Page 1 of Forever, Maybe
Combine the world’s most delicious cheese sandwich (trademark pending), a haze of drug- and alcohol-fuelled hunger and a spontaneous act of kindness, and you have the makings of an unexpected romance. Who’d a thunk it?
Twenty-year-old Daniel Murray leant out of the van parked outside the student union building on Scott Street late one Thursday night to take the customer’s order and found himself transfixed.
Standing before him was a tiny girl dressed as if she’d stumbled out of a punk fairy tale. Her orange ball gown flared dramatically at the hips; the hem crudely hacked off at calf length with what must have been blunt scissors.
Beneath, a black net petticoat peeked out, providing all the volume.
One side of her head was shaved, while the other side boasted a sleek blonde curtain dyed at the ends with a clashing shade of pink.
Her Doc Martens and a black crocheted shawl tightly wrapped around her shoulders completed the look.
Her eyes—turquoise-blue, huge and glassy—locked on Daniel. Then, with the air of someone whose night had peaked several hours ago, she wailed, “I don’t have any money!”
Daniel’s assistant, the very able Joe, sighed. This wasn’t their first broke-and-hungry-student encounter of the night. “Sorry, hen. Nae money, nae grub.”
Daniel stirred, caught somewhere between sympathy and something else. “Tell you what,” he said, ignoring Joe’s exasperated glare. “There’s some cheese savoury filling left over that needs to be used up. As a one-off, I’ll give you a freebie.”
Out of sight of the customer, Joe kicked Daniel’s calf.
Daniel shrugged, blushing faintly as he reached for two thick slices of that day’s freshly baked bread.
He buttered them liberally, piled on the savoury filling and added an extra dollop of mayonnaise for good measure, as the lassie looked as if she needed feeding up.
He tucked the sandwich into a brown paper bag and nodded toward Joe.
“Can you hold the fort a sec?”
Joe rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. “You owe me. Big time.”
He stepped aside to let Daniel climb out of the van, only to wince as the sharp metal edge of the back counter clipped his elbow.
Meanwhile, the girl had drifted away. She settled herself on the pavement across the street, where the ground sloped steeply down towards Sauchiehall Street where now and then, a black cab, its orange light on, drifted past.
Her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees and her head rested on top. The black shawl barely covered her trembling shoulders, and Daniel, sandwich in hand, felt an unfamiliar tug at his chest.
He walked toward her, bracing himself for whatever came next.
“Hey,” Daniel prodded her gently and sat down beside her. “Sandwich on me.”
She twisted her head, frowning at him. “What’s in it?”
“Cheese savoury. Grated cheese. Mixed wi’ a bit of coleslaw. It’s our bestseller.”
As she extended one hand to take it, a gurgle, soft and squelchy, sounded, making her eyes widen in horror. She snatched her hand back, stuffing it in between her folded legs and her stomach. “Oh my God, that’s my tummy, not my, not my—”
“Arse?” he asked, suddenly much more at ease.
“Yes, I mean no! My tummy rumbled. I did not, one hundred per cent I promise, fart!”
Pinkness bloomed on her cheeks, heightening the turquoise blue of her eyes. The metallic sheen of her grey eyeshadow reminded him of his all-time favourite wank-bank image. Pamela Anderson with her hair slicked back and face glistening wet.
He shook his head dislodging Pamela lest she send his hormones into further overdrive.
“I believe you. Thousands wouldnae.”
“I didn’t ! I smoked a spliff earlier and whited out. Now I’ve got the complete munchies. I was on my way back to my room to get something to eat when I saw your van, and thought, ‘oh, wow, that would be yummy’.”
He proffered the bag once more. “Better eat it up then. Before your stomach farts again.”
She screwed her nose up, but took the sandwich from the bag, gazing at it with almost holy reverence.
Three bites in, she remembered her manners.
“Thank you so much. This is the best cheese sandwich I have ever tasted. It might even be the best sandwich in the whole world! You should trademark it, or all the other sandwich vans will steal it from you.”
