm, yes. Not instantly. It wasn’t like sparks flying or anything, but she was a nice girl. I liked her energy.” I removed the square sunglasses I’d purchased from the airport; we were covered by shade now.

“Where you together long?”

“Only a few months. It wasn’t serious; it didn’t get to that stage.” That was my fault, I thought. Paula often reminded me I would live to regret it.

“What happened?”

She asked every question with reluctance in her voice. I could tell she didn’t want to know, but she did, if that makes sense. Maybe she wanted some clarity like I did. Maybe it would make her feel less guilty about leaving things theway she had.

Did she want to hear I’d moved on with someone else to feel less burdened by it all? It was possible.