The Single Girl's To-Do List (23 page)

Ethan had been a wonderful host. He opened doors, he pulled out my chair and he wouldn’t let me pay for a thing. Every word out of his mouth was funny or sweet and always interesting. He was aware, he was intelligent; I found out he loved his career as a teacher, spent as much time reading and researching lesson plans as he did going hiking with Sadie, his golden retriever, and every thought that passed through his mind was spelled out on his honest face. There was no pretence, no guessing games. I asked a question, he answered it. He asked a question, he wanted to know the answer. Ethan Harrison was, to all intents and purposes, the perfect man.

So all I could hope was that it was the jetlag that was leaving me feeling completely and utterly unaffected by his attention. We were sitting side by side on the corner of a high table, not too close to the edge of the deck. I stole a glance at my date, the sun setting in the sky behind him, lighting up his hair and casting shadows on his handsome face. Why didn’t I feel anything? Once I’d got over the initial buzz and potential heart attack, something strange had happened. Nothing. I liked Ethan but I didn’t
like
him. Try as I might, there was just nothing there.

‘You really set the fire alarm off at The Savoy?’ he asked over a giant plate of what looked like chips and gravy covered in baby food. It was not the most appetizing thing anyone had ever put down in front of me, but I was assured poutine was a delicacy. I couldn’t see how the chef could work maple syrup into it and, therefore, I was officially not interested.

‘I did,’ I confirmed. ‘Unless the Metropolitan Police happen to ask. In which case it was an accident and nothing to do with me.’

Given how I’d come to be in touch with him again, I’d left the single girl’s to-do list out of our conversation so far but, now we’d settled in one place, we were running out of conversation. Fast. I wasn’t into ice hockey; he didn’t follow football any more. He loved to hike. Surviving in the great outdoors without a corkscrew was one of my greatest fears. Ethan didn’t watch TV. Didn’t. Watch. TV. What option did I have left?

‘You’re insane.’ Ethan smiled across at me with crinkly blue eyes. ‘I knew you were cool but now I see you’re completely crazy.’

‘Not really.’ I rubbed the tattoo on my right wrist. It was almost completely smooth again. ‘Mostly incredibly ordinary. According to some people, I’m actually very boring.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Who would ever think you were boring?’

I rested my elbow on the table and covered a small smile with my hand. I’d only had a couple of sips of my drink but my head was swimming already. The perils of jetlag and cocktails. Jetlag and cocktails. Nice to mix things up from the usual Monday routine.

You know what’s wrong here, whispered Redhead Rachel, appearing out of nowhere. You know exactly what’s wrong with this situation.

Nice of her to show up at the end of the bloody day. This might be the only instance where it was better never than late.

‘Really, I’m a big fan of the quiet life.’ I chose to ignore my bitchy alter ego but, even as I said the words, I knew it wasn’t true any more. ‘I don’t need to be out punching supermodels in the face every Wednesday.’

OK, that part was true, but I didn’t want to spend every Thursday night making spaghetti bolognese for a man who didn’t deserve it either. I’d rather just make it for myself. Possibly for Emelie. I’d never be cooking for Matthew ever again. Ethan’s expression suggested he was still stuck on the ‘punch a supermodel in the face’ part of our conversation.

I picked up a chip that seemed relatively gravy-and cheese-curd-free. ‘That was Emelie anyway.’ I bit into the chip. I put the chip back down. Bleurgh. ‘I just set off the fire alarm.’

‘I can’t believe how much you’ve changed.’ Ethan started on the poutine with much more commitment. ‘You know you’re kind of amazing, right?’

You are amazing. Redhead Rachel yawned at my side. And he’s completely and utterly dull.

Redhead Rachel was a bit mean. But worryingly correct.

‘Really, not amazing. We should have caught up a month ago.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Things were very different.’

But of course we wouldn’t have been able to catch up a month ago because, without the list, I would never have thought to look him up. Matthew would never have messaged him. I would never have been sitting in a bar in Toronto. I would have been watching
Match of the Day
with half a Domino’s Tunion and the best part of a bottle of white wine giving me indigestion.

