He didn’t see me, then performed a double-take, apparently primed to object to my presence there. I lifted my chin and held up the end of Dean Martin’s lead. ‘I’m helping Mrs De Witt with her dog,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. He glanced down at Dean Martin, set his jaw, then turned away as if he hadn’t heard me. Michael, at his side, glanced at me, then turned back to his mobile phone.
Josh came on Friday night after work, bringing takeout and a bottle of wine. He was still in his suit – working late all week, he said. He and a colleague were competing for a promotion so he was there for fourteen hours a day, and planned to go in on Saturday too. He peered around the apartment, raising his eyebrows at the décor. ‘Well, dog-sitting was one job opening I certainly hadn’t considered,’ he observed, as Dean Martin trailed suspiciously at his heels. He walked around the living room slowly, picking up the onyx ashtray and the sinuous African-woman sculpture, putting them down, peering intently at the gilded artwork on the walls.
‘It wasn’t top of my list either.’ I laid a trail of doggy treats to the main bedroom and shut the little dog in until he’d calmed down. ‘But I’m really okay with it.’
‘So how you doing?’
‘Better!’ I said, heading to the kitchen. I had wanted to show Josh I was more than the scruffy, intermittently drunk jobseeker he had been meeting the past week so I had dressed up in my black Chanel-style dress with the white collar and cuffs and my emerald fake-crocodile Mary Janes, my hair sleek and blow-dried into a neat bob.
‘Well, you look cute,’ he said, following me. He put his bottle and bag on the side in the kitchen, then walked over to me, standing just a couple of inches away, so that his face filled my vision. ‘And, you know, not homeless. Which is always a good look.’
‘Temporarily, anyway.’
‘So does this mean you’ll be sticking around a little longer?’
‘Who knows?’
He was mere inches from me. I had a sudden sensory memory of burying my face in his neck a week previously.
‘You’re going pink, Louisa Clark.’
‘That’s because you’re extremely close to me.’
‘I do that to you?’ His voice dropped, his eyebrow lifted. He took a step closer, then put his hands on the worktop, at either side of my hips.
‘Apparently,’ I said, but it came out as almost a cough. And then he dropped his lips to mine and kissed me. He kissed me and I leant back against the kitchen units and closed my eyes, absorbing the mint taste of his mouth, the slightly strange feel of his body against mine, the unfamiliar hands closing over my own. I wondered if this was what it would have been like to kiss Will before his accident. And then I thought that I would never kiss Sam again. And then I thought that it was probably quite bad form to think about kissing other men when you had a perfectly nice one kissing you at that very moment. And I pulled my head back a little, and he stopped and looked into my eyes, trying to gauge what it meant.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s – it’s just all kind of soon. I really like you but –’
‘But you only just broke up with the other guy.’
‘Sam.’
‘Who is clearly an idiot. And not good enough for you.’
‘Josh …’
He let his forehead tip forward so that it rested against mine. I didn’t let go of his hand.
‘It just all feels a bit complicated still. I’m sorry.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. ‘Would you tell me if I was wasting my time?’ he said.
‘You’re not wasting your time. It’s just … it was barely two weeks ago.’
‘There’s a lot that’s happened in those two weeks.’
‘Well, then, who knows where we’ll be in another two weeks?’
‘You said “we”.’
‘I suppose I did.’
He nodded, as if this were a satisfactory answer. ‘You know,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘I have a feeling about us, Louisa Clark. And I’m never wrong about these things.’
And then, before I could respond, he let go of my hand and walked over to the cupboards, opening and closing them in search of plates. When he turned round, his smile was brilliant. ‘Shall we eat?’
I learnt a lot about Josh that evening. I learnt about his Boston upbringing, the baseball career his