I got my revenge with the mains, though, since the braised celery was still, y’know, braised celery, despite being covered in cheese. Whereas I was presented with most of a dead animal in this amazing sweet-sticky-smoky sauce and crispy, thick-cut chips like you get in gastro pubs. Although, if those were my terms of reference, probably I didn’t have much of a future as a food critic.
By the time we got to dessert, we were basically dead of indulgence. The caramelized apple tart turned out to be literally a caramelized apple on a pastry base, with ice cream on the side. So that was sort of hilarious. As was the fact that Nik cut into it super carefully, having obviously been scarred for life by the disguised orange experience.
What was left of the evening found us in a pile on the sofa, under a duvet dragged from the guest room, watching Supergirl on the enormous wall-mounted TV. Nik idled his fingers in my hair and it was like being at Oxford—except university had been this closed system, made up of habits and proximity and inevitability. Now we were in the world. And the world was kind of…ours.
Full of possibility.
Or I was just full of champagne.
“What’s he like?” Nik asked.
“Hmm?”
“Caspian Hart.”
“Oh.” Tricky one, that. “Complex.”
“Wow, you’ve really developed this keen insight into him, haven’t you?”
I gnanged his shoulder. “I’m not sure what to say. He’s rich, powerful, and insanely hot. He lives in a different world from me.”
“Yeah, but do you like him?”
I wondered how to explain.
“The fact that you’re taking so long to say yes isn’t a great sign, Ardy.”
“Oh my God, of course I like him. I just…I’m not sure I know him.”
“Well, you only met him a few months ago.”
“I get that but”—I chewed my lip thoughtfully—“it feels…deeper somehow. Like maybe he doesn’t want me to.”
Nik was quiet for a moment or two. “This reminds me of the time you broke up with that guy because he didn’t like Labyrinth.”
“Yes, because what sort of monster doesn’t like Labyrinth?”
“Um…maybe this isn’t about Labyrinth. Just saying.”
I peeped at him over the top of the duvet. “You mean—dum dum duhhh—it’s about me.”
“You do have a way of getting out of relationships.”
“But,” I pointed out, all logical-like, “I’m not in a relationship with Caspian.”
“And yet you’re still looking for the thing that’s wrong with it.”
Wow. He’d got me there.
“Wow,” I said, “you got me there.”
He pulled me in closer and attacked my hair until it was all fluffy and annoying. “I’m really going to miss you.”
“I love you too.”
I snuggled down even farther. Vaguely turned my attention to Supergirl—who was saving the world with her compassion and sincerity, and some hard-core punching. Mainly, though, I was thinking about what Nik had said and if it was true. I mean, yes, it was. Kind of.
Or maybe it was a totally different problem this time. Because, for once in my life, I didn’t want out of a relationship: I wanted in one. But that meant finding my way—probably through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered—past the man Caspian kept trying to be, the one who sent me flowers by rote and touched me by rote and didn’t seem to see me when he looked at me, to the one who had whispered to me down the phone, laughed with me, listened to me, comforted and believed in me. The man who had come for me at Oxford when I most needed him to be there.
