Page 2 of Love at First Sight

Look. I know this isn’t really real. I know this is all in my head. I know it cannot be that eyes meet across a crowded room (or crowded back entrance at Whole Foods), et cetera.

And yet.

‘Cal,’ the man says, offering his hand after a beat longer than polite has passed.

He has to be feeling this too. His eyes roam my face and I actually believe what he’s just said – that he genuinely thinks I’m beautiful.

I flush pink, unaccustomed to such forthright flattery.

I take his hand and second contact is established.

He shakes it, and I think we both realise it’s strange to shake hands after a hand-held walk.

‘Jessie,’ I say, and then we laugh, about what precisely I have no idea, but we’re both doing it, and urgh, this is so embarrassing, but later, when I tell India about all this, I’ll say and everything else just melted away into the background .

Like, those words will actually leave my mouth.

Mortifying. It’s just me, and him, looking and trembling and smiling and falling.

Until a staff member booms out a thanks for our cooperation over the megaphone, anyway.

‘The firefighters are at the front of the building dealing with the situation,’ they yell, forcing Cal and I to release one another so we can cover our ears.

They talk loud , man. ‘It’s a small fire in one of the waste-paper bins, nothing serious.

It shouldn’t be much longer before you’re free to go. ’

‘Quite the original hostage situation,’ I say to Cal, when it’s safe to lower my hands.

‘I’d have preferred being held against my will in, say, a spa,’ he replies. God, his voice is sexy.

‘The man likes a spa, does he?’

Cal laughs. ‘Who doesn’t?’ He answers his own question with a wag of his finger: ‘A liar, that’s who.’

I nod, conceding his point. ‘I am partial to a massage.’

‘Hot oil, Swedish or Thai?’

‘Sport.’

He nods, digesting this. ‘Bit of an athlete then?’

I shrug, feeling the most self-aware and self-conscious I’ve ever felt in my life, like everything matters: the bow of my head, how I’m stood, all of it. ‘I’ve been known to lift a weight or two, yeah,’ I say, my voice sounding more confident than I feel. ‘Makes me channel my inner badass.’

‘Something tells me you don’t need weights to feel that way.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Would I?’

We look at one another again. I’m feeling things, loads of things, all at once.

Animated and bold and like I want to throw caution to the wind and just talk .

Not entertain, not banter, but really talk, in a way that feels so impossible in my dating life normally.

Cal has appeared out of nowhere and it’s nice chatting with him.

So, sod it. I have to trust this connection, have to believe I can be my full self in front of another person and it be received well.

I want this man to know me, all of me, as soon as possible.

‘It’s been a long weekend,’ I admit. ‘It’s feeling like a long …

life? Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing my best. It’s just the trying of it all, if that makes sense.

But I don’t have to try at the gym. Not in the same way.

I go in, switch off my brain, and push my body to do these awesome, cool things. And that’s …’

‘Badass,’ he supplies, looking impressed.

‘I get that. I work out as well. Running mostly. Some cycling. I wonder – not to sound too “Women 101” – if you feel badass lifting weights because it’s subversive, too?

I like exercising, and get glimmers of what you’re talking about, but nowhere near as strongly. ’

‘Perhaps you’ve not found your thing yet,’ I say. ‘Have you tried pole dancing, perchance?’

‘There’s a stag weekend in Amsterdam with video evidence of such an occurrence, as it happens. I have tried to destroy said evidence, but my so-called friends have a master copy. I suspect it’ll come out at my own wedding, if that ever happens.’

‘Ever come close?’ I ask. I don’t know why. It just slips out. It’s the sort of information other women might wait months for.

‘Once.’ He nods. ‘But I was twenty-three, and although I couldn’t see it at the time, I have the benefit of hindsight to say: thank god she didn’t say yes.’

‘Oh no!’ I say. ‘You proposed and got turned down?!’

‘Not very badass at all, huh?’ Cal says. His eyes twinkle naughtily, letting me know he’s totally fine with how it all turned out. ‘File me under “loser” if you must.’

I pull a face, jutting out my bottom lip like I feel sorry for the poor little baby.

‘Pity.’ Cal laughs. ‘The sexiest of all emotions.’

‘I find anguish quite sexy myself.’

‘Lots of crying in the shower and eating the whole pack of biscuits?’

‘Have you been spying on me?’ I ask.

‘Unfortunately I speak from experience.’

‘The jilted lover,’ I say.

‘Can’t say I don’t own it,’ he replies.

I narrow my eyes at him, assess his face. Okay, so the lad has banter. Interesting. A face like that, easy to talk to, comfortable with his emotions and his vulnerabilities … My eight minutes with him have become fifteen, and I am more and more intrigued.

