said, ‘Tell me from the beginning. Tell me what happened.’ She raised her glass to his, and they said a small ‘cheers’.
‘Tell you what happened,’ Daniel repeated. They were both doing that grinning thing again. They were both just so damn happy to be there.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I got a new job, and so hadn’t been doing this commute very long.’
Nadia dropped her jaw, playfully. ‘Oh wow, okay. You really are going from the beginning, beginning.’
Daniel’s face dropped, disappointed. ‘You said to!’
‘I was just kidding,’ Nadia said. ‘Sorry. I’m … nervous.’
‘You are?’
She shrugged. ‘A little. Maybe.’
‘Well, I’m glad you said that,’ Daniel said. ‘Because I am too.’
Nadia wanted to remember every detail of what was happening, like he’d said to. The shadows of the candles across his face and the taste of the bubbles against her throat and the way he half smiled when he was unsure and needed encouraging. She wanted to frame the smell of the place, pine cones and orange, and see herself from above, flicking her hair back off her neck.
She smiled at him. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘The commute.’ He was so handsome – and so polite too, always making sure she was comfortable and topping up her glass without asking.
‘Well. I saw you by the market one day, not long after I had started my job. Before the summer – maybe in May? You were with some slick, corporate guy, talking so passionately about, like, artificial intelligence? And laughing, and being smart, and I just knew you were a woman I wanted to know.’
‘Slick corporate guy? I mean – if that was with Jared, that really was months ago! I got the go-ahead on that in … May, I think. April, even!’ Nadia wanted to know everything about this man who had spotted her in a crowd so long ago. Why hadn’t she seen him then?
Daniel looked down at his lap, where he fiddled with his hands. ‘Yeah. I felt so stupid for not approaching you then, but what was I gonna do? You were working, and—’
Nadia realized something: ‘And if you had tried to say hi I would have totally blown you off.’
Daniel laughed. ‘Exactly. Let the woman have her lunch meeting!’
Nadia laughed too. Now she thought about it, it was pretty rare to have a guy randomly strike up conversation. Maybe that was why she’d stayed and talked to Eddie when he did, on that fateful night. It was important not to be hassled on the street, but on reflection, she hardly ever spoke to somebody she didn’t already know. Like Eddie had said, it just didn’t happen.
‘But then I saw you,’ he continued, ‘on the train. My train. And over a couple of weeks I figured out that on a Monday you always got the 7.30, and sometimes on a Tuesday too.’
Nadia laughed from her. ‘Ha! That’s hilarious to me. I always have the best intentions at the start of the week, and it never lasts. I’m just not a morning person!’
‘Noted,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Nadia smirked.
Daniel blushed.
‘But I panicked then too. What was I supposed to do? Talk to you on the underground like a psychopath?’
He took a long sip of his drink. The condensation cooled on the outside of his glass, leaving a little wet mark on his chin. Nadia wanted to lean over and wipe it for him. She wanted to straighten his collar and touch his neck and pull him in close.
‘Again, I would have told you where to go.’ It’s true. She’d never spoken to another human on the tube in her life, except to maybe say ‘Excuse me’ or ‘Can you move your bag, please?’
‘So I wrote to you. And then you wrote back. So I wrote again. It’s funny, but I actually sent another Missed Connection after the cinema, and it ran today. But then I saw you on the tube and you recognized me and the adverts … didn’t matter anymore.’
‘This is so weird, but my friend Gaby tried to set me up with you. Didn’t you go to the RAINFOREST summer party?’
‘Yup. Gaby. Gaby asked me to. But you never showed.’
‘And then the night at the bar? I showed up then!’
‘My mum … she’s just widowed. My dad died earlier this year. She was so upset …’
‘Oh gosh,’ Nadia said. ‘That’s so awful. I’m so, so sorry.’ She could see the sorrow flicker across his face. She could see the traces of grief in his expression.