Love Your Life(78)

“You were honest with me a moment ago, Ava. Now can I be honest with you?” He takes my hand in his as though to soften his words. “Sometimes—just sometimes—you’re overoptimistic about people. And situations.”

I gape at him. Overoptimistic? How is that even a thing?

“Optimistic is good,” I retort. “Everyone knows that!”

“Nothing too extreme is good,” counters Matt. “I love that you see the best in everything, Ava. I do. It’s one of your most lovable qualities. But everyone needs to deal with reality sometimes. Otherwise…they risk getting hurt.”

I feel a prickle of resentment. I know about reality, thank you. And OK, yes, I sometimes choose not to look too hard in its direction. But sometimes that’s because reality is inferior to what life should be like.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the busker packing up his things with stiff, angry gestures. There. That’s reality, in all its shittiness. It’s not the heady moment of cheering and glory; it’s a policeman bringing you down to earth.

I crunch my ice-cream cone and eye Matt over the top of it.

“Real is hard,” I say, almost as though it’s his fault.

“Yup.” Matt nods.

He doesn’t crack a joke like Russell would. Or tell me I’m stupid. Or try to distract me. He’s prepared to sit patiently with me and my thoughts. He’s good at that, I’ve noticed.

“I’ll chase the invoice,” I say after a while.

Without speaking, Matt tightens his hand round mine, and I feel a swell of something warm inside. Not the white-hot rush of first infatuation, but maybe second love. Solid love. The love that comes of knowing what’s inside as well as outside a person.

    I love this man because of who he is and in spite of who he is. All at once. And I hope he loves me the same way.





Nineteen




We decide to hold the party a week later, by which time my enthusiasm for exploring Matt’s life has very slightly dimmed.

I tried to launch myself bravely at golf. But that did not go well. I was actually quite galvanized beforehand. I was prepared to deal with any obnoxious people. I was all set to follow the rules. I was ready to stand at the golf-club bar, talking casually about “par 4” and “birdies.”

But none of that came into it, because we didn’t go near a golf club. It turned out that my big challenge of the day wasn’t the people or the rules or even the outfit, it was hitting the golf ball. Which turns out to be impossible.

Matt took me to a driving range, gave me a bucket of balls and a club and a quick lesson. He said that I would probably miss the first few times I tried to hit the ball, but after that, things would fall into place.

Things did not fall into place. I aimed carefully at every single one of those wretched bloody balls, and I missed them all. All! Do I need to get my eyes tested? Or my arms tested?

    It was so embarrassing. Especially because a couple of other golfers noticed my failure and started watching. Then one of them clocked Matt as being Rob Warwick’s brother and they called over a friend. They all thought it was hilarious. When I got to the last ball in the bucket, I could actually hear them laying bets. By this time my face was beetroot and I was panting, and I was so determined to hit the last ball that I gave an extra-energetic swing. Which meant I didn’t just miss but wedged the golf club right into the ground, practically dislocating my shoulder.

I will say I have more respect for golfers now. Because what they do—hit the ball all round the course, without once missing it—feels like a superhuman feat to me.

On the way home, Matt asked, did I want to try again? And I said, maybe we should stick to the tai chi for now. And that’s how we left it.

So golf was a bit of a fail. And then that night we had a row because Matt decided to “tidy up” my flat and got rid of some essential notes for my book. Like, essential.

“They were ratty Post-its,” he said, when I confronted him. “You hadn’t looked at them for weeks.”

“But I was going to!” I said furiously. “They were vital to my novel!”

I was quite cross, I must admit. The notes were all about Clara’s upbringing in Lancashire, and I’d come up with a brilliant anecdote about a mangle and I’ll never remember it.

“To be honest, I thought you’d given up on the novel,” he said with a shrug, and I stared at him in shock.

    “Given up? Matt, it’s a work in progress.”

“Uh-huh.” He surveyed me warily. “But you never do any writing.”

“I have a job, if you remember, Matt,” I reminded him, in prickly tones.

“Right.” He nodded. “But all you’ve done this week is talk about the other book you want to do. I suppose I got confused. Sorry.”

At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Other book? Then my brow cleared. It’s not his fault he can’t keep up with my portfolio career.

“That’s not a book, that’s a podcast,” I explained kindly. “Totally different.”

I’m quite excited by my podcast idea, actually. I want to start a craft discussion, inspired by my Etsy batik. I’ll interview other crafters and we’ll talk about how our projects enhance our lives. I just need to get the equipment and decide on a name for it.