Our Stop(18)

She allowed herself a little smile.

He could be reading it right now, she thought to herself. He could be thinking of me as I am thinking of him.

The idea of it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt oddly comforting.

What would he say in return?





9


Daniel


‘I really am going to have to ask you to piss off,’ Daniel said to Lorenzo as he poured boiling water into his favourite Arsenal mug. ‘I am not reading a dating guide. Absolutely not.’

He manoeuvred around his flatmate to the fridge, pulling out the plastic carton of milk and doing a double take as he realized that it was weirdly light. He looked at it, pointedly, sighing dramatically.

‘Lorenzo, did you put an empty milk carton back into the fridge?’

Lorenzo looked from the carton to Daniel’s raised eyebrows.

‘It’s an emergency stash day,’ Lorenzo said with a shrug, opening the drawer where they kept the single-portion pots of UHT milk that they made a game of stealing from hotels and buffet breakfasts. Daniel wasn’t sure how it had begun, but there was now a specific drawer for them, for these long-life UHT milks, which had more recently come to involve UHT milk sachets too.

‘There’s a trend for them,’ Lorenzo had acknowledged knowingly once, as he returned from a weekend wedding in Edinburgh with ten sachets. ‘The sachets are much easier to open. More environmentally friendly too.’

Some weeks they didn’t buy proper milk at all, living off the UHT drawer. What was weirder was that Daniel and Lorenzo didn’t even really talk about it. It was just a thing that they did. No milk in the fridge? Time for the milk drawer, then. It normally happened at the end of the week, on a Friday, so at least today they were consistent with their milk-buying inconsistencies.

By way of a mild apology it was an easy-open sachet that Lorenzo handed over now. Daniel took it, shaking his head. It felt like there was a ‘Joey and Chandler’ dynamic between them sometimes – and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

‘I’m just saying, have a glance at it,’ Lorenzo said, taking a milk sachet for himself and ripping it open with his teeth. He drank it down, on its own, in one gulp.

‘It’s for girls!’ Daniel said. ‘Presumably girls who want to pick up boys! I don’t want to pick up boys!’ He held his tea by the rim of the mug, deciding it was too hot and switching it to the other hand to hold by the handle. ‘If I was a girl picking up boys it looks like a mighty fine book, but as I am not, I shall proceed on my own, book-free,’ he said, adding defensively, ‘I don’t need a book to tell me how to chat a woman up.’

Lorenzo picked up the copy of Get Your Guys! from the table where he’d left it out for Daniel the night before.

‘All I’m saying,’ Lorenzo intoned, ‘is that everyone at work was equally as sceptical as you, except the woman who commissioned it. And one by one, she passed it out to the 5 girls on the staff and, one by one, they all had stories about trying what –’ he glanced down at the front cover to remind himself of the author’s name ‘– Grant Garby says, and now most of them are engaged.’

‘But,’ Daniel said, closing his eyes as if very, very tired. ‘They are women. Hitting on men.’

Lorenzo shook his head. ‘Well, you see, I thought I should take a look at it, you know, as research, and it is my job to PR books, even if I wasn’t PR-ing this one. Know the market and all that. And he’s fucking genius. Grant Garby. He has this whole YouTube series and everything. It’s been a slow grower, but since it came out and word has spread, he’s sold like, one hundred thousand copies. Chicks swear by him, but he reckons blokes should be reading his stuff too.’

Daniel finished his tea and put the empty mug in the sink, where it would live for two days until he’d finally cave in over his dishwasher stand-off with Lorenzo and empty it himself, thus making room for a kitchen full of dirty crockery and the whole cycle could start over again.

‘Why do you need help hitting on women? It’s literally the only thing you’re good at.’

‘Rude,’ said Lorenzo, only half insulted. ‘And, my friend, this is what makes me so clever: continual practice.’

‘Continual practice.’

‘Continual practice. Christians don’t go to church once, and then say they’re Christian forever. They go to church every Sunday, to keep practising their religion. I’m no Casanova because I got lucky with girls a few times – I’m called The Closer because I practise the skills needed to be The Closer.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ said Daniel, looking at his watch. ‘Nobody calls you The Closer.’

‘I call myself The Closer.’

‘I repeat: that’s disgusting.’

Lorenzo moved to block Daniel’s exit from their shared kitchen. ‘Listen to me. I fucking care about you, man. I care that this works out for you. Okay? And I’m telling you – read the book.’

Daniel made eye contact with his friend, who instantly, in a fit of embarrassment at being so candid, looked away and moved aside. Theirs wasn’t an easy relationship, but Lorenzo had definitely stepped up after Daniel’s dad had died, and he figured that’s what he was getting at: that Lorenzo wanted Daniel to have something work out in his favour. Lorenzo was caring in the only way Lorenzo knew how.