57
Roisin was experiencing a surge of pleasure such as she’d not known in a long while. She’d warmed to The Mallory: no longer was it a prison with frilly pelmets. She saw it as Matt did; it enveloped her instead of oppressing her. The glow of sconce lights on the red walls, the dark wood, the leather stud-back booths and tartan stools, the rumble of the dishwashers: soothing. As was the velvet quiet of the countryside beyond the windows.
She’d always found the noise of the city relatively comforting and the silence of the countryside spooky. Times were changing.
The Manhattan was helping.
‘I believe I have to pass your phone number on to Imogen,’ Roisin said. ‘Tireless work.’
‘Which one was Imogen again? Did she have the head thing, that royal children wear?’
‘Which one – phew. Though today of all days I can’t complain about your allure. I’m so grateful to you acting as a lighthouse to today’s mermaids.’
‘Don’t say that, thanks.’ Matt frowned.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not complimentary.’
‘How could that not be complimentary?’ Roisin said, puzzled.
‘When it means a puddle-deep peacock of a man, slutting about. Sneaky denigration. You sound like Joe.’
‘Ouch,’ Roisin said, though he was right. It was admiration wrapped in needless mockery.
She thought on it. If Matt was intimidating to Joe or anyone else, it was through no intention of his own. Being pretty and smart was simply what he was. Easing their discomfort about this overachievement with ridicule was a price he was expected to pay, like a toll booth he had to pass. She could see why, sometimes, he lost patience with it.
‘I suppose if you’re told you’re hot often enough, it loses its lustre,’ she said, tongue inside of cheek, deciding to steer the ship to calmer waters.
‘So now I’m conceited?’
‘No! I honestly never thought being called fit insulted anyone.’
‘That’s not what you said, and you know it. You meant I’m a letch, who exploited it today to general economic advantage. Being a successful letch is still a letch.’
‘Alright, I apologise for any suggestion you are attractive to women. I withdraw my wholly unfounded and defamatory accusation. Satisfied?’
They both laughed.
‘Matt. We’ll both feel nauseous if I try sincerity, but I wasn’t running your efforts down,’ Roisin said. ‘The way you’ve sorted this place out has blown me away, to be honest.’
He smiled warmly. The jukebox had struck up ‘Slave to Love’.
‘Another?’ He stood up.
‘Yes, please. Bloody hell, I need to tell Mum to pay for the upgrade, don’t I? This thing loops the Eighties and Nineties. It’s like a late-night minicab.’
‘Some of us like familiarity! You’re such a grinch,’ Matt said. One hand outstretched for her hand, he mouthed, Tell her I’ll be waiting …
With a groan and feigned reluctance, Roisin accepted the invitation, put her hand in his. She got to her feet and let Matt waltz her around the lounge bar.
She rested her head on his chest. After the handholding, she wasn’t sure if this was wise, but it felt too good to stop. Such close contact was a strange mixture of fireworks and security. That was it – that was what Roisin had noticed during the handholding. It was completely natural, and yet wildly exotic at the same time. Exhilaratingly new and already familiar. He was a safe place, full of danger.
She toyed with her own feelings, imagining how it would feel if they crossed lines. If they … belonged to one another.
Imagine if this was real.
Matt was completely out of her price range, surely? Or she was slumming it, for him.
When Roisin glanced up, to her surprise, Matt was looking down at her with an intense seriousness. She’d almost call it pained. It was utterly unlike him. She realised they had been catapulted into A Moment Before Another Moment – this couldn’t be played off as horsing around when they’d gazed at each other with such obvious intensity.
What did she do, or say, next? The answer was simple, and Roisin couldn’t believe she acted on it: she leaned up and kissed him.
Their mouths connected and her heart lurched. She wanted this, and wanted him, and as much as it was a huge surprise, there was no point denying it. The kiss was tentative; she felt Matt was responding in shock as much as anything. But he did respond. Time stood still.
Her feelings for Matthew McKenzie had arrived in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. Slow, but fast at the end.
‘Wait,’ Matt said, pulling back, frowning. ‘If you’re trying to upset Joe, I can’t deny I’m the killer choice. But I don’t want to be a nuke.’
He gave her that troubled look again. She felt she was seeing a side of him he always kept hidden. It was slightly disorientating.
‘Oh, OK,’ Roisin said, flustered and flushed, unsure what she was supposed to say. She’d not expected to kiss him.
