The Piano Man Project Page 0,90

No one should drink alone on their birthday.’

Hal placed the flask back into its box. ‘I haven’t always drunk this much,’ he said. ‘I used to be too busy.’

Taking the box from his hands, she laid it on the table.

‘I don’t think badly of you for it, Hal.’

He shook his head. ‘You should. I don’t like the man I’ve become, Honey. I don’t like the life I have now.’ He tried to choose his words to make her understand. ‘I’m not talking about the material stuff. I mean sure, I miss the trappings, but it’s not that. It’s in here.’ He tapped his fingertips on his chest like a builder testing the soundness of a wall. ‘My heart needs to race. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as I was pushing myself over my limits. Faster cars. Bigger bikes. Higher slopes. I was always restless for the next big thrill.’ He rolled his shoulders and scrubbed his hand over his stubble. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore without all that.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel like a dead man walking. Nothing makes my heart race.’

‘Maybe, in time …’ she said, tentatively. ‘There’s loads of things you could still do, when you’re ready, I mean. Tandem skydiving, even. Stuff like that.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s just I like to be the one in charge, not the passenger.’

Honey sipped her wine. ‘I bet you were a scary boss to work for.’

‘You wouldn’t have liked me.’

Would she have liked him? Aside from doctors, Honey was the first person he’d let anywhere near close enough to become a friend since the accident. She hadn’t known the man he was before. She only knew this pale, watered-down version of him.

‘Probably not,’ she said, candidly. ‘You frightened the living daylights out of me when I first met you.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re Honeysuckle Jones, freedom fighter, bona fide Wonder Woman.’

She laughed gently. ‘Tash dressed up as Wonder Woman on New Year’s Eve last year. She had a terrible wardrobe malfunction in The Cock; Superman had to save her virtue with his cape.’

One of the things Hal had come to value most about Honey was the fact that she didn’t take life too seriously – never more so than in that moment. He loosened his shirt collar and tie as he sat back against the sofa, his arm along the back of it when she scooted back beside him.

‘Is your life always on the edge of ridiculous?’ he said, leaning his head back on the cushions.

She was silent for a moment. ‘Not always. Quite a lot more so since you moved in though.’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault you’ve become a female version of Robin Hood with a band of merry pensioners, or that your crazy friends have some bizarre insistence that you can only date pianists.’

‘They did it again today,’ she said.

‘Did what?’

‘Tash and Nell set me up on a blind date,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to meet them at the café and they sent a pianist to meet me instead.’

‘Oh.’ The idea that she’d been on a date and then returned home to his drunken poor me rant pissed him off. ‘Was he better than the last two?’

Honey sighed. ‘I guess he was, yeah.’

She didn’t elaborate, and her hesitancy to share details frustrated him. He wanted to hear her laugh and tell him it had been another dating disaster, but she didn’t. Frustration had him reaching for his wine. He wanted to see her face, to be able to see the things her face wouldn’t be able to hide rather than pick through her words for clues. And he wanted to see her face because when he dreamed of her she was always indistinct, more of a feeling than an image. A good feeling.

‘Two dates in one day. It’s my personal best,’ she said, making light and sounding anxious as her head rested on his arm.

Hal’s need to be top dog at everything kicked in hard. Honey was beside him on the sofa, bumping against him from hip to knee.

‘Did he kiss you goodbye?’ he said.

‘It was lunchtime and I was stuffed full of American pancakes. He gave me a peck on the cheek and his number.’

Even that sounded too promising for Hal’s liking. He found that he didn’t want Honey to use that number. He knew well enough that he was being unreasonable, but it was his birthday and she was, well … right now, she was his date, and