Daniel grinned, unreasonably pleased. Compliments on his sandwiches were his drug—he was powerless against them, utterly hooked.
He ran a hand through his dark, floppy fringe, brushing it back from his brow as his heart did an unexpected flip.
The fact that the girl was still sitting here felt nothing short of miraculous.
Jesus, she was stunning .
“What’s your name, by the way?” she asked.
“Daniel. And yours?” he countered with a tilt of his head.
“Daniel?” Her face lit up as if she’d just discovered buried treasure. “That’s a lovely name! You’ve got so many options: Daniel, Danny, Dan… endless possibilities!”
“Aye, s’pose. But everyone just calls me Daniel.” As soon as the words were out, he cringed. He sounded like a pompous idiot.
“Well, I’m going to call you Danny,” she declared with an air of finality. “And I’m Nell. Lovely to meet you.”
The name suited her perfectly: short, sharp, and full of spark. Daniel—or Danny, apparently—couldn’t help but smile.
Most people who attended university or art school had a posh accent.
She sounded English, but not posh English.
He recognised a regional accent but couldn’t place it.
A tiny bit of sandwich filling clung to the corner of her mouth.
Without thinking too much about it, he leant forward and brushed it off.
Her eyes widened in surprise as she jerked back.
“Sorry!” He raised his hands. “I… um… there was a wee bit of food stuck to your face.”
She moved her head. “Oh. Okay, thanks. Do you own that sandwich van?”
She gestured towards the van, with its prominent Stuffed! sign on the side.
“Aye, a year ago, my Uncle Shane had lent me enough money to buy this clapped-out old van, which my dad helped me convert into a mobile sandwich shop. Joe came up wi’ the name and this mate o’ his wi’ a paint shop in the east end had a load o’ red and black paint left over, so that’s why we ended up wi’ that colour scheme. ”
She nodded. “I love it. It’s bold. Standy-outy. D’you just come here to sell sandwiches?”
“No, most of the time we go round the industrial estates. There’s aw these workers there who dinnae get much time for lunch, and there are no shops nearby, so they’re happy to pay for decent fresh food.
Uncle Shane came up wi’ the idea of selling to students.
He said we wouldn’t need permission for the council to park outside the student union and that all the students would be—”
Shane’s words— off their fucking tits —froze on his tongue. His uncle uttered all kinds of off-colour phrases most of the time, but he had this old-fashioned thing about not swearing or using rude words in front of women, which his nephew had inherited.
A smile danced in the corners of Nell’s mouth. “Drunk as skunks, per chance? Ready to hand over their dosh, even though it would only take them about three seconds to return to their halls and make something themselves for nothing?”
Busted. He grinned. “Aye.”
He’d followed Shane’s advice, and the students flocked there every Thursday evening. So much so, that now that a lease on a shop in Hyndland had expired, Shane had advised him to buy the premises and turning it into a permanent sandwich shop/delicatessen. He would lend him the money, too.
He and Joe had slaved to get to this position. Five am starts to make the fresh bread, treks across Glasgow with the van, non-stop bargaining with suppliers, trying to source the best ingredients at the cheapest price and late nights now that they’d added student discos to their regular jaunts.
“All work and no play makes Daniel a dull boy!” his mum liked to nag. He could hear her voice now, tutting, as he let an opportunity slip through his fingers yet again.
Nell, meanwhile, looked as though she might nod off in front of him.
She’d finished her sandwich and was resting her head on her forearms while a stray lock of pink hair dangled over her cheek.
Her eyes had gone glassy again, and she teetered on the edge of sleep—or possibly unconsciousness.
Either way, she definitely wasn’t sober.
Now was the time to ask.
Daniel swallowed, summoning the blunt honesty that had served him so well in life or at least hadn’t gotten him punched too often. “D’you have a boyfriend?”
Nell’s head shot up like a jack-in-the-box, her turquoise eyes wide and fully awake. “What?”