‘So, Rachel Summers, high-flying international make-up artist,’ Ethan held an imaginary microphone out to me. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’

‘Another answer that would have been very different a month ago,’ I replied, wondering what the answer was now. ‘Tough question, Mr Harrison.’

‘How so?’

‘A month ago I would have freaked out at the thought of how old I’ll be in five years. Thirty-three. Scary.’ I closed my eyes and swallowed. ‘And I’d definitely have said I’d be married with a baby. Maybe two. That’s it probably.’

Ethan smiled happily. ‘Sounds like my answer.’

‘I’m just not sure it would be mine any more.’ I rubbed my tattoo and pushed my hair back behind my ears, letting it fall back around my face. ‘Thirty-three doesn’t seem nearly as scary as the idea of having kids right now.’

‘So what do you want?’ he asked.

I laughed out loud and smiled at my answer. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Just getting a clearer idea of what I don’t want.’

‘Do you think you’ll stay in London?’ Ethan asked as I turned in my chair to look out at the sun setting over the city. It had never occurred to me that it would be so pretty here. In fact, like so many things, Canada had never really occurred to me at all. I was glad Matthew had made me come; I was a frog in a well. Or a slightly more flattering animal. The lights of the CN Tower were just starting to stand out against the powdery sky and Lake Ontario glittered in the distance. ‘I hear Toronto is running very short on make-up artists.’

‘Really?’

Boring, the redhead whined, he’s cheesy and boring. Aren’t we over that?

‘Really.’

It would have been the perfect time for a kiss. Sitting there shoulder to shoulder, knees touching under the table, sharing a drink at the end of a wonderful day after all these years apart but, when it came down to it, my butterflies had fluttered off somewhere else.

‘You probably wouldn’t realize how much you’d miss it unless you left,’ Ethan broke the tension and pulled away. ‘I think that’s the thing about cities – you get used to all the things they offer you, then you really don’t think about it until it’s taken away. I lived in New York for a summer after college and, when I got back to Toronto, things here just seemed so slow, like it took forever to get anything done. But now I wouldn’t leave for anything. I just want to go to work, come home, walk my dog and chill out.’

‘Sounds nice,’ I said. Rachel from one week ago would have genuinely considered that blissful. Redhead Rachel was gagging with her fingers down the back of her throat. And, somewhere in the middle, the real Rachel knew this wasn’t the life for her. As wonderful and romantic as it would have been to run away with my teenage dream, it just wasn’t going to happen.

He rubbed a hand over his face and rested his forehead against his fist. ‘I can’t even start to wonder how boring my life must sound to you. I don’t mean I just sit in my house every day waiting to go to sleep. I just mean this is a great city if you don’t want to be constantly freaking out. It’s a great place.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ I fingered the change in the pocket of my sundress, no idea what to say next. ‘And you have animals on your money.’

Ethan smiled. I wondered when I’d become mentally unstable.

‘Yes we do.’ He leaned in towards me and loosened the hair behind my ear.

‘Beavers,’ I held it up to show him. ‘And, is that a moose? Funny.’

‘I guess I never thought about it.’ His smile was just a little bit crooked even though his post-braces teeth were perfect. Why wasn’t I falling for this? I was clearly defective. ‘I guess I never thought about a lot of things.’

Out of the mouths of fools and babes, Redhead Rachel commented while inspecting her nails to my left.

‘I’ve been thinking about something.’ Ethan leaned in for the kill.

His lips were only on mine for a moment. It wasn’t even really a kiss, more of a test-the-waters peck and, as soon as I’d got used to them being there, they were gone. It was soft and sweet and a perfect first kiss.

It just wasn’t Dan.

‘I totally just got off with Rachel Summers,’ Ethan blushed, placing his hand over mine and gently squeezing it. ‘Wait until I tell the lads.’

‘Only took you twelve years,’ I said quietly, trying to smile. What was wrong with me? Why was I thinking about Dan? I tried to imagine how I’d be feeling if we were round the back of the sports hall, his Lynx Java mingling with my Impulse Vanilla Kisses instead of on the rooftop of a posh hotel, my Marc Jacobs Daisy and his nothing at all. The whiff of dog food on chips didn’t help, but that really wasn’t the problem here.

