The Love of My Afterlife(71)
There’s a knock at my door. Merritt jumps. Wow, she really is on edge.
“Two days,” I say, putting my hands together. “You can run circles around those guys I thought? Around Eric? You can hold him off. I’ve made peace with it. I’ll even date Roger Pecker, no complaints.”
Merritt looks like she’s about to say something else but then stops herself. Instead, she throws her hands up in exasperation. She lifts her chin. “Please just try, Delphie. And no. I can’t promise that Mrs. Ernestine won’t murder you, so maybe watch out!”
She’s kidding.
Right?
Before I can confirm she’s kidding, she has shimmered and popped off back to Evermore.
I open the door to find Cooper standing there, hair damp, wearing a black T-shirt with a photo of Jack Nicholson kissing Helen Hunt. Underneath it says, Good Times, Noodle Salad.
“Nice,” I say, pointing to it.
“It was a gift.”
“I like it. Are you…?”
“Yeah, I was thinking…?”
We laugh. I take a breath. “How can I help you, Cooper?”
He laughs too. “You could allow me to take you to dinner this evening.”
“Excuse me?”
“This evening. Dinner. With me.” He thumbs at his own chest.
I brush my hair back behind my ear. “You mean…like a date?”
“I do.”
“I thought you didn’t date?”
“I don’t.”
I grin. I’ve never been on a date before. And the last time I went out to a restaurant in London was in 2015, and that restaurant was the Paddington branch of Chicken Cottage. I think of what Mr. Yoon said.
It’s nice to see you looking happy.
I might not have much choice in how long I stay alive. But I do have some say in how much life I can pack into the days I have left. How much happiness I can experience. I have zero to lose now.
I nod. “Okay, yes. You can take me to dinner.”
He smiles then, the tiny gap between his front teeth visible. It’s a real smile. An excellent smile. A not-at-all-despicable smile. I think about the first time I saw him downstairs after he moved in. When he bowed to me in the hall with those glittering eyes. How my stomach had flipped with distant, impossible-seeming possibility. And then, when he told me to fuck off that morning, immediately feeling like an idiot for thinking of him at all. Now I know it was because his beloved twin sister had just died. Of course he told me, a grumpy woman at the door, complaining about his music, to fuck off. But I didn’t think about that. All I thought was that this man was simply confirming everything I already knew about people. They were all terrible.
I wonder if I had tried again to make conversation, if we’d have found ourselves in the same scenario as this, only with more time to see what came of it.
“I’ll see you at seven,” Cooper says before turning on his heel and striding back down the hall.
I guess we’ll never know.
35
A few years ago, in a rare burst of confidence and hope, I bought the sexiest, most beautiful dress I’d ever seen, from a boutique on Westbourne Grove. It was only when I got back to my flat that I realised I actually had nowhere to wear it. And even if I did, it was way too glamourous and slinky for someone like me. It’s been hanging unworn in my wardrobe ever since. I decide that I might as well wear the pale green dress with the slit tonight because I literally have nothing left to lose. If I’m going to dive into these last two days, I might as well really dive in. While the heat wave has finally broken, it’s still warm, so I tie my hair up with a black ribbon, brushing the hair so much that the waves sort of puff out, making the ponytail super voluminous. It looks cool, I think. My heel blisters mean that the only footwear I can conceivably wear without ripping my feet to shreds is a pair of silver flip-flops I picked up last summer. They might not exactly go with this dress, but at least I can comfortably walk in them.
I opt for some tinted moisturiser and dab on more of the glossy lip balm that Leanne lent to me for the gala.
Cooper has an appointment somewhere before our date, so the plan is to meet him outside the restaurant. I have no clue what to expect, this being my first date and everything, but as I shuffle down the street with the other summer revellers, I am filled with nerves that feel very different to the nerves I’m used to. These nervous jangles are soft and bright and twinkling, not the heavy thunking darts of dread I’ve previously felt.
I’ve never been to Chelsea, so I use a newly downloaded map app on my phone to find the way to the restaurant—a place called Concept and Caramel. As I reach the restaurant, a discreet-looking building with darkened windows, I see a group of teenagers sitting on a wall opposite. Two of the teenagers are laughing at one of the others, a younger-looking girl with buck teeth and acne-scarred skin.
I halt and watch as one of the older kids nudges the other as if to say, Watch this, and then takes a huge wad of pink gum out of his mouth before splatting it onto the younger girl’s head with a slap that is audible to me from across the street. I picture Gen and Ryan doing the same thing to me. You’d think teenagers would have thought up new, more interesting ways to harass each other. Some things just never change.
Before I can think about what I’m doing, I march across the road to where one of the girls is laughing at the “joke” while the other teenager takes a pic on his phone. The younger girl has tears in her eyes. I can tell this is not her first rodeo with these goons.