Wow, he’s a talker when he’s had a drink. I feel completely unequipped to respond in a helpful way. I wasn’t expecting him to open up to me like this, to be vulnerable. I wish I knew the right things to say. I don’t want to offer meaningless platitudes, but my experience of parenting is limited to high days and holidays with my nieces and nephews, and even then never as the responsible adult. My siblings see me as the baby of the family, they don’t look to me for childcare.
‘Yikes,’ I say. It’s the best my whiskey-softened brain can come up with. I’m not proud of myself right now.
‘Yikes?’ Mack stares at me, silent for a few seconds, and then he starts to laugh, as sudden as if someone pulled a stopper from a bottle. ‘Fucking yikes?’
I stare back at him, a little bit horrified, and then whiskey-tipsy laughter bubbles up my windpipe too, until I need to wipe tears from the corners of my eyes. It’s like a dam-burst, the tension over which of us will leave swept temporarily away, replaced by a slice of giddy elation. Neither of us knows what the hell we’re going to do now that we’re not set urgently against each other.
‘I’m sorry things are so tough for you back home,’ I say, when we’ve both calmed down. ‘And that I don’t have anything more useful to say.’
‘Yikes was pretty seismic,’ he says. ‘I might start to use it back home.’
Mention of home centres my mind back on my more immediate problem. ‘I can’t spend another week here waiting,’ I say. ‘This time is too precious to let slip away.’
‘What are you waiting for, Cleo?’
Things have shifted between us tonight, a fragile truce of sorts. He’s given me a window into his world, so I don’t bat his question away. I reach for my glass, more for something to do with my hands, and I can’t quite meet his mismatched eyes as I speak.
‘I write for Women Today.’ His neutral expression tells me he hasn’t heard of us. I’m not offended; he’s from another continent and he’s hardly our demographic. ‘It’s an online magazine,’ I say. ‘The most popular in the UK by miles,’ I add. If I really drill down into why I said that, it’s because I want him to be impressed, or at least not dismissive. I don’t want to drill down even further to work out why his opinion matters to me. ‘I write an online column about being single in London, and more specifically about searching for love.’ I flick my eyes up to his to check if I see derision. I don’t, so I carry on. ‘And I don’t know if I’m just looking in all the wrong places but I’ve been hitting dead ends and going round in circles for a few years now. It’s become …’ I search for an appropriate way to express it. ‘Monotonous. And wearying and shallow. I feel as if I’m fading away.’
I raise my eyes and find him studying me. I notice warmth there, like he’s really listening.
‘I’m thirty soon, and the closer it gets the more anxious I get. I’ve been trying to understand why I feel so conflicted because I’m not consciously worried about the number itself, or even about being single and not having kids yet.’
‘Well,’ he says, after a pause. ‘This sure is the wrong place, as you say, to come looking for love.’
I smile, saddened. ‘But a really good place to know for certain I’m not going to find it, which was kind of the point.’
He nods slowly. ‘So you’re, what, an anti-love columnist now? Because you’ve ended up stranded with the right person to help you on that score. I can give you a million reasons to call off the search right now, Cleo. Love fucks you up.’
An unexpected laugh escapes me. ‘I might just file that,’ I say. ‘It’s pleasingly succinct.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he says, raising the bottle at me as he tops up our glasses. ‘Buckle up, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘Are you going to tell me I’m better off alone? You wouldn’t be the first to trot out that old chestnut.’
‘The old ones are the best, as they say,’ he says. ‘I’m not here to warn you off love. You might still find someone who wants you for ever.’ He rolls his glass between his palms. ‘But I’m probably not the best person to dole out romantic advice.’ He looks into his whiskey. ‘Turns out for ever is too long for some people.’
I’ve had enough to drink to let the words in my head fall out of my mouth unchecked.