He looks at me as if I just told him I have red hair.
“Pfft, I can hear that. She tells me she’s Irish like I don’t know me an accent when I hear one.” He shakes his head and turns back to listen to the group arguing close to us. I’m thinking I’ve stumbled upon a bit of an eccentric.
I fall silent again, listening to the chattering of voices around me, rising and falling in volume by turns. I’m envious of those who have the confidence to do this kind of thing, just show up at a place and start having a debate with a random stranger. It’s the one part of being a professor that I still haven’t gotten my head around yet. I know how to research and I know how to write, but I don’t know how to speak coherently and confidently on a topic in front of a room full of people, even when I know all the facts like the back of my hand.
Stand me up on any sort of a stage, and my mind goes blank. I guess that’s why I want to sing for an audience, at least once, because not only do I love to sing, but I also feel like singing would be easier than talking. Perhaps because the music drowns out the unbearable silence in between words.
I stay another while, chatting a little more with Fareed, before I hop back on the bike. I leave it at a station in the park, deciding to take the Tube home since I’m too tired to cycle all the way. As I’m walking down the street to Sasha’s house, I notice somebody pulling up out front in a silver Mercedes.
When I get closer, I see it’s Robert. He slams the driver’s-side door shut and presses a button on his key chain to set the alarm.
“Hey, you didn’t take the Tube to work today?” I ask casually, walking toward the front door.
“I did this morning,” he replies, “but I had to go and collect my car from the apartment.”
“Oh, right. Was Kara around?”
He shakes his head. “She was at work.”
“What does she do?”
“Window dresser at Selfridges.”
“Mm-hmm,” I mumble, opening the door and stepping inside in front of him. His mood is strangely subdued this evening. He’s carrying a large gym bag, which probably contains the last of his things from his apartment. Well, it’s Kara’s apartment now.
He dumps the bag at the bottom of the stairs and uses his keys to scratch at his neck. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks.
“Sure, what about?”
He leads me into the kitchen, and I sit down on a stool as he leans back against the counter, arms folded.
“So I’ve got a new place all lined up to move into,” he begins.
His statement takes me by surprise. “Oh, yeah? That’s good.”
“It’s gorgeous. Perfect for me. Practically brand new, right by the Thames and everything.”
“Sounds fancy,” I say, nodding, not really knowing why he’s telling me this.
“The only catch is that the current tenants aren’t going to be moving out until early September.”
“That’s a good way off.”
“It is.”
“So…” All of a sudden, I get where he’s going with this.
“So I was thinking I’d stay here with you and Sasha for the rest of the summer. But I wanted to run the idea by you first.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Is this you being considerate, Robert?” I ask, shocked. Under normal circumstances he’d just announce he was staying and that would be that.
“Look, I know you’re not exactly comfortable living under the same roof as me, and I know you think I’m evil incarnate, which isn’t true, but we won’t get into that now. I promise you I’m not doing this to be cruel. Even though we fight all the time, I like living with my sister, and I want to stay here until I can move into my own place. But obviously you’d have agree to it, because we both know Sasha will do whatever you say anyway.”
I bite on my lip, considering his proposal. He’s right, though. If I told Sasha I didn’t want Robert here, she’d tell him he couldn’t stay without a second thought.
There’s some kind of sadness in his eyes. He doesn’t want to live alone, at least not at this moment in time. Perhaps it would be too lonely for him, since he and Kara just broke up. I’ve never really seen him act like this before. Not very often, anyway.
“What you said to me last night made me very uncomfortable,” I tell him, straightforward, my voice quiet.
He scratches at his neck again. “I know…I just…well –” He pauses with a slight grin. “In my experience, women generally enjoy it when I say things like that to them. I didn’t expect you to react so…negatively.”
I scrunch up my nose, my tone disbelieving when I ask, “They do?”
He laughs. “Uh, yeah. Some women have even filthier minds than men.”
I flick a strand of hair back from my face. Robert clearly thought I’d be on a par with those women. He really has no clue about my extreme lack of experience, and I take a certain level of comfort from that. I know what he means, too. I imagine that once you’ve been having sex for years and years, being spoken to so explicitly wouldn’t be that shocking anymore; you’d become desensitised to it.
Glancing up at him, I say, “Why don’t we make a truce, then, a proper one? We can be friends, but you’ll have to stop doing the whole ‘freak Lana out by pretending to come onto her’ thing. If you agree to that and to be generally decent, then I’ll agree to you staying here. What do you think?”
“I didn’t realise I was doing a ‘thing,’” he replies, chuckling.
“Yeah, well, you were.”
“Okay, I’ll behave.” He pauses and smiles, walking over and holding out his hand to me. Oh, God, what am I getting myself into? A couple of days is one thing, but a whole summer with Robert is going to be the biggest test I’ve ever faced. If he really does behave, then maybe, just maybe, we can become friends. Proper friends.