Our Stop(73)

‘Jesus. Calm down.’

‘Come on. I need your support here.’

‘Okay. So. You’re going to bump into him, this week. Just like that! As if by magic.’

‘No. Not by magic,’ Nadia admonished. ‘By the law of attraction!’

‘Great plan,’ said Naomi.

Nadia replied, ‘Oh ye of little faith.’

She was still dissatisfied with Naomi’s reaction after they’d said their goodbyes. Emma would have been much better at making her feel less crazy. She missed her. She played with her phone in her hands, turning it over and considering texting her. But to say what? Just hey?

Hey friend – how you doing? she settled on, hitting ‘send’. She stared at the message, waiting to see if it was received, and then read. It wasn’t. Nothing appeared at the top of the screen to indicate that Emma was online and getting the texts. Nadia put her phone in a drawer and pulled on her pyjamas.

‘I’m going to see Waistcoat Guy again,’ she said aloud. ‘I just know it.’





44


Daniel


Daniel was in a great mood – not only had he taken matters into his own hands with Nadia (again), but right before he’d left work, he’d had an email to say that by this time next week, he’d officially be a home owner.

‘I did it,’ he told Romeo in the lobby on the way out. ‘The flat – it’s mine! We’re a go!’

Romeo leapt up from where he sat behind the welcome desk.

‘That’s great, man – really, really well done!’

‘Thanks, dude.’

Romeo looked wistful. ‘I hope me and Erika get to buy a place someday,’ he said. ‘That would be pretty sweet.’

Daniel raised his eyebrows in shock. ‘Moving in together? I didn’t know it had got that serious!’

Since the summer Romeo had been seeing Erika, a woman he’d met at a sourdough-bread-making class, and Daniel knew Romeo had fallen hard, but he didn’t know he was already planning a future with her.

‘I think it’s the real deal,’ said Romeo. ‘I could definitely put a ring on it. Not like, tomorrow, but for sure she’s a lifer.’

‘Well, damn, that’s great,’ Daniel said. ‘I tell you what – bring her to the house-warming party. You’ll love all my uni mates, and I can’t wait to meet her.’

Romeo held out a fist.

‘Done and done,’ he said. ‘You’ve got yourself a date.’ He lowered his voice a little, for comedic effect. ‘Speaking of which – any word on when your note might run?’

‘No,’ Daniel said, slipping on his gloves as he felt a freezing November wind gust through the open door. ‘I’ve never known, though. They just sort of run it when they run it. It’s out of my hands now,’ he added, holding up his gloved hands in surrender.

‘Well,’ said Romeo. ‘The flat, the girl, it’s all coming up, Weissman.’

‘It’s all coming up Romeo and Weissman,’ Daniel corrected him.

‘That sounds like a pretty sweet double act,’ Romeo said.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Daniel replied.

Daniel headed across the road to the tube, so he could bounce across the city to get to one of the City Professionals networking events. He’d been fifty-fifty on whether he should go, but since his great day he decided he should. If good luck came in threes, he was open to what Good Luck Number Three might be. He actually didn’t have a contract lined up for after he finished at Converge at Christmas, although he suspected they might keep him on to establish the next part of the project. It wouldn’t hurt to mingle with some new faces and hand out a few business cards.

‘Daniel!’ came a voice, not long after he’d hung up his coat and headed to the bar. There was always the awkward entrance when arriving somewhere alone, especially at a work event, that meant the safest bet was to do a lap of the room and then get a drink, figuring out where the friendliest faces were. He was relieved to have been commandeered by someone. The first conversation opener was always the hardest.

‘Gaby!’ Daniel said, turning around with his small glass of red. ‘The woman, the myth, the legend.’

Gaby leaned in and they kissed both cheeks. ‘I owe you an apology,’ she said.

Daniel wafted a hand. ‘Bygones,’ he said, presuming she meant to apologize for leaving him stranded at her work’s summer party a few months ago.

‘Your email back to me was so kind, but I just wanted to say again that I am mortified that I cajoled you into coming to that party and then abandoned you without even explaining that Nadia wasn’t coming. The whole thing was a mess. And you were very gracious about it.’

Daniel’s body jolted at the name Nadia. He knew, of course, that Gaby couldn’t be alluding to his Nadia, if he could call her that, but the name was so rare, really – he’d never met a Nadia before the Nadia on his train – that he couldn’t help but have a reaction to it.

‘Oh god, did I say something wrong?’ Gaby asked.

‘No, no. It’s just – Nadia. You don’t hear of many Nadias around.’

Gaby shrugged. ‘I’ve never thought about it, but no, I guess not.’ She smiled at him. ‘How are you enjoying Converge, anyway? I’ve actually heard really interesting things about the ways they’re incorporating the use of cloud storage in data expansion …’