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‘Mm. Isn’t it?’ Nathan agrees. In his haste, a bit of tomato sauce has escaped and is running slowly down his chin. Normally, I’d find something like that rather off-putting, but there’s something almost sexual about it in this context. I don’t know whether it’s the silky redness of it, hinting at ripeness and fertility, or something more basic about the way we’re devouring the pizza in a similar frenzy to the sharks from earlier, but I imagine myself reaching out and wiping it off, before suggestively licking my finger clean. The thought sends sparks shooting through me as I reach for my second slice. Never mind near-death experiences, it seems my ultimate turn-on is sharing cheap carbohydrates on an empty stomach with a good-looking man. Shit. If pizza can do this to me, what the hell could pasta do? An image of Nathan and me sharing a bowl of spaghetti forms in my mind. We’re attacking it with similar gusto and the tomato sauce is going everywhere. Somehow, we end up on opposite ends of the same strand of spaghetti, like Lady and the Tramp, but what happens when our mouths meet is definitely more R-rated than Disney. It sounds disgusting and messy, and it’s totally out of character for me, but the image has left me feeling hopelessly turned on.
By the time we begin the third slice, the food is starting to do its work and the furious tempo is slowing. As we carry our boxes over to the table and sit down, the lurid mental images fade, leaving me feeling slightly embarrassed. Nathan breaks off some kitchen roll and hands a couple of sheets to me, before wiping the errant tomato sauce off his chin. This simple action breaks the remainder of whatever spell I’ve been under, and I carefully dab my own chin, horrified to discover that I’ve had a similar accident. Any lingering desire I might feel is quashed as the pornographic images from just now are replaced by one of my mother looking disapproving. I can practically hear her voice saying, Really, Athena. Your father may be an expert on ancient times, but we are not barbarians, so please don’t eat like one.
By the time we finish the pizzas, and I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I did eat the whole thing, plus my share of the garlic bread, my stomach feels distinctly bloated. If I were on my own, I’d undo the button on my shorts to relieve the pressure, but I don’t think I know Nathan well enough to feel comfortable doing that in front of him, so I’ll just have to put up with the discomfort. I just hope it doesn’t turn into full-on indigestion later. Nathan stacks the empty boxes by the bin before picking up the bottle of wine – not that I need any more – and coming to join me on the sofa. Silence falls once again, but now I feel bold enough to break it.
‘So,’ I ask, emboldened by the wine and carbs. ‘Who is Kayleigh and why is she so desperate to get hold of you?’
He sighs, and there’s a long pause before he speaks.
‘Technically,’ he says in a flat voice, ‘Kayleigh is my fiancée.’
24
His what?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say when I’ve regained the power of speech. ‘Did you say fiancée? As in engaged to be married?’
‘I believe that’s the meaning of the word, yes.’ His voice is still flat, as if all the energy has been drained out of him. ‘It’s complicated.’
That’s the understatement of the year. Who blocks their own fiancée? And why the hell has he never mentioned this before? And what on earth does he think he’s doing messing around with me if he’s engaged to be married? I’ve spent the night in his apartment, for God’s sake! I know nothing happened, but the optics are terrible. And then there’s the picture of us on the boat that he was so pleased with. I kissed him! All right, it was primarily for Mrs Barry’s benefit even if I did enjoy it, but the point is, I’d never have done that in a million years, or even let him hug me the way that he did, had I known. Even sitting next to him on the sofa suddenly feels uncomfortably intimate and I get to my feet, crossing to lean on the kitchen counter so I can face him.
My mind is in chaos. I feel like he’s deceived me, and that makes me angry. He led me to believe he was single; he allowed me to entertain fantasies about him, to get close to him, when all the time… I’m trying to remember who initiated the hug on the boat. It was definitely him, but then it was me that escalated it into a more intimate clinch. It was me that kissed him. But then he was the one who squeezed my buttock, who made it clear he was enjoying the intimacy of the moment. Is it my fault? Should I have asked the question more explicitly? No. He should have made it clear from the outset that he wasn’t available.