I’d been trying so hard to make this Ethan thing real I was completely ignoring a far more worrying situation. And it wasn’t the chips. ‘So what do you want to do now?’ he asked. ‘We could catch a movie maybe? Dinner? You’re not really feeling the poutine, right?’

‘I’m so sorry but I’m sort of knackered.’ I yawned to demonstrate my point. ‘I really just want to go to bed.’

‘Bed?’ If he spent any more time blushing, he’d be no use to anyone in the bedroom anyway. Every ounce of blood in his body was making a beeline for his cheeks.

‘My bed,’ I clarified hastily. Wow, way to leave a sentence open for entirely the wrong interpretation. ‘I should go to my bed and sleep. Jetlag.’

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, it was as if my body just gave up. As the sky above us turned from powder blue to a soft, dusky purple, my ability to keep my eyes open began to fail and all I wanted was my bed. Maybe my judgement was just impaired by the shroud of sleepy. I needed to rest. When I had a clear head I’d be able to work out what exactly was wrong with this picture. Or at least what was wrong with me.

Redhead Rachel was already standing by the lift, tapping her watch. She seemed to know exactly what was going on. If only she would let me in on it.

‘Jeez, you must be totally jetlagged.’ Ethan looked a little bit disappointed but, ever the gentleman, he signalled for the bill and gave my hand another squeeze. ‘I had a lot of fun today. It was great to catch up.’

‘Definitely.’ It had been fun. It just hadn’t been the whirlwind romance I’d built myself up for. ‘Thank you so much for showing me around.’

‘Let’s get you back to your hotel.’ He threw a couple of notes on the bar and flashed the waitress a goodnight smile. The dimples I’d wanted to tweak so desperately in Year Eleven returned with a vengeance. I really wished I could pin down what was wrong with me. Surely it wasn’t just that he didn’t watch TV?

‘Thanks.’ I hopped down off my bar stool and let him wind his fingers around mine, hoping to feel something gooey and lovely in my stomach. All I could feel was that one rancid chip rattling around. Truly it was the stuff great love stories were made of.

‘So this is you.’ Ethan’s very practical car pulled to a stop outside the shiny black fascia of The Drake.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and gave him my best sleepy smile. At least I hoped it was a good sleepy smile and not just cross-eyed. ‘Thanks so much, it was fun.’

‘It was.’ He turned off the engine and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel. Ruh-roh, that was a very serious face. ‘I know you have to leave on Wednesday but do you have plans tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘Can I text and let you know?’

‘Of course.’ He shifted in his seat until he was facing me. ‘I’d really like to hang out. Today was awesome.’

‘Right.’ I turned quickly, one hand on the door handle, leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek and then bolted out of the door. ‘Night, Ethan.’

I slammed it shut behind me and was safely inside the hotel before I even heard his engine turn over.

‘Hi, Miss Summers,’ the receptionist gave me a wave. ‘Good evening?’

‘Yes?’ I offered. She looked as convinced of that as I did. Em had texted me to say she and Matthew were in the bar and to come and join them, but since I clearly couldn’t be trusted to deal with people, I headed straight up the stairs to bed. It would be nice to have a shower without an audience.

‘Well, sleep tight,’ she called after me.

‘Yeah, whatever,’ I chuntered, mounting the stairs.

Fat bloody chance of that.

I crawled into bed, still in my sundress, and got under the covers. There was no time for a shower. I didn’t care if my face felt a little bit sunburned. I didn’t care if I woke up with panda eyes. Why had no one worked out that jetlag and messy-stressy boy nonsense was the cure for OCD? Wrapping myself up in the duvet, I couldn’t even find the energy to flick off the light switch. By the time I’d rolled myself up against the seasonably warm weather, I was right in the middle of the bed. Fuck it, Emelie was just going to have to roll me over when she got in. As soon as I was down, I turned into lead, and like lead I sank into a deep sleep the second I closed my eyes.

It was daylight again when I opened them.

‘Morning.’ Matthew was stretched out on the chaise lounge, reading a French magazine. Matthew didn’t speak French. ‘You were sock on when we got in last night.’

‘I was knackered,’ I said quietly, so as not to wake Emelie. ‘We walked around all day. What time is it?’

