“Sophie! You came.”
“I did.”
The bartender placed my drink on a cardboard beer mat, but as I offered him the money, Max interjected.
“And a pint of Guinness please.” He turned to face me, the lenses of his glasses steamy from the humidity in the room and added, “My treat. You wouldn’t be out if it wasn’t for me suggesting it. You’d be at home, washing your hair.”
It made me smile that he’d remembered my comment, and I gladly accepted his generosity.
When he’d de-steamed his glasses and the bartender had handed over our drinks, Max gestured to a doorway at the other end of the pub.
“My friends’ band aren’t due on for a while, so let’s go out the back.” His voice was loud. It needed to be to be heard over the band. “We’ll be able to talk then.”
I don’t know much about music, but I could tell the band were half decent – the lead singer had a good voice. The music wasn’t what I’d choose to listen to, but the crowd were behind them, enthusiastically singing along to the cover version of a well-known indie song. I feared for my eardrums. It was as though they were playing at Wembley Stadium rather than a local pub.
It was much quieter in the snug and luckily we found a free table. The space was small though, and equally as stifling as the main room. The window dripped with condensation, the droplets of water slithering down the inside of the pane and pooling on the window ledge. It was like stepping inside a furnace, and if I hadn’t taken my cardigan off right away I might have collapsed from overheating.
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked in disbelief, eyeing Max’s thick cream sweater. It was chunky knit – the sort of thing a fisherman would wear for a long day working on the choppy North Sea – and looked like it weighed a ton.
“A bit,” he admitted, smiling sheepishly, “but I’ve not got a T-shirt on underneath.”
I laughed nervously at the thought of his naked skin beneath the wool, and recalled his muscular arms from earlier in the day. I wondered if his abs and pecs were equally as toned. The image left my mouth dry, and I took a desperate swig from my wine to try to push all thoughts of an undressed Max to the back of my mind. Pull yourself together, Sophie. You barely know the guy.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” he said, sliding his sleeves up to once more reveal those gorgeous arms. The golden-brown hairs that covered them were ever-so-slightly visible against his skin, and I found it hard to pull my eyes away. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“What made you think that?”
“I thought you’d be wary of being invited out by someone you haven’t met before. It’s not how people meet these days, is it? It’s all about swiping right on a dating app.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who needs a dating app,” I replied, swilling my wine around the glass, “and it’s not like you’ve been hit by the ugly stick. I’d have thought you’d have women queuing around the block.”
My cheeks heated up as Max raised his eyebrows at me.
“Not quite, but thanks. I’ve got friends who use dating apps. One met his fiancée on Tinder.”
“Really?”
My only experience of the app had been one very sad rebound date soon after Darius and I had split up. I’d arrived early at the coffee shop we’d agreed to meet at, the hit of strong mocha not as emboldening as a bottle of wine would have been, but far more acceptable for ten o’clock on a Sunday morning. When my date had finally arrived – late – he hadn’t even bought a drink, just walked up to me, asked if I was Sophie and told me he lived in the flat upstairs if I was “up for it”. I hadn’t been up for it. I’d been looking for someone to pay me a few compliments and boost my self-esteem, not a quick shag.
“It’s the modern way, I suppose, but I’m not sure it’s for me. I’ve never been good at selling myself.”
“You work in a shop! Surely selling should come naturally.”
“That’s different. It’s easy to help someone find what they’re looking for on the rails.”
“Not so easy to big yourself up?”
“Not without coming across like a bit of a dick.” His tone was serious, but I could tell he was joking through the hint of a smile.
“You seem so confident,” I mused.
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” he said, before taking a sip of his Guinness. The creamy froth sat on his upper lip for just a second before with one quick flick of the tongue it was gone, as though it had never been there in the first place. “I learned that the hard way.”
I gave a quizzical look, but Max didn’t offer anything further, instead saying, “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about you, how you spend your free time when you’re not washing your hair…”
Smoky eyes peered out at me from behind his glasses, the most unusual shade of greeny-grey, like the opaque wisps in the glass marbles I’d find in the bottom of my stocking each Christmas Day as a kid. And those forearms, which I had an overwhelming desire to have wrapped around me, were a distraction too. I’d bet Max gave good hugs, especially in that stupidly cuddly sweater. He’d be like a human teddy bear.
“What do you want to know?” The question was a stalling tactic as I wondered how I could make my humdrum life sound more exciting than it really was. “I grew up here and now rent a place in Northumberland Park, where my neighbour’s ginger moggie Scrat Cat is forever climbing in through my kitchen window. I spend my free time either binge-watching a TV series or making stuff.” When he looked at me questioningly I added,
