There wasn’t a thing about this man I didn’t know. ‘What do you want?’
This was why we were soulmates. He was trying to solve my problems in exactly the same way I was trying to solve my problems.
‘My job,’ I replied.
‘You can’t have your job.’ He slapped my bare thigh and I had to remember to be offended and not turned on. ‘As account manager, it’s my role to give you honest feedback and tell you what is and isn’t possible. Your old job, off the table. What else do you want?’
‘I really do just want my job,’ I said, clutching the warm bottle between my knees. ‘If I had my job back, I could just put everything back how it was and carry on. That would be perfect.’
‘If this week has taught us nothing else, it’s that things were not perfect for you,’ Charlie said. He turned on the bench until his knee was pressing against mine. ‘People lose their jobs every day, Tess. They don’t take to their beds for four days and fall apart. They turn to their friends, they go on holiday, they – I don’t fucking know – read the great novels or something. Write a great novel. Start a blog. Tell me what makes you happy, aside from work.’
I tried to think about something other than his knee on mine.
‘You?’ I said as quietly as humanly possible.
‘Me?’
‘You and Amy?’ I wanted to slap myself.
Charlie nodded for a moment and took the bottle back from me without words. The ducks on the pond, full of stale bread, started to make their way over to the rushes looking for their beds.
‘I think the problem is, you’re so used to being in your head and solving the problem that you don’t know how to present it back to the client. That’s my job,’ Charlie took hold of my hand. His were almost as soft as mine, but so much bigger. I turned, flushed with vodka, proximity and my ridiculous outfit, and looked into his big brown eyes. He was adorable. ‘So here’s what I see. You are a beautiful, clever, funny woman. You work too hard, you take on too much, and you’re far too concerned with other people’s expectations. You worry too much about your friends and you live with a mentalist, but aside from that, the basic elements are all there.’
Beautiful. He said I was beautiful.
‘Basic elements for what?’ I asked.
‘A life,’ Charlie replied. ‘You’re amazing, you know?’ He knew me well enough to recognize my near-tears whimper and started talking fast. ‘You have so much drive and ambition; you’re so dedicated to achieving your goals. All you need to do is redirect that energy to a new goal. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about your job – you should. It’s just that it can’t be the only thing you care about. There can’t only be one thing that makes you happy.’
‘Are you happy?’ I asked him, not letting go of his hand. I was a bit worried I might never let go. ‘In general, I mean, are you happy?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded slowly. ‘I’m happy. I like my job, I’ve got good mates, I like my flat. There are things I’d change, but overall I’m not complaining. Are you happy?’
‘Am I happy?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think I’m really anything.’
It was hard to say out loud, but as soon as I did, I knew it was true.
‘What would you change?’ I asked him, waiting to start feeling drunk. I really wanted to be drunk. ‘You said there are things you’d change.’
‘Oh, obvious stuff.’ He squeezed my hand and scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dirt under the bench. ‘I’d like my own place. I’d like Arsenal to be doing better in the league. A smoking-hot girlfriend who would do my washing so I didn’t keep running out of socks would be nice.’
‘I am so sick of buying you more socks. What do you do, eat them?’ I asked with the closest thing to a laugh I could muster. Bravely, I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in. He was wearing the aftershave I’d bought him for Christmas. He smelled cool, spicy and familiar. It made my stomach melt, my fingertips tingle. ‘You’ve got loads going for you. You could get a hot girlfriend if you really wanted one. You’ve got everything.’
‘And so have you.’ He dropped his head on top of mine, our coppery curls meshing together, and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘You just haven’t realized yet.’
‘I’ve got sod all,’ I said, trying to pretend that the teenagers weren’t totally eyeing up the bottle in my hand. ‘As you have quite rightly pointed out.’
‘You’ve got me.’ Charlie said. ‘And I’m all right.’
‘Oh, don’t.’ I laughed out loud. ‘Don’t even.’
This wasn’t the first time Charlie and I had got drunk on a bench. This was not the first time one of us had talked the other through a crisis. But it was the first time he’d looked at me with such dark eyes. The first time I’d felt his thumb gently running back and forth over the back of the hand he was holding. And the first time that I had ever felt his heart beating as fast as mine.
‘I’m all right, aren’t I?’ he asked. ‘Tess?’
I felt goosebumps on my bare legs and twisted round to get a better look at him. His dark, gingerish five o’clock shadow was starting to come through and his dark, dilated eyes were ever so slightly bloodshot from getting up so early, driving so far and drinking so much. He leaned his forehead against mine and repeated himself in a whisper.
‘Tess?’
Words were my thing. Words were my actual job. I used them every day, manipulated them, moulded them, made them dance around in circles, but at that moment there wasn’t a word in the world that would help me. And so instead of trying to say something funny or clever, I took a deep breath and kissed him. For a moment, I couldn’t tell who was more shocked. Neither of us moved – we just sat there, frozen, Tess pressed against Charlie. My cold, vodka-burned lips against his cold, vodka-burned lips.
And then he kissed me back.
It was slow at first and I wasn’t quite sure it was happening but I was too scared to pull away. And then I felt the slightest movement against my face, the tickle of warm breath on my wet lips. For ten years I had wondered what it would feel like to kiss Charlie Wilder on the mouth, and now I knew. It felt spectacular. The arm around my shoulders tightened and his other hand crept up to my face, cradling my cheek in his palm while our lips became better acquainted. I wrapped my arms around his back and ignored the little voice in my head that was shouting, ‘And now we’ll never, ever let go!’ As well as the vodka, I could taste the beer on his breath. I hated beer but I didn’t care. I was kissing Charlie Wilder and Charlie Wilder was kissing me.
‘Wait.’ Unable to stop myself, I pulled away with a pained expression. ‘You’re not kissing me because I’m sad, are you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, his voice broken and just short of breath enough to make my heart pound.
‘And you’re not kissing me because you’ve been drinking?’ I just could not stop myself from asking these ridiculous questions. Who gave a shit if he was kissing me because he’d been drinking? I hated myself so much sometimes.
‘Maybe? A little bit,’ he admitted, leaning back in for another kiss. ‘Can you stop overthinking this now, please?’
‘No,’ I replied, pressing a smile against his lips. ‘Have you met me?’
The teenagers across the way started whooping at us approximately four seconds into the second kiss, and although the sun setting across the mill pond was as close as my village ever came to beautiful and romantic, they were very, very off-putting.
‘Back to yours?’ Charlie asked. I took a deep breath and held it in for a moment. He wasn’t just suggesting we go home, he was suggesting we Go Home Together. ‘Tess?’