Page 10 of Begin Again Again

Beth forgot all about sleeping with him. “Are you serious? You’re named after the place your parents made you?”

“One hundred percent.”

She lifted a hand to her mouth. “Holy shit. Nice of your parents to remind themselves of that every time they called you in a playground.”

He smiled. “Yeah, pretty weird, hey?”

Again, with that smile. He looked so different grinning; it was bizarre. Like a method actor playing an entirely different character.

“You…” Beth started.

“What?”

“It’s just… do you… are you nervous about being here or something?”

He swigged his pint. “Nah.”

Beth was too distracted by the dark caramel hair in his armpit to push, but she didn’t think he was being honest. His smile was too… everything.

“Anyway.” Byron drained his pint glass. “Another one?”

“Sure,” she said on pure reflex. Byron signalled the waitress.

“So,” he said once the waitress left with their fresh order. “What’s the best holiday you ever had?”

“Is this your idea of small talk?”

“It’s better than talking about the lockdown. Come on, your best holiday?”

She opened her mouth to tell him about her mid-twenties tour of Europe—drinking real absinthe in Prague, bathing in the Barcelona sun, skydiving in the Swiss Alps—but another memory surfaced.

“Probably when I went to the Mornington Peninsula with my friend, Lara,” she said, surprising herself.

Byron nodded, because he had no idea she’d ever skydived in the Swiss Alps. “How come?”

“Um, we went to the hot springs three days in a row and read books, and I know that doesn’t sound exciting at all, and it wasn’t, but itwasnice. Nicer than any holiday I’ve ever had before.”

“Why d’you reckon?”

“I don’t know,” she lied. The reason was, unlike on her tour of Europe, she hadn’t spent her time ping-ponging between paralytically drunk and deathly hungover.

Byron stared at her, waiting. That seemed to be his signature move—waiting for her to fill the silence. Beth didn’t want to comply, but it was too hard not to.

“It was the first holiday I’d ever been on where there was no pressure to do anything,” she said. “Travelling was like a job before that.”

“Because you had to go everywhere and see everything?”

“Yeah, but it was me as well. It’s like I had this holiday personality…” Beth caught herself just in time. Too deep. Too much. Definitely not first date appropriate. “Anyway… I could just chill around Lara on holiday. I napped and I was alone if I wanted to be alone. She was super pregnant, so she just slept and read most of the time too and it was great. When we came home, I was relaxed. Ready to make things happen instead of insanely anxious because I’d been shitfaced for a week.”

Goddammit. She hadn’t meant to say that.

Byron waited, but Beth wasn’t going to get suckered again. She stood, grabbing the pink pencil case she used as a purse. “Bathroom.”

The corner of Byron’s mouth pulled up. “No worries.”

He might as well have said,‘I know what you’re doing.’

Beth rushed away, legs wobbly, head spinning. She checked her phone while she peed. She had an email from work and a text from Lara.

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