I’m so caught up in my tangled emotions that it takes me a moment to realise that Nathan has started speaking again.
‘I met Kayleigh online, just under two years ago,’ he says in the same flat voice. ‘She was bright, vivacious and wickedly funny. I was captivated by her from the start.’
Do I want to hear this? Each complimentary word he uses to describe her feels like being stabbed in the stomach. I should go. I don’t need to hear his inevitable limp explanation about how she ‘doesn’t understand him’ or whatever. He may not have outright lied to me, but he’s deceived me nonetheless. Yes, rational me knows that it was unlikely that he’d turn out to be the love of my life, but I never dreamed that it would be because he was engaged to someone else. What was I? A plaything? A distraction while he was far away from home? He must have realised that his friendship with me was inappropriately close and yet he let it carry on. I want to flounce out of his apartment, preferably delivering some killer line about how I was worth so much more than a loser like him before disappearing into the night with at least some of my pride intact. But this is like one of those TikTok videos of a multi-car pileup happening in real time, captured on someone’s dashcam. You know you shouldn’t be looking, but you can’t help yourself. There’s also the weird blocking of her number that I don’t understand. I stay put.
‘I should have seen the warning signs when I took her home to meet my family for the first time,’ Nathan is saying. ‘It was about a month after we’d decided to become exclusive and I couldn’t wait to show her off.’
‘What happened?’ I ask, doing my best to disguise my fury and keep my voice level.
‘Nothing. At least nothing that I could put my finger on. To me, she was the same Kayleigh that I was falling for, so I was a bit surprised when Mum and Tess were less than enthusiastic about her. Mum said, and I quote, “As long as you like her, Nathan, that’s all that matters.”’
‘Ouch. What did Tess say?’
‘She didn’t say anything, which told me everything I needed to know. If she’d liked Kayleigh, she’d have been straight on the phone after our visit, gushing about her, wanting to invite us over so she could get to know her better and all of that. You know the phrase, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”?’
‘Of course.’
‘That sums up Tess’s silence. I couldn’t understand it and, if I’m honest, things got a bit prickly between me and my family because of it.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What?’
I know I should be the bigger person here, but I can’t resist putting the boot in. ‘It just reminds me of something my mother said to my brother Troy, years ago when he was dating,’ I tell him. ‘She said, “At some point, every son brings home a girlfriend that his mother secretly refers to as that woman.”’
‘Yes, exactly. But I couldn’t understand why. She was perfectly polite to them, maybe a little reserved, but other people’s families can be a lot, can’t they? If she was quieter in their company, maybe she was feeling overwhelmed. Anyway, Kayleigh and I continued to see each other and, after six months, she suggested we move in together. That was when things with my mum went properly south.’
‘Why?’
‘She decided to stage an intervention under the pretext of inviting me over for dinner. Kayleigh was on a trip to Amsterdam with some of her mates, so she made this big song and dance about how lovely it would be to cook for me and, like a muppet, I fell for it. When I got there, she and Tess basically ambushed me. They said that Kayleigh was controlling, that they felt my personality had diminished since I’d started seeing her…’ He stops and shakes his head as if trying to dislodge the memory.
‘What did you do?’
He laughs bitterly. ‘Oh, I was super mature about it, as you’d expect. I told them they’d never made the effort to get to know her, demanded to know why they couldn’t just be happy for me, and then stormed out. Do you know what the worst part is? Deep down, I think I knew even then that they were right. I was just too stubborn to admit it, especially to them. Anyway, we moved in and things were OK to begin with. I was happy, or at least I thought I was. But even I began to see that Kayleigh was manipulating me, even if I still couldn’t admit it to anyone else. She’d find reasons for me not to see friends she didn’t approve of. She expected me to agree with her on everything. If she wanted a glass of wine then that was completely fine, but if I wanted one when she didn’t, she’d roll her eyes and make unsubtle remarks about alcohol dependency. It was a drip, drip, drip of control, designed to wear me down without me realising. Like the frog in a saucepan – you know that story?’