‘Ten-ish?’ Matthew replied. ‘I thought you were never going to wake up. Give sleeping beauty a tap; the car’s booked for eleven thirty and I have to eat something before my stomach lining starts digesting itself.’

‘Car?’ Getting up was an epic struggle. My limbs felt as though they’d been chopped off and replaced with sausages. Nothing seemed to work.

‘Em was telling me about that bungee-ball thing at Niagara Falls.’ He stood up and hauled me out of bed. ‘So I looked into it. We’re going.’

‘We are?’ I looked down at my crumpled dress and up at Matthew’s shocked expression. ‘I slept in my clothes.’ I explained.

‘So I see.’ He held my shoulders and walked me over to the shower. ‘Good date?’

‘Feels like a car conversation,’ I pulled at the zip on my dress and wrapped a towel around me to avoid burning Matthew’s retinas with my boobs.

‘That bad?’ He turned on the water, testing the temperature with his hand. ‘Are you OK?’

I picked up my special redhead shampoo, ready to wash some sense back into my hair.

‘Let’s just say I’ve picked the right day to jump off the top of a tall building.’

‘Road triiiip!’ Emelie yelled, throwing a plastic bag full of treats across the back seat and then distributing huge Starbucks cups to Matthew and me in the front seat. He’d taken driving dibs and I was playing navigator, which left Em in charge of entertainment although, as far as I could tell, my role was mostly holding the iPhone where Matthew could keep his eye on the TomTom app while Em stretched out on the back seat and ate crisps. I’d definitely drawn the short straw.

Much to Em’s delight, Matthew was doing his best to rev the engine of the Mini Cooper when my phone switched out of its map mode and flashed up with a private number.

‘It’s probably Ethan,’ I said, opening the car door and hopping out onto the pavement. ‘Give me a minute.’

‘You’ve got one minute,’ Em shouted through the window. ‘Road triiiip!’

‘Hello?’ There really was no good reason not to see him, other than I’d already made plans to jump from a great height with a bit of elastic tied around my ankles. It wasn’t as if he was going to propose. Probably. He had talked an awful lot about his friends’ babies. If ever there were a marrying kind, it was him. And I supposed – until a week ago – me. Stupid bloody timing.

‘So, I read your letter.’

Simon never bothered with hello. It was one of his less pleasant habits. Like clipping his toenails in the living room, eating Marmite sandwiches before bed and keeping his hands down his pants during
Match of the Day
. Actually, during any TV show after eight p.m. And these were the things of which I needed to keep reminding myself.

‘Why are you reading my letters?’ I was more than a little bit confused. ‘And why you didn’t your number come up? Have you changed your number?’

‘You changed the locks without telling me,’ he replied. ‘It seemed fair.’

‘You left.’ I found a bus shelter and sat down. Pacing wasn’t going to help my blood pressure. I nodded good morning at the two old ladies waiting beside me. They nodded back. Lovely people. ‘Why are you reading my post?’

‘I’m not reading your post.’ He sounded pissed off. ‘I’m reading the letter you wrote, addressed to me. The one in which you repeatedly refer to me as a cockweasel.’

It took me a minute but I got there eventually. The letter. The letter I put on the coffee table. That Matthew must have picked up when he went to get Simon’s mail. Cockweasels.

‘Oh.’ It was a good job I was already sitting down although, really, lying down might have been better. ‘That letter.’

‘That letter,’ he replied. ‘Matthew said you were going to Canada?’

I looked around at the two old ladies in the bus stop, the cars driving over tramlines on the wrong side of the road and the funky black and white stripy building opposite.

‘I’m in Canada,’ I confirmed. ‘Toronto.’

‘For work?’ He was starting to sound slightly less pissed off and slightly more curious.

‘Nope.’ Why give him any more details than he deserved?

‘Fine. Look, this is costing me a fortune so I’m just going to say it,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘That letter really fucked me off.’

‘Imagine that,’ I replied. If he started giving me shit, I could just hang up again. What was he going to do: come to Canada to shout at me in person?

‘Yeah. It wasn’t very nice to read but, after I read it, I thought … You were right. There were parts of it that made me feel like shit. I can’t really blame you. You’re right about everything.’

