Page 17 of Before You Say Goodbye

She was also amused and he could tell. He laughed.

“He was a nice boy,” he said. “Better than those other boys you bring back here sometimes. He talked to me for ages. Mainly about you. I told him stuff.”

“Oh God.” Autumn whined, rubbing her free hand over her face.

“Only good stuff. He likes you — I can tell. He wanted to know all about you.”

Walter would have plenty to tell him, too. He and Autumn had spent a lot of time together since she had arrived. Despite his blabbermouth and how often he moaned about the news, she couldn’t bring herself to dislike him. Walter was good-natured and funny. He’d spent thirty years of his life working as a security guard and then inherited a fortune from his late cousin. He had never been married, but spent thirty-five years taking care of his best friend’s widow, Margaret. She’d passed away only eighteen months before. Walter had waited until then to admit to himself that he had always loved her. Now, he spent his days regretting the things he’d never said. Autumn wanted towrite that story one day. She was waiting for the right time to ask his permission.

Though she had moved away from her little town to live in London, Autumn had been entirely unprepared for how big New York City was. She had not realised just how tiny she would feel when surrounded by permanent crowding and the tallest buildings she had ever seen. There were barely any streets that didn’t hum with activity all through the day and night. No matter where she was, she always felt crammed in, the way one might feel even in the quietest corner of a busy nightclub. She had been hugely overwhelmed by it at first, but was slowly getting used to the atmosphere here.

Still, she knew this was not her forever home. She’d been longing for a cottage with a vegetable patch for as long as she could remember. City life was necessary for her right now, but she planned to settle down somewhere with less grey and more green one day.

Walter, who was still loitering, had been born and bred in New York. He loved it here and didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave. Despite an issue with his leg that made it difficult for him to climb the stairs to his apartment, he refused to move. Autumn expressed her concerns about his health and safety pretty much every time she saw him — if there was a fire he’d have absolutely no chance of making it out of the building — but he’d insisted he would never leave his home, no matter how difficult or dangerous things became. He would starve and die up there first, he’d said. She’d argued with him a lot about it at first, but eventually realised there was no point. Walter’s opinions were as strong as his American accent. He would not be moved.

They’d had many heated debates, but Autumn continued to visit Walter, even if only for a few minutes, most afternoons. They settled eventually into talking mainly about things theyagreed on. He had been good company as she’d settled in. For a while, he had been her only friend for thousands of miles.

She admired him now, his eyes sparkling with nosiness, and resolved to forgive him. He lived through her experiences.

“Thanks, Walter,” she said.

“Be nice to him, Autumn.”

He turned and went back inside. If only it were that simple, she thought, as she opened the note on the staircase.

I’ll come back later. I can explain. Bowie.

Her body flooded with the kind of anxiety-inducing dread she’d felt often in England, but hadn’t experienced since she’d moved to New York. Her heart quickened, her chest hurt and she felt like she couldn’t suck in enough oxygen. She didn’t want to see him. Sleeping with him had been the wrong thing to do. She might have lost a friend over it. Perhaps if she just never saw him again, she could go back to life before him. When she and Bluebell had been firm friends, in constant contact, when she had known who she was and what she wanted, and all had been right with the world. She had no desire to be around a man who made her feel so vulnerable. She’d never allowed anyone to have such control over her.

Panicking a little bit, she let herself in, tossed Bowie’s note in the bin and picked up the phone to call a man she’d been ignoring for a fortnight. They’d met in a bookshop and exchanged numbers, but she had been too busy having fun with Bluebell and meeting other people to return his calls. She asked him to dinner. Despite the short notice, he agreed to meet her in an hour.

Autumn didn’t feel remotely like going out, but she didn’t know how else to avoid Bowie. She thought about replacing the note he’d left her with another asking him to leave her alone, but suspected he’d ignore it. If he started banging on the door,Walter would come out and tell him she was inside. She couldn’t be bothered with the drama. It was a better idea to make sure she was unavailable until he got the hint and left her alone. She’d need a distraction in the form of a man to pull that off. She hoped that this one was handsome. She couldn’t remember what he looked like and when she tried, she only saw Bowie.

She put on a flowery mini-dress and blazer, brogues, and oversized earrings. Just before she left, she kicked the brogues off, slipping her feet into a pair of plain black heels, instead. She very rarely wore them, but they made her feel sexier, and she really wanted to feel good.

She had just set off down the first set of steps when she ran into Bowie. He was almost at the top, and looked rather dramatically breathless. They froze, each with one foot in front of the other, so that it might look to anyone who saw them as though they were intending to collide into one mass. He planted his gaze on hers.

“Autumn,” he said.

He said her name as though he could still taste her on his tongue. Her attraction to him overwhelmed her. In a conscious effort to put a barrier between them, she clutched her bag to her chest.

“I’m going out,” she said. Bowie made no effort to hide his disappointment. He stared at the carpet for a moment, then tentatively raised his gaze to look at her again. She knew he’d taken those few seconds to work through all possibilities, and willed him not to ask her to elaborate.

“Date?” he asked her cautiously. She nodded. She was acting much colder than she’d meant to. She heard his breath catch in his throat and willed herself to give him nothing but stiff posture and an expressionless face, but her pride was getting in the way. She waited for him to say something, but he was silent.

“I couldn’t let you know because I don’t have your number and you didn’t call when you said you would,” she said, a little snippily. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. His shoulders slumped low and he sighed. He had given up. Disheartened by his lack of fight, she started down the stairs again.

She hoped he might follow her, but he didn’t.

* * *

Autumn spent the next few hours trying to focus on what the handsome man in front of her was saying, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t because he wasn’t interesting — he was a humanitarian aid worker and had spent most of their evening together telling her about the most dangerous parts of the world. Autumn, who was not well-travelled, would usually be enthralled, but tonight she was too consumed by her lingering feelings for Bowie to care even a little bit about what Anthony had to say.

Seeing Bowie again had reminded Autumn that he wore his heart on his sleeve. He was not the type of person to hide how he felt about a person or a situation — his sister was the same. There was probably a perfectly valid reason he couldn’t see her last night, but Autumn had overreacted and made herself look like a fool. Her head had shoved her heart aside. She had been spiteful to him and that didn’t sit well with her at all. She was unpleasant to men only when they deserved it, but Bowie didn’t, he was kind and good. She was ashamed of herself.

She knew that the right thing to do was to be honest about everything. She should tell this lovely man her mind was on someone else. She should leave the restaurant, call Bluebell, explain what had happened, apologise for breaking their unspoken code of friendship, and ask for a way to contact her brother, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do that yet because she was afraid. Everything had gone too far. Bluebelladored Bowie, and Autumn would be in trouble not only for sleeping with him, but for upsetting him afterwards, too.

When the waitress asked them if they wanted coffee or desserts, Autumn politely declined. A coffee forfeit on a date like this would ordinarily occur in order to fast-track the inevitable: coffee and sex at her place. If it wasn’t for Bowie and the way she felt about him, she’d have taken Anthony home with her. He was well-dressed, intelligent and articulate. He had beautiful brown eyes and greying hair. There was a protective quality about him she liked. But she couldn’t wait to get away and she certainly couldn’t bear the thought of his hands on her.

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