‘The etiquette is to at least vaguely try to deny that’s what you were doing, though!’ Matt said, now sounding both amused and offended. Normal Matt had returned. But while his tone of voice was steady, he was flushed, too. She had affected him.
‘I do deny it,’ Roisin said. ‘Completely. I’d never tell Joe.’
Tell Joe what, exactly?
‘I don’t think you need to tell him for it to be revenge,’ Matt said quietly.
The jukebox decided to be a silent wanker, clicking through to the next track with agonising sluggishness. It left them stood in an unbearable silence until Simple Minds’ ‘Alive And Kicking’ came on. It wasn’t helpful to have YOU TURN ME ON boom out, either, if Roisin was honest.
‘I just …’ She just what? Was experiencing an overwhelming carnal pull towards Matt, and it felt like her heart was along for the ride? How the hell did you say that, out of the blue, after ten years? ‘It felt right in the moment,’ she finished lamely.
‘Nothing to do with that “distasteful” thing you needed to do, to prove you and Joe were over?’
Roisin’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh God! That wasn’t … this isn’t that …’
Nevertheless, she saw Matt’s point.
‘Hmmm. OK. No offence, but I don’t want to be a source of regret to you,’ Matt said. ‘I don’t want my body to be the equivalent of the empty bottle of apple schnapps.’
‘You’d never be that,’ she said, with feeling. How could he ever imagine himself as disposable?
Simple Minds echoed through the dimly lit room, as unsaid things whirled around them.
‘Uhm, I’m going to head up to bed,’ Matt said eventually.
‘Sure,’ Roisin replied, a confident monosyllable masking internal chaos. ‘Night.’
She was frantically scrabbling to find the words to make the fact she’d lunged at him normal, or nothing much, or a joke, so they could patch this up, and completely failing.
Once Matt was out of sight, she smoothed her hands down her sausage skin-tight dress and thought, well. You sure plucked defeat from the jaws of victory there, Walters. Fuck.
She put a palm over her face. She felt sixteen years old.
Aaaaaargh you tried to get off with Matt and he blew you out! Aaaaaargh! This is the most embarrassing thing to happen, like, ever.
Did he even think the Joe revenge thing, or was it a nimble way of not having to be mauled by her?
Roisin grabbed a trigger bottle of disinfectant and began wiping the tables to Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ with an amount of force the task didn’t require. She tried not to think about how unbearably awkward tomorrow’s ‘good morning’ would be.
She’d have to mumble stuff about being wasted, and both of them would know it was balls. Their whole dynamic was based on Roisin being a woman immune to his charms, and she feared that was permanently shot. She cringed so hard it was as if she’d sprain her stomach.
She heard a noise and turned to see Matt on the other side of the room again, looking at her. Before she could say anything, he walked towards her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her like it was the last scene in a movie. It was nothing like their halting first attempt: passionate, deep and pushy, their hips clashing. Roisin still had Dettol in one hand and a J-cloth in the other but reciprocated as best she could. Tongues, woah.
‘What happened to apple schnapps?!’ she said, when they came up for air.
Matt brushed her hair from her face, smoothing it behind her ear, and smiled. ‘I thought if it was a one-off, it needed to be a better memory than that.’ He paused. ‘Sorry if I was uncool. I panicked.’
This was officially a head wreck: was he kissing her that well to show off? Did he fancy her or not? That kiss felt a lot like the opposite of not.
Before she could begin to process it, Roisin had a thought so violently upsetting she wriggled out of his embrace and almost pushed him away with open palms.
‘Oh NO,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘GINA.’
‘… I’m not involved with Gina?’
‘No, I know, but Matt. She’s my best friend. One of my best friends. She’d be utterly shattered by us …’ Roisin didn’t want to look presumptuous. ‘By us. You’re right – this absolutely cannot happen! What the hell was I thinking? I hate myself right now.’
‘Ah, there you go. There’s the regret you ordered,’ Matt said, in a very flat voice. ‘That arrived faster than even I predicted. Amazing.’
‘You see the problem though?’ Roisin said.
‘Yes, I do. I never thought something I didn’t do could cost me this much. You know I’ve never, ever taken advantage of that situation, right? Nothing’s ever happened, nor would it?’
‘Yes, of course! I didn’t think it had.’
Roisin realised that Matt was deeply pissed off, and he had a right to be. Coming on to someone and then remembering you couldn’t because your friend liked them was fifth-form stuff.
‘I’m sorry,’ Roisin said. ‘Really sorry.’
‘Probably for the best,’ Matt said. He walked off without saying goodnight.
Roisin was left in a state of disarray.