‘You ever been told you’re funny?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Funny- looking .’

‘Hardly,’ I say, before I can stop myself. He bites down on his lip and my lower pelvis jolts awake. Jesus Christ.

‘Right back at ya.’ His lips curl upwards like he knows he’s being cheesy and he ain’t sorry about it.

‘Ladies and gentlefolk, boys and girls, both and neither – you are cordially invited to our show!’

‘What the …?’ Cal says, as three men in waistcoats and bowler hats cartwheel through the tarmacked car park where we’re waiting. They move into the middle, with one guy jumping on the shoulders of another, and the third guy doing flips around them.

‘Just across the way, you can prepare to be amazed,’ says one of them. ‘We have jokes! We have pathos! We will reset your paradigm with stories we have been workshopping for months! All for free, as we prepare to tour!’

‘Awww,’ I say, watching these men try to rally support for their performance. ‘That takes balls, rounding up strangers to watch your show. God bless.’

Cal inhales sharply. ‘Yup,’ he says. ‘Especially when I’d bet most people just want to get on with their day.’

‘I guess.’

Cal looks at me. ‘You don’t have wild plans you’re itching to shoot off to?’

‘Not really,’ I admit. ‘Truth be told.’

‘Truth be told, me neither.’ He shrugs.

Ask me to hang out.

‘You’ll come along, won’t you, you beautiful people?’ One of the actors has appeared beside us, all but physically manhandling us in the direction of his show. ‘You’ll be sorry to miss it once you see us collect our BAFTA this time next year. Come on!’

‘I don’t think we’re allowed to go yet,’ I say, panicking. Do I really want to get bamboozled into hours of amateur theatre and risk Mr Handsome Whole Foods here slipping through my fingers? No, I do not.

Right as Cal starts agreeing with me, it is announced by the fire marshal: ‘Friends! You are now free to go!’ Cal stops, mid-sentence. He snaps his mouth shut and smiles at me.

‘I tried,’ he says, apologetically.

‘And failed,’ the performer adds brightly. ‘Come on, follow me, this will be the best hour of your life! Or at least in the top five hundred!’

I start to object, but I know for a fact this is exactly the kind of random event I am supposed to embrace. Do it for the story. That’s what India would say right now. I just really do not want to go alone …

Ask me to hang out!!

‘I don’t actually have anywhere else to be,’ I say to Cal. ‘So … I’m gonna go, I think …’

Say you want to come too!!

Cal looks impressed. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, why not?’

‘Is it weird if I come?’

BINGO!!

‘Yes,’ I say, tongue firmly in cheek. I give him a wink for good measure. ‘But a good weird.’

He chuckles, shaking his head like he never planned for his afternoon to unfold this way, but is happy it has.

‘I can live with that,’ he decides, and we follow the performer.

The show is in a small basement theatre across the road from the supermarket, and the actors have managed to half fill the hundred or so seats.

Cal and I are forced into the front row, and sit in curious silence, no idea what’s about to happen.

I want to grab his arm, to nestle into him.

We have centimetres between us and I can feel the heat radiating off his bare skin.

He smells sweaty, but not putrid or stale.

He smells sexy, in that way I imagine a man chopping wood in the great outdoors smells, or Paul Mescal in Gladiator II . Pure man.

The theatre is plunged into darkness with no warning, and it scares me so much I gasp.

‘You okay?’ Cal whispers, and it’s only when I tell him I’m fine and he looks pointedly down at his arm that I realise I have actually grabbed him. Any excuse, I suppose.

‘Sorry,’ I whisper back, but he puts his hand over mine to encourage me to keep it there, so I do, and he is hard and firm to the touch, and then there’s a man on the stage, in a spotlight, who starts screaming.

The next hour is a largely inexplicable mix of chanting, acrobatics and full-on nudity that, whilst brave, doesn’t seem to add to the story – on account of there not really being a story.

It is more designed to shock, I think. God bless that, instead of getting awkward about it, Cal simply leans over and whispers, ‘Christ. That’s a massive cock, isn’t it?

’ I have a coughing fit trying to hold in my laughter.

10/10 response, that. I add it to my mental list of reasons why this bloke is a keeper.

By the time we stumble back out onto Church Street sixty minutes later, into the mid-afternoon sun, all I can say is: ‘That. Was …’

‘Insane?’ Cal supplies, and I half agree.

‘Yes? But also kind of amazing?’

‘I feel you were swayed by the scene with the naked dancing.’

‘ Mesmerised is the word.’