Page 56 of Love in Tune

‘I’ll try my best to get Mimi to come soon,’ Honey said.

Carol nodded, her eyes cast to the ground. ‘Do me a favour. Make it as soon as you can?’

Nodding, Honey glanced away. She would. For both the men she now knew in self-made seclusion, she would.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Friday morning rolled in grey and cool, but Honey woke up early and in a hot sweat.

It was today. Or tonight. Friday. No-date night with Hal. In an attempt to play it down in her head, she hadn’t told a soul. Not Tash, nor Nell, nor Lucille and Mimi, a choice she regretted as she threw up her breakfast five minutes after eating it. Her nerves were off the scale. Tash would have been the perfect person to help her dial it back down with her jokey good humour, but Honey knew that she’d be somewhere thirty thousand feet up at that moment and in no position to offer comfort. Nell … Nell was probably being politely boffed over her muesli, so no joy there either, and it wasn’t a conversation she should have with Lucille and Mimi. That left no one. No one except the one person who was aware of the arrangement. Hal. But what was she supposed to do? Knock on his door, and then what? Ask him if he was still on for casual sex later? She pulled a ‘you idiot’ face at her reflection as she tied her hair back in the hall mirror, shook herself into her mac, and left the flat.

Across the lobby Hal heard Honey’s door open and close, and listened for her footsteps. He was able to discern whether she was heading over to his or towards the front door, and today she paused just outside her own door. Was she deciding which way to go? Had she bottled it? Should he? He had grave misgivings about the whole situation. His body was undeniably turned on by the fact that Honey wanted him, and his head was certain that it was a mistake of monu-fucking-mental proportions. His hand touched the cool lock on his door, ready to open it and cancel. He stood still, bated breath. If she walked his way, he’d open it, call it off because that was no doubt why she’d be coming over. If she went out of the front door, he’d … and then the front door banged, and she left for work, robbing him of the luxury of choice. She hadn’t cancelled, and neither had he.

Hal greeted the pleasurable emotion that surged around his body like an old friend. Adrenalin in his veins. The feeling he’d lived for before the accident, the one where you’re right on the edge of doing something incredibly stupid and have to screw up insane amounts of courage to throw yourself off the ledge.

Except sometimes you didn’t have the safe landing you’d banked on. Sometimes it really was incredibly stupid. Sometimes it could wreck your life. Hal’s problem was that he honestly didn’t know which way this one was going to play out.

He heard her come in as he’d heard her go out hours before, from the front door to her own flat without deviation towards his door.

He could do this. There was a way to give her what she wanted without taking what he did. She probably wouldn’t like it, but this was his gig, his terms.

He reached for the whisky bottle.

Honey had spent her day in a swan-like state; serene on the surface, frantic on the inside where no one else could see. Her heartbeat was erratic, pounding too fast every time she thought about the night ahead. Her brain wouldn’t function when it came to shop-related matters, and she was hugely relieved by the arrival of an agency chef to help Skinny Steve because her brain wanted to think about Hal and their non-date all day. What should she wear? Where would they do it? She’d changed her sheets before work that morning to fill the time between throwing up her breakfast and leaving the house. Maybe the sofa would be a better idea; they might be able to slide naturally from conversation into sex. ‘How was your day, dear? Fine. Fancy a shag?’

In the end she’d decided that it would be best to just stop trying to plan it and let Hal take the lead. She was after all, the pupil, and he the teacher. By the time there was a knock on her front door just before eight o’clock that evening, she was mildly hysterical and badly in need of a fortifying drink.

‘Shit,’ Honey whispered, struck silent and statue still by the sound of the knock. ‘Shit!’ Her heart seemed to bang around behind her ribs almost as loudly as Hal had banged on the door. He was here. He hadn’t forgotten, or backed out. He was outside her door and she needed to let him in.

‘Coming!’ she called out skittishly, and then cleared her throat and put her hand over her mouth to hold in the horrible urge to gaily add, ‘or else I hope I will be,’ as she opened the door.

‘Honeysuckle,’ he said, and just the sound of her full name on his lips was enough for her to want to gasp,do me. Hal looked the same but subtly different, an ever-so-slightly less grungy version of himself. It was probably the fact that he was wearing a shirt rather than a t-shirt with his jeans, a shirt that followed close against his body and was as inky dark as the hair he’d made an attempt to tame.

‘Shall I come in, or would you like to do it in the lobby?’ he asked, and Honey belatedly realised she had yet to invite him in.

‘Sorry … sorry. Come through.’

In the lounge, Hal took a seat on the sofa, and Honey prevaricated between the other end of the sofa and the chair. The chair won.

‘Unless you expect me to make you orgasm from three feet away using just the power of thought, you’re going to need to come closer.’

Honey laughed nervously. ‘Ha. Yes. Would you, umm, would you like a drink first?’

‘I already had one, but you go ahead. You sound as if you need it.’

‘Do I?’ she said, knowing full well that she did. ‘I’m fine, really. Totally fine. Cool as a cucumber.’ She moved from the chair to balance on the other end of the sofa. ‘See? I’m right here, being cool and calm.’

After a minute’s awkward silence she jumped up again and shot across to the kitchen. ‘I might just get that drink.’

In the kitchen, she banged her forehead three times against the fridge door, called herself an obscene name, and returned with two big glasses of red.

‘I bought wine,’ she said, putting the glasses down on the table. ‘Shiraz. Australian.’

‘There aren’t nibbles too, are there?’ Hal said, low and dry as a bone.

‘No nibbles.’ She sat down alongside him, not quite touching and wishing she’d put the TV on before he came over because it was so quiet and it looked rude to put it on now, as if he were boring her.

He took a sip of his wine, and she took a gulp of hers.

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