“Can I see you again?” he clarified quickly, feeling his ears start to burn.
Her lips twitched, teasing a smile. “See me again at your sandwich van? Or see me again, like, we go out for a drink or something?”
Not quite as straightforward as he’d hoped. “See you again as in we go out for a drink. Or… something like that.”
She tilted her head, studying him for a moment that felt like forever. Then she nodded—just once. It wasn’t exactly definitive. Was that a yes, ‘I’d love to go out with you’ nod? Or a cool, ‘see you next Thursday when I’m drunk and broke again’?
The silence stretched, each second dragging by. Daniel could feel a familiar flush creeping up his neck and spreading across his face.
“Okay,” Nell said at last, breaking the tension with an easy smile. “A drink. Or something like that.”
Relief rushed through Daniel so quickly it left him light-headed. “Great. I’ll, uh… I’ll figure out the ‘or something’ part.”
Her smile widened, and for the first time that night, she looked as if she might actually be enjoying herself.
Then her words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “Thank you so much that’s a lovely offer but it’s the end of term and I’m supposed to be going to France always wanted to go…”
Daniel blinked, utterly lost. Nell caught the look and paused, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “Sorry,” she said, her cheeks flushing faintly. “Too much booze. What I meant was… I’m heading to France for the summer.”
There it was. Her way of saying it wasn’t worth starting something when she was about to disappear for three months.
Daniel’s heart sank, but his mum’s “all work” refrain looped through his head like a taunt.
“Och, so what?” he said, feigning nonchalance. “Maybe we’ll hate each other anyway.” He met her eyes, forcing a grin. “How about a picnic at Kelvingrove Park this Sunday? I’m no’ working, and I’ll bring the food.”
The silence continued so long, panicking him into salesman mode.
“Eh… I’m an alright guy! I put the loo seat down when I’ve used it.
What’s that book all the lassies like? Circle of Friends?
I’ve no’ read it, but my mate’s girlfriend has, and she read us bits o’ it.
Sounded alri-awfy good. My mum, I’m kind to her!
Flowers! They’re fantastic. Make-up’s brilliant too, and if you ever need me to buy you fanny pads, that’s fine! ”
Nell’s expression shifted from bemusement to outright astonishment.
“Not fanny pads, sorry. I meant sanitary towels. Or, you know, the things you stick up—”
Dear God in Govan, he was making it worse. Stop talking, Daniel. Just stop. He stared at the ground, hoping it might open and swallow him whole.
The disastrous attempt at charm had been cobbled together from his woefully limited understanding of “what women wanted”: his mum’s advice (the toilet seats and flowers), Joe’s latest girlfriend’s obsession with Circle of Friends and a vague memory of Sara Cox mentioning the willingness of a boyfriend to buy fanny pads on The Girlie Show as a hallmark of a good man.
Tomorrow, he’d tell Joe they could never, ever bring the van back here again.
But then Nell nodded—vigorously, almost comically so—like she was overcompensating for how long it had taken her to respond. “That sounds nice,” she said, her tone light.
Daniel grinned, emboldened by the tiny victory. Too emboldened. “You never know,” he said, grinning like an idiot. “This could be forever! In years to come, we’ll tell all our weans we met when I gave you a free sandwich!”
Fucking hell. What was wrong with him tonight? Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Joe, who was pretending to gag, two fingers shoved into his mouth. Daniel could already hear the teasing he would endure for the next week if not the rest of his life.
Nell, thankfully, didn’t seem fazed. A smile tugged at her lips, softening her sharp features. “You never know,” she said, the words laced with amusement. “Maybe.”
With that, she hauled herself to her feet, wobbling slightly but steady enough.
“See you Sunday, Danny, Dan, Daniel!” she called over her shoulder, her voice sing-song. “Best sandwich maker in the whole world!”
She was gone before Daniel realised one crucial detail.
They hadn’t agreed on a time.