on the second try?
No, she thought. Not when there’s a man right here who shows up when he says he will. Sorry, Train Guy.
34
Daniel
On Monday, when Daniel got home from work, he hesitated at the door before he put his key in the lock. Lorenzo was home. Daniel didn’t want to see him.
Pushing open the door, smells of garlic and salmon wafted through the hallway. Daniel’s first thought was that if Lorenzo was hosting a date in their living room – a date with no warning, no less – he’d go straight back out again, probably to his mother’s. His second reaction was to think, How dare he impose on the house this way? In theory Daniel didn’t care who Lorenzo had over, but it was fucking poor form to have somebody over two nights after they’d thrown punches at each other over his treatment of another woman.
In so many ways Daniel had had no right to get involved with him and Becky, but … he just knew it wasn’t right. He knew that Lorenzo would have taken Becky into his room if Daniel hadn’t have stopped him, and that was just wrong. Daniel had saved Becky from doing something she probably wouldn’t remember doing, but he’d saved Lorenzo from doing something he’d never be able to un-do too, no matter how blurred the line was. Daniel’s conscience told him there were no shades of grey here, even if Lorenzo would’ve argued for them.
Lorenzo had been gone all day Sunday and come home after Daniel had locked himself away in his room, but in the forty-eight hours since it happened, Daniel had convinced himself that he was absolutely right to have stood up for Becky that way, whether she knew it or not. Whether Lorenzo knew it or not.
‘Hello?’ Lorenzo yelled, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘Oh, hey man. I’m, erm … making pasta al salmone.’
Daniel nodded, and searched for clues as to who else was there.
‘I got in a bottle of Malbec too.’
Daniel scrunched up his nose. For him? Was this for him?
‘I’ll open it,’ Lorenzo said.
Daniel took off his jacket and threw it over the arm of the sofa as he heard the pop of a cork easing out of a bottle neck, and the sloshing of liquid against a glass. Lorenzo reappeared with two glasses and handed one over. Daniel took it.
‘I’d have thought you’d be hungover,’ Daniel said. ‘Still.’
‘I think you knocked my hangover out of me,’ Lorenzo said. If that was a joke, neither of them laughed.
They sipped their wine. Eventually, Daniel moved to sit at the table. He wasn’t sure what there was to talk about, really. There was nothing he really wanted to say.
‘I know the other night was stupid,’ Lorenzo said, awkwardly hovering by the table. ‘I … I know that. I was a twat.’ Daniel listened. He had been a twat, yes. It was good that he understood that. ‘And I texted Becky, and obviously she’s …’
He kept letting his sentences trail off. Daniel almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
‘She’s told me not to text her again. Which, erm, you know.’ And then his bottom lip wobbled and he burst into tears. A grown, thirty-something-year-old man with a bruise on his face and a glass of red wine in his hand let out a low guttural noise, like an animal in a trap.
‘Oh mate, I don’t know what happened,’ he said, wiping at his eyes and trying to pull himself back together. ‘We’d had sex before and I thought she was up for it. But she said …’
He trailed off.
Daniel’s resolve to stay angry softened – but only slightly.
‘I’m at a bit of a loss for words to be honest, mate,’ Daniel said. He took a sip of his wine, measuring out what he wanted to say. ‘I didn’t think you were like that. Like – pervy.’
Lorenzo nodded, his face scrunched up. ‘Are you gonna call the police?’
‘The police?’
‘To report me.’ Daniel thought he meant about the fight, which obviously he wasn’t going to do because he’d been just as much to blame. But then Lorenzo countered with, ‘To report what I did to Becky.’
Daniel opened and closed his mouth, settling on saying: ‘No. Of course not. Nothing technically happened, mate. But like – what if I wasn’t there? You know? That’s what’s …’ Now it was Daniel’s turn to struggle to finish full thoughts. He wished he’d never gone on Saturday night. He wished he’d stayed home, like he’d wanted