International Player(64)

London was different. Truly was different.

When I’d seen Truly after being away from New York, I’d wondered why we hadn’t been better at keeping in touch. I wanted to hear about her work, wondered if her hair still smelled of coconut. I’d been excited to see her. Seeing Francesca after so long was . . . fine. Perfectly pleasant. A distraction from another woman.

“Hey, did you order?” Francesca asked as she took a seat opposite me.

“No, not yet.”

She beckoned over a waiter in a way that only women in New York could. She crossed her legs, her shiny, strappy heels knocking the table. I was pretty sure Francesca wouldn’t own a Star Wars t-shirt let alone a Stranger Things one. Fuck, Truly looked good in that t-shirt. Looked good in everything.

“Whiskey?” she asked.

“A Manhattan,” I told the waiter. I never drank cocktails in London. Whiskey straight, beer, or wine, but cocktails weren’t pivotal to London culture in the way they were in New York. We might speak the same language, but there were so many differences, large and small, between New York and London. The most important one was that Truly wasn’t here.

“So, tell me, break any hearts recently? I see you’re not married.” She glanced at my left hand. I’d forgotten how forward New York women were. It was how Francesca and I had ended up together in the first place. She’d introduced herself to me in a bar like this one, asked me if I was single, and I’d gone home with her. She’d made it easy. Women like her always did.

“Oh, I think you’re the heartbreaker here,” I replied, sitting back. Francesca’s invitation for a drink was an opening line after which we’d both decide whether or not we wanted to go to bed together.

“No heartbreaking here.” She drew a square around her heart with her finger. “I love my work. It might not bring me flowers, but the money keeps me warm at night.”

I chuckled. “Well, at least you’re clear about your goals.” We were alike in that way—goal oriented and driven—although money had never been my motivator, just a helpful by-product.

“So, tell me about your work,” she said. “What are you up to now that you’ve made your fortune?”

“I’m dabbling in a few things. I’ve been helping a friend with charity work and looking at the healthcare industry.” We chatted as if we’d just been introduced or were old business colleagues, but it felt as if I were at a networking event, being polite and swapping small talk.

“Charity work? That doesn’t sound like you.” She smiled around the edge of her glass and took a sip of her drink. “You’re a corporate bad boy. A titan of the stock market now.”

She didn’t know me at all.

“What can I say? I’m complicated.”

Francesca was attractive, but I wasn’t attracted to her, and I wondered if I ever had been really. There was no chemistry, and I wasn’t really interested in anything she had to say. I’d been fighting back the urge to call Truly since boarding to tell her how my airline wasn’t using the Airbus 380 and that instead I was on a Boeing 777. I didn’t care if Francesca had an alternative theory to Stiglitz on globalization. But if Truly did, I wanted to hear it. I wanted to tell her every nothing thought I had along with every important one, and I was pissed off that she didn’t get it. To end things because she was worried she’d feel too much? That was bullshit.

I unclenched my fist and tried to concentrate on the woman in front of me rather than one three thousand miles away. “Are you still at the same firm?” I asked to be polite.

“I’ve moved a couple of times,” she said, taking a gulp of the cocktail that had just arrived. “You have to move on to move up in my business, but I’m hoping I’ll get partnership at this firm. If not, I’ll leave in a couple of years.”

I nodded. “The endgame is important to keep in mind.”

“Speaking of—shall we finish our drinks and go up?” she asked.

That’s why we were having drinks, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just to catch up. We weren’t friends. But what she was offering didn’t hold the appeal that it would have done before I’d gone back to London and started sleeping with Truly. I didn’t want just convenient sex or a woman slotting into my life, as Rob had described it. I might want Truly out of my system but going to bed with Francesca wasn’t going to make that happen. I couldn’t even have a cocktail with a woman without comparing her with Truly and then being filled with regret. That wasn’t Francesca’s fault.

“Yeah. I actually need to make a few calls, so I should probably go.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Okay. I thought I—”

“I’m seeing someone.” On the face of it, I’d lied to her, but it didn’t feel dishonest. Running into Francesca brought things into focus for me. For the first time in my life, I’d been left heartbroken, and Francesca wasn’t going to put me back together again.

“Oh. Good for you. I’m going to hang out here for a while then,” she said, leaning forward as I stood and kissed her on the cheek.

“Enjoy. It’s good to see you, Francesca.”

It had been enlightening. Knowing Truly was in the world, there was no way I could take Francesca to bed. It wouldn’t be cheating. Truly hadn’t even demanded monogamy when we were sleeping together, let alone now when she’d ended things. But I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted the woman who looked sexy as hell when she was hunched over her laptop, cross-legged on the sofa, eating cold Chinese food. The one who could match me question for question in a pub quiz. The person who, despite being a workaholic, still found time to read to sick and injured kids.