“Oh, right.” I take a sip of my drink to buy myself some time. “He was…”
“Held up.” A voice whose vibrations I learned to recognise too soon says, right next to my ear. “I was held up for longer than expected. An emergency, you know how these things go…”
I want to turn to him and let his eyes swallow me up again, but I’m almost afraid that this is a dream I’m about to wake up from.
“So he does exist,” Smith says, surprise in his tone. “We were starting to doubt you.”
I smile tightly at his thinly veiled shock.
“I’m here.” Eric’s arm snakes around my shoulder. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
His voice is soft and intimate, and makes me turn towards him.
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
He smiles at me. And before I can work out what’s happening, his mouth is pressing gently against mine. A few seconds of him, his heat, his soft lips, before he deprives me of it all once again.
I straighten my tie for no reason, dazed and too giddy for something that feels like lies and disaster.
“You’re totally forgiven.”
AFTER GOING THROUGH allthe introductions, chatting with nosey colleagues and drinking more than necessary to ease the tension, Eric and I go outside to get some fresh air from all the fiction we’ve created with our own hands and in which we’re slowly drowning.
“I thought I made myself clear,” I say, trying to seem tough and distant.
“What are you talking about?”
“The whole… Er… Kissing thing.”
Eric’s lips morph into a smile. “I wanted to make it realistic.”
“You managed. Too well, even. There was no need.”
He sticks his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers – which look so good on him, as does his unbuttoned blazer and light shirt. To call Eric ridiculously charming is reductive – and dangerous.
Men like him eat guys like me for breakfast.
His smile loses confidence, the light slowly dimming. “I wanted to say sorry.”
Oh no. When he’s being a dick, Eric is charming. But when he’s human, he’s… Oh, my God.
I can’t start to like my fake date too much.
“I was awful.”
“A dick,” I correct him, and he smiles, nodding.
“I was.”
“Because of your bad day, or…?”
“He came to the restaurant today.”
“Mmm?”
“Colm. He showed up at the restaurant.”
“Got it.”
