“Charter members,” he says.
Soon the food comes, and we eat and talk. “How was your time with your father the other week? Was it hard?”
I picture my dad at tea, his words about Andrea, about happiness, about pushing myself. “Tense, I suppose. He wanted to give me work advice. He always does.”
“What sort of advice?”
“Try harder. Work harder. Be better,” I say, then take a bite of my salad.
Heath scoffs. “Doesn’t he know how bloody hard you work?”
“He likes to light a fire under me.”
Heath shakes his head, perhaps frustrated, but his answer seems imbued with understanding. “Maybe it’s his way of staying involved with you. Maybe he feels like it’s the thing you have in common, so he won’t let go of it. I’m not defending him, mind you. But maybe he’s holding on to that.”
I noodle on that for a minute. Heath might have something there. “You could be right. Especially since I don’t talk to her at all.”
“Do you want to?” he asks carefully.
The prospect should make me shudder. The thought of seeing Poppy has always felt traumatic. But maybe that’s a vestigial reaction. I don’t want to give her that sort of power in my life, so I take time to truly think on his question. “At first, I didn’t want to talk to her. She tried to call me a few times and I avoided her. She sends me Christmas cards, but . . . I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know her again.”
He gives a supportive smile. “Then don’t. You don’t need to invite people who’ve hurt you in the past into your present life.”
Maybe the corollary to that is I don’t need to avoid them either.
Maybe if I need to go to Chelsea, need to visit the street of her gallery, I shouldn’t let the thought of seeing her stop me.
I’ll be fine.
My father, though? I can’t just erase him. He’s my dad.
But I don’t want to linger on my father at this impromptu dinner. “What about your parents? You said they live nearby?”
“Just outside of London.”
“And what do they do? Wait! Are they librarians too?”
After he finishes the bite of chicken, he laughs, pointing at my smile. “You’re never not going to pretend I’m a librarian, are you?”
I shake my head, maintaining a very satisfied close-lipped smile. “You’re just a sexy librarian to me. You’re going to have to accept it.”
He leans a little closer, drops his voice to a smoky timbre. “I happily accept it. And no, they’re not librarians. He’s an illustrator. She’s a copywriter.”
“Oh, everyone’s so creative,” I say.
“They are. They’re why I love art,” he adds.
“How so?”
“Huge museum fans. They used to take us all over Europe to visit them. I loved it growing up. Never complained. Always asked to see more. To go on trips to Barcelona, Vienna, Rome, and of course, Paris, to check out every museum.”
I sigh happily. The story warms my soul. “You’d found your calling.”
“Found it in Paris. In the Musée d’Orsay, to be exact.”
I motion for him to keep going. “More, tell me more.”
“They took us there when I was sixteen, and I didn’t want to leave. I spent the whole day. My brother is younger by nine years. He wanted to go to a park, so they took him to the Tuileries across the river, and I stayed with the Van Goghs and Monets, the Picassos and the Renoirs, wandering the galleries until the museum closed.”
“A love affair began,” I say.
He smiles. “Indeed. That was it. I knew I wanted to work in art.”
“And does your brother work in parks?” I ask playfully.
He laughs, shakes his head. “My brother’s an actor. He’s in a play now. And So It Begins. It closes in a week.”
My jaw drops as my smile ignites. “I’ve heard great things about that play.”
Heath stops eating, fork in midair. “Do you want to see it?”
“Yes. I love the theater.”
“I had a feeling.”
“I’m so predictable,” I joke.
“Or maybe I already know you well.”
It feels like he does. It feels, too, like he could know me better than anyone ever has.
When he walks me home, we trade books, and the effort it takes not to invite him upstairs is monumental.
We meet after work a few days later at a café in Neal’s Yard, an alley that opens into a courtyard, not far from Heath’s home.
Time for our first book club. We settle into chairs at a sidewalk café, ordering wine for me, beer for him, then we set the paperbacks on the round iron table.
When the drinks come, we talk about stories. “I think, for me, I really responded to the whole thrill of the new lover with the impossibility of at all,” I tell him of the Hazel book.
“Yes, I have to agree. Though, sometimes I just wanted him to say, ‘Fuck the world’ and be with her,” he says, leaning back in his chair, taking a drink of his ale.