Well, this was a turn-up for the books.

‘What I did was shit and cowardly and you didn’t deserve it.’

I leaned back against the wall of the bus shelter. Really?

He took a deep breath and I could have sworn I heard a heavy sniff. ‘Rachel, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t ask and I know you should say no, I know you’re going to say no but, god, I really want to see you.’

I stared across the street as a tram rattled by. Trams. Canada was funny.

‘Rachel, are you there? You know I can’t tell if you’re answering me in your head when we’re on the phone.’

‘I’m listening,’ I replied. ‘You want to see me.’

‘I know I’m an idiot cockweasel who doesn’t deserve it but I want to come home,’ he said quickly, tacking a nervous laugh on the end for good measure. ‘I’ve been sitting here looking at my phone, reading that letter all day. It’s taken me until now to get the guts up to call you.’

What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? I nibbled on the corner of my thumbnail.

‘OK, I’ll just keep talking and you don’t hang up, deal?’

In five years, I’d only seen Simon cry twice. Once when his granddad died and again when Chelsea won the double, but it sounded as if he was having a go at hitting the triple himself.

‘I don’t know what I was thinking, changing jobs, meeting new people, coming up to thirty, whatever,’ he went on. ‘I convinced myself I was missing out on something. It was like, I looked at you and started seeing a mortgage and pension plans and university fees and weekly trips to the supermarket and just being old. I stopped seeing you. But I was wrong.’

I was a weekly trip to the supermarket? I stopped biting my nail. He looked at me and saw pension plans?

‘I’ve had a bit of time to think about it and I was wrong. I can admit that now. I
was
a cockweasel but now I want to come home. I love you.’

‘You do?’

‘I do.’

‘Even though I’m boring?’

‘Even though you’re boring,’ Simon tried to laugh. ‘But boring’s not that bad when you think about it, is it? I really miss you, Rach.’

I breathed in and then breathed out. I was calm. I was totally, totally calm. I was not about to hulk out on Queen Street West.

‘But what if I don’t want that any more?’ I asked. We were this close to Rachel go smash-smash. ‘What if I’m different?’

‘You’re still Rachel,’ he replied. Someone was getting annoyed that I hadn’t rolled over like a dead dog. ‘Look, when are you back? Shall I pick you up at the airport? I’ll make dinner and we can sort everything out.’

I puffed out my cheeks and looked back at the car. Em was hanging out of the window making ‘wrap it up’ hand gestures in between scoffing handfuls of Ruffles. I gave her a wave and a two-minute sign. Or at least I thought it was a two minutes sign. I might have actually flashed her a V.

‘Rach?’ Simon’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘No.’ My voice. My word.

‘No I shouldn’t pick you up?’

‘No to all of it.’ I stood up and started pacing. Threat of stroke be damned. ‘No, you can’t pick me up. No, you can’t pretend none of this happened. No, you can’t come home. It’s not your home any more.’

Saying it made it true. I’d done too much in the last ten days to just go back. Of course it would be easier to write it off as an extended mad half-hour, but since when was anything worth doing easy? I wasn’t in love with Simon any more. I hadn’t been in love with Simon for a long time. I was in love with not being on my own, with having someone there at the end of the day and now I knew I didn’t need that. My heart wasn’t broken over him; it was breaking for the things I had wanted from him. And I didn’t want them any more.

‘Rachel?’

‘You are a coward. And a cockweasel.’ I winced and mouthed an apology at the old ladies. One of them shook her head, the other smiled. ‘What if I’d come home three months ago and said, all right Simon, I reckon I might want to shag about for a bit but once I’m bored of sleeping on my mate’s settee, I’ll come back. It’ll be on my terms and I’ll call you up and insult you first, though. Does that sound OK? What exactly would you have said?’

‘Rach—’

‘I’ll call you when I’m back and I’ve decided what I want to do with the flat. I have to go now, I’m about to throw myself off a bridge or something.’

I pressed end and called Simon a very bad word in a very loud voice. The old ladies sitting beside me in the bus shelter looked somewhat startled.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I covered my mouth with my hand and apologized again. ‘I forgot where I was for a minute.’

