Page 103 of The Fallback

‘Because you never mentioned it!’ she protested. ‘And anyway, we were housemates!’

‘So?’ Mitch asked.

‘So, it would have been a terrible idea.’

‘Why? Why would it have been a terrible idea?’

Rosie sat for a moment and thought. Why had shereallynot said anything that morning? Why had she been so sure it wouldn’t have worked? She was always looking for the practical approach; she didn’t want to take the risk, get swept off her feet and it all end in heartbreak, but why had she been so sure that it would have ended that way? The thought of trying to explain all of that in an articulate way made her head spin. So, she simply said, ‘Well,younever mentioned it and you never tried to kiss me again!’ She folded her arms across her chest defensively.

Mitch groaned in frustration. ‘Because you made it so damn clear that you didn’t want to talk about it, you pretended it had never happened! And anyway, I tried loads of times to talk to you about it, but every time I did something would conspire against me.’

‘Like when?’

‘Like…’ Mitch paused for a second, thinking. ‘Like in Italy!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I was about to talk to you and then we got the phone call about my mum.’

Rosie remembered that night so clearly. She had thought Mitch was about to tell her to back off, and now it turned out he had been going to say the opposite? ‘But why didn’t you say anything about it when we got back to London?’

‘Because my mum was really sick, Rosie! Because I was tired and frightened she might not make it and I couldn’t risk losing you as a friend because I needed you so much to help me through all that. I don’t know what I would have done without you! And that night,’ he continued, ‘a year ago. When I got that promotion? When I had booked that table at that fancy restaurant but I got the wrong date?’

‘You mean the wrong year,’ she said, a smile starting to play about her lips.

‘Yeah, OK, whatever, the wrong year. I was planning to tell you then at dinner. And then I messed up.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me in the pub? Why did it have to be in that restaurant?’

‘Because I had it all planned out, exactly how it was all going to be, and then it didn’t work and I was so mad at myself, and I took it out on you, and it all felt wrong to be telling you that night.’

Rosie looked at him across the table, cross with him for missing the opportunities, cross with herself for apparently missing the signs. To hell with keeping a clear head, she thought, and drained her glass of champagne. Ever the gentleman, Mitch reached over to refill her glass.

‘You still haven’t explained New York.’

Mitch put his head in his hands and rubbed his face. ‘I thought it would help me get over you.’ His voice came out muffled between his fingers.

‘Get over me? You suggested we have a baby together!’

Mitch groaned again,‘It was all such a mess.’

‘Explain’ demanded Rosie tapping the table. Mitch looked down at his hands, then up at the sky, then he too picked up his glass of champagne and drained it.

Eventually he said, ‘I’ve always been in love with you, Rosie. It’s always been you. Ever since you answered my advert for a roommate. I still remember what you were wearing that day.’ He smiled at her sadly. ‘Do you remember?’ Rosie didn’t move. ‘You had on a grey T-shirt, black combat trousers and seemed to be carrying the rest of your worldly goods in that enormous rucksack you used to lug around with you.’

Rosie remembered, of course she remembered. She was nervous about moving to London on her own, Connor had recently left for Washington and all the plans she thought she had made were up in the air.

‘You said you were anxious about moving to London for the first time, but you seemed anything but anxious. You were so quietly confident, so self-assured, I thought you could do anything you wanted to do. I still do,’ he insisted.

Rosie just remembered feeling like a mess. She hadn’t worn make-up, those combat pants were a real fashion faux pas and she actually did have most of her things in that rucksack. She just desperately wanted to make sure she had somewhere to live sorted before her PhD started. Rosie never would have imagined that the person she would end up living with would have been Mitch, or that he would remember their first meeting just as clearly as she did.

‘I couldn’t believe it when you said yes to moving in. I remember thinking that this is what it felt like to win the lottery. But all the time I was telling myself to calm down.’ Rosie looked at him quizzically. ‘Because while I was getting to live with the girl of my dreams, you might not feel the same way. And that’s what I feared when we kissed that night.’

Rosie blushed at the memory; it still made her stomach somersault. ‘I was hurt, I thought you either didn’t remember or wanted to forget,’ she protested, ‘and I worried that it would ruin our friendship if I brought it up and then you rejected me, you already meant so much to me, even by that point, Mitch.’ They stared at each other across the table for a moment, lost in memories.

Mitch smiled ruefully. ‘Well, that was a lost opportunity.’

‘But what about all the other girls?’ Rosie pressed him.

‘What about them?’ he asked. ‘None of them lasted, none of them ever measured up to you.’

‘But none of them looked anything like me!’ she exclaimed. ‘If you could pick the polar opposite of me, you seemed to do so each and every time which just reinforced my belief that you couldn’t have been interested in me because I wasn’t your type.’

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