“I don’t know what are you talking about.”
Paul bursts into laughter. “You just can’t bring yourself to admit it?”
“Admit what?”
“That you like him. And a lot. That you liked it here, that you felt alive for the first time in a long time.”
“Now you’re really going too far.”
I walk towards the car parked on the street, a short distance from the club. Paul’s footsteps quickly catch up with me.
“You can tell me, you know.”
I turn suddenly towards him.
“You like him. And you didn’t expect it. And you wish you didn’t like him.”
I shake my head, angry.
“And the more you try to convince yourself of that, the more you become involved.”
“You don’t know what…”
“Oh… I don’t know, you say? You know how it happened between Vanessa and me. It was like… like a bump on the head!”
“I don’t think she would like how you describe your meeting.”
“I’m sure there are better ways to describe how I felt the moment Vanessa smiled at me for the first time in that club after I asked her if she had any plans for the next fifty years.”
That’s exactly how it was. I know it because I was there. I even got into a fistfight that night. Vanessa was in the company of her then-boyfriend, Paul, but Paul hadn’t received the memo.
“I knew it was her.”
“You were shamelessly lucky.”
Paul shrugs. “Fortune favours the brave.”
“Paul…”
“You haven’t taken your eyes off him all night.”
“That was because he was half-naked.”
“The other bartenders were also half-naked. All of them.”
“Really?” I ask, realising too late that I am not helping my cause this way.
Paul raises an eyebrow.
“I didn’t look around, that’s all.”
“That’s because you were focused on his ass!”
“What the hell…?”
“OK, you may have looked at something else too, but…”
“Are you done?”
