Page 84 of The Fallback

Baffled, Connor asked, ‘What are you doing?’

Rosie turned back to him. ‘I would say this has been a lovely trip down memory lane but that would be a lie. I’ll say it’s been a useful one.’

‘Rosie, come on. Don’t be so dramatic.’ He tried to put his arm out to stop her but she shook him off. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘To grow up, to be an adult, to take a risk that I should have taken a long time ago,’ she shot back at him as she headed for the exit. She left him, stood at the bar, open-mouthed, and was happy she hadn’t offered to split the bill.

Rosie pushed through the doors of the bar and looked both ways down the busy street. It was crowded and at first, she couldn’t see Mitch, but then a flash of red caught her eye, the red coat of one of his friends. Quickly she headed in that direction, pushing past fellow Londoners on her way. No one batted an eyelid, they were all used to being pushed and pulled by the London crowds.

‘Mitch!’ she shouted as she saw them draw close to the stairs heading down into the underground at Piccadilly Circus.

She saw him start, wondering if he had heard his name called.

‘Mitch!’ she called again and this time he stopped and turned, almost being swept off his feet by the crowd as he did so. He spotted her.

’Rosie?’ he called back. ‘Are you OK?’

Even after everything, after the fights and the sabotaged relationships, after their fallback plan lay in tatters, the first thing Mitch did was to ask if she was all right. Rosie felt her heart soar in a much needed way after the bitterness and unpleasantness that had been her date with Connor. Mitch’s friends stood hesitating on the top of the steps.

‘I’ll meet you there,’ he said to them as he stood to one side and waited for Rosie.

Rosie hesitated. The crowd was only getting thicker but the distance between her and Mitch was closing. Two more steps and she would be close enough to touch him. Taking a deep breath, she took those two steps and looked up at him.

‘Mitch, I…’ she began, unsure of what she had planned to say.

Mitch looked down at her. He seemed hesitant, too, waiting for her to say something, almost willing her to do so. She felt herself totter on the brink of something major, this was the moment to tell him, to admit her feelings for him. If she didn’t, she knew she would regret it, but again she had that small voice of doubt telling her that it could ruin everything.

But she had listened to that voice too many times, and what was there left to ruin? Mitch wasn’t talking to her, anyway. And really, how could she tell him in words what she really felt? Surely there must be some truth that actions speak louder than words? Before Rosie could allow her stupid voice of caution to open its mouth and destroy any confidence she had, she stepped up on her tiptoes and kissed Mitch on the lips.

Around them the commuter crowd surged, Rosie felt herself losing her balance, but not before she had opened her eyes to see Mitch’s wide-eyed look of surprise. Her lips felt charged by an electric current and she toppled slightly to the side. Mitch put his arm out to catch her but at that moment a loud group of men pushed through, pulling Mitch in one direction down the steps and Rosie in the other. Rosie could just see the top of Mitch’s head over the crowd before it disappeared down the steps.

‘Mitch!’ she shouted again in desperation. She didn’t know what that look had been on his face but she knew that he must have felt something to look so surprised.

‘You OK, love?’ a man asked as she felt herself propelled to the edge of the crowd.

Rosie put her hand out to steady herself against the brick wall of the building and nodded. He looked concerned, but then plunged into the crowd himself – concerned maybe, but not concerned enough to miss his train home. Rosie tried to catch her breath but her mind was racing. Part of her was punching the air in delight at having had the courage to kiss Mitch,she’d done it!But now she needed to find out what that look on his face meant.

She looked for an opening in the press of commuters and stepped back into the path, racing quickly down the steps into the ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus. London rush hour was not for the faint-hearted. People were rushing this way and that, swiping their cards and phones with precision over the readers before disappearing off down the escalators leading to the tube trains.

Desperately Rosie tried to scan the crowd but she couldn’t see Mitch anywhere. Hadn’t he waited for her? Known that she would come down the stairs and look for him? Couldn’t he feel that? For a moment she thought about getting the tube over to his apartment, she could talk to him face to face there. Make him understand. Maybe even kiss him again… Her heart squeezed tightly at the memory. But he had been heading somewhere with friends, hadn’t he? That was obvious. So he might not be back home for hours. Pulling her phone out, she tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail as it would if he had got on the tube. She didn’t leave a message, because what was the right thing to say to your best friend who you had just kissed?

Rosie walked around the ticket hall several times, hoping against hope that she would find Mitch waiting for her somewhere. On her third lap round, she finally accepted defeat. He wasn’t here, he hadn’t waited for her, he hadn’t come back up to find her and he hadn’t called her. That was what the expression on his face had meant, and it wasn’t the answer to her kiss that she had been hoping for.

Her shoes felt like lead. All she wanted to do was to talk to Mitch but she now felt further away from him than ever. Resigned, she pulled her card out of her bag and headed for the tube herself. Her heart was heavy but she wasn’t angry at herself for kissing Mitch. Quite the opposite. For the first time in a long time, Rosie felt she was living her life and taking some risks. It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but she had an answer. Maybe it would be the end of her friendship with Mitch but at least she would now know and could follow Jasmine’s advice. It was the last thing Rosie wanted, but maybe she was strong enough for a fresh start, maybe she could begin looking to the future and to start planning what the rest of her life might look like if Mitch wasn’t in it.

ChapterTwenty-One

Rosie woke to several missed calls on her phone, none of which were from Mitch, and a pillow streaked with tears and mascara. The high from the previous night had dissipated quickly and she rolled over and bleakly observed the pile of clothes on her floor, left over from her date preparation. Although nothing materially had changed in her room since then, the excitement she had felt last night while she got ready, was in stark contrast to the nauseated despair she now felt. Damn men and their ability to ruin a perfectly good evening. She should have stayed in, ordered takeout and mainlined a box set. None of these had so far reduced her to tears in the way men had.

Two of the calls were from Connor who had left her a voicemail, which Rosie quickly consigned to oblivion by deleting it. Whatever that idiot had to say to her was not going to be worth listening to. Rosie wondered if there was a way of getting him barred from all dating apps before deciding that if the people who ran dating apps were at all interested in policing the behaviors of toxic men, the apps wouldn’t exist in the first place.

The last call was from her mother and Rosie knew she needed to return it. She was just summoning up the mental resilience that would be needed to speak to anyone when her mother beat her to it.

‘Mum,’ Rosie said in as bright a voice as she could muster, ‘I was just about to call you. Is everything OK?’

‘Everything is fine, darling, don’t worry. I was just calling to tell you I was going to be in town today and to ask if you would like to meet for lunch or a coffee? If you’re not too busy.’

Rosie hesitated and her mind raced forward to her day ahead. She knew she had a ton of work to do in the lab, but her spot wasn’t reserved until late morning. If she sat at her desk for too long, her mind would replay that kiss with Mitch over and over again. She needed something to distract her.

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