‘Don’t worry,’ one in a fetching orange mac replied. ‘We’ve come across more than one cockweasel in our time, we just never used that name for them.’

‘Do you remember Donald Tyler?’ the other chuckled as the bus pulled up. ‘Now he was a real cockweasel.’

I wiped away the beginnings of tears, pleased that they had never made it all the way out, and smiled at the two ladies as they boarded the bus. Forty years from now, that would be me and Emelie. Matthew would doubtlessly be too busy cruising around Miami in his toy boy’s convertible. Scratching my tickly nose, I walked back to the car and jumped back in.

‘What’s up?’ Matthew took one look at my face and pulled me into a hug. ‘You all right?’

‘It was Simon,’ I mumbled to the wet patch my tears had started on his T-shirt. ‘He wants to come home.’

‘Oh my god.’ Em launched herself and the Ruffles through the gap in between the seats to get in on the hug action. ‘What did you say?’

‘I told him no.’ First order of business, I took the Ruffles and dropped them in the foot-well. I was going to be needing them soon enough. ‘I don’t want him back. It’s not his home any more, he left.’

‘Amazing.’ Matthew untangled himself from the hug and held his hand up for a high-five. ‘Good. You’re better off without him.’

‘You’re totally owning this single thing,’ Em agreed. ‘Men of the world watch out.’

‘Hmm, yeah.’ I rested my head on her arm. ‘Rachel Summers, international heartbreaker.’

That title might have more credibility if I could stop thinking about one very specific heart I’d at least bruised recently. And it did not feel good.

‘You still need to fill us in on that story,’ Matthew reminded me once he’d wrangled Emelie back into her seat and convinced her to fasten her seatbelt. ‘Do you want to rain-check on this? We could do it tomorrow?’

The last couple of days had been tiring and confusing. The jetlag had put Redhead Rachel right off her game and, basically, I needed to be back on it. Which meant only one thing. I buckled my seatbelt, took my to-do list out of my handbag and waved it at Matthew. ‘If I’m ever going to do this, it’s going to be today.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ he nodded, turning the key in the ignition. ‘Niagara Falls it is then.’

‘Whooo!’ Em bellowed out of the window again. ‘Road triiip!’

‘Yeah, Em,’ Matthew spoke into the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s going to get really tired, really quickly.’

‘WHOO.’ She leaned forward and repeated herself, twice as loud, right in his face. ‘ROAD TRIP.’

‘Shall we just get going?’ I suggested, tucking the manky-looking napkin away. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I didn’t survive the bungee jump. A broken neck had to be better than four hours in a car with these two.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting from Niagara Falls but Alton Towers meets Blackpool Illuminations dropped in the middle of a National Trust park really wasn’t it. The place was terrifyingly tacky, the complete opposite of tasteful and modern Toronto. It took twenty minutes to crawl through the neon signs, past the waxwork museum, the bowling alley, funfair and four different Starbucks before we were waved off into a car park. And by car park, I mean great big gravelly field. Em bounded out from the back seat like an over-enthusiastic puppy as soon as the car had rolled to a halt.

‘Come on, it’s this way,’ she yelled, bouncing up and down, face turned up to the sun. Anyone would think we kept her in a box in the cellar. ‘I can’t wait for you to see it.’

Matthew unfolded his giant frame from the tiny car with slightly more dignity and stretched. Vanity was pain. Hiring the coolest car in the garage wasn’t always a good idea if you were technically a giant.

‘Come on.’ He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and we followed Em and the hordes of other visitors across the car park. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

The en-route Ethan discussion had been relatively brief. Still shaken by SimonGate, I couldn’t really sit there and make excuses as to why I’d spent a wonderful day with a wonderful man and felt nothing. Em was clearly wearing her hopeless romantic hat and blamed everything from nerves and jetlag through to the jeans he was wearing and the far too early introduction of her beloved poutine. If nothing else, I had discovered her secret shame of adding melted cheese slices to chip-shop chips and gravy when no one was looking. Matthew, on the other hand, was much more fatalistic. Ethan wasn’t the one. It was a fun crush, long-distance things often were, he told me, but when it came down to it the chemistry wasn’t there.