‘Do you have a minute?’
She looked up from some notes. ‘Yeah. What’s up?’
He could tell she immediately thought he wanted to talk to her about a patient.
‘Do you want to go somewhere this afternoon?’
The pause was agonising. It felt like asking a girl at school on a date and seeing all the reasons that she wanted to say no flit behind her eyes.
‘I think we should try to get back to normal,’ he said quickly.
She flinched at those words, but it was too late to pull them back. He wasn’t about to tell her he’d spent the last two weeks unable to sleep because of the whole ‘what if’ scenarios drifting through his head.
It was like being a kid with one of those books where you got to choose what happened next.
Except...none of his choices had seemed right, even in his imagination.
‘Let me take you on a tour of the city. Or a drive further out. Whatever you like. I’ve been a poor host.’
She was going to say no. It was written all over her face.
He watched as she bit her bottom lip. ‘Or let’s take some time to do what we normally do. We can catch a movie. Find a bar.’
He was getting desperate and he didn’t care if she knew it.
She blinked. ‘I’d rather just go for a walk around the city, towards the park maybe.’
Relief flooded through him. ‘Great. Why don’t we get changed and I’ll meet you out front.’
He turned quickly before she changed her mind, finishing up a few things with patients, then heading back to the house to change into jeans and a light shirt.
It took nearly an hour for Viv to come and meet him. He’d started to pace outside the front of the hospital. She appeared wearing skinny jeans and a long-sleeved white top with a simple bag over her shoulder and a pair of sunglasses nestled in her hair.
‘You came.’
‘I came,’ she sighed. He could tell she wasn’t exactly happy, and he wasn’t used to Vivienne being like this. Normally things were so easy between them. They got to be themselves, without any need for other faces.
He wanted to reach out and touch her. But every molecule in his body told him not to. Told him that reaching for Viv again could set off a catastrophic chain of reactions that his body would want to react to.
‘Let’s go this way,’ he said quickly. ‘It takes us through the Hoàn Ki?m district and will lead us down towards the lake.’
She started walking. He was sure he should actually be leading, but Viv’s long strides made him wonder who exactly was leading who here.
He kept up and started pointing out part of the city. ‘This is the local school. There are more than four hundred pupils. This is where Lien and I went to school together.’
Her head turned towards him. ‘You went to school together? I thought you met at medical school?’
He shook his head. ‘We did both. You know Lien’s parents stay just a few streets away?’
She nodded and he continued. ‘They’ve always lived there. My parents and I originally stayed in an apartment further into Hanoi. They didn’t build the bungalows until after they took over the hospital.’
They wandered through the streets. The walk from the hospital to the lake took around an hour.
Duc kept talking, partly because he couldn’t stand any silence between them. It was easy to chat as the area on the way to the lake was full of shops.
Duc pointed down various streets. ‘Things get a little quirky around here with each street having specific kinds of stores. Look, this street is mainly book stores. The one to the left, that’s all shoe stores.’
Viv nodded and stopped to look in a few windows. She picked up something with an international brand. He nudged her and shook his head. ‘This is a tourist area. That’s not likely to be real.’ She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘But it’s right in my price range.’ So he waited while she pulled some money from her jeans pocket and paid.
As they moved along there were vendors at various street corners selling fresh fruit and they stopped to pick some up.
The traffic was chaotic, the streets packed with cars and mopeds, and it took an age to cross some of the roads en route to the lake. As they walked down one street they saw a bride getting her picture taken on the steps of a grand hotel. Duc smiled. ‘That’s one of the most luxurious hotels in Hanoi.’
‘It certainly looks grand,’ murmured Vivienne as she stopped to watch the bride and groom posing together. Duc didn’t want to hurry her along, so he waited while photographer posed the couple on the steps. Even from here, he could tell just by the way they looked at each other that they were totally in love.
An uncomfortable prickle ran down his spine. Viv had stopped watching them and was staring at her feet. Images shot into his brain. He could remember exactly the expression in her blue eyes that night, and if he closed his eyes he could remember exactly how much his heart had thudded in his chest and exactly how much he’d wanted things to go further.
Was he a fool?
She was quite simply the best person he knew. But there was no way he could have a fling with Viv and still retain the closeness of their friendship. Even now, he’d probably gone some way to ruining it.
Everything he did now had to try and pull things back.
He gave a tug at her elbow. ‘Let’s go around the corner. There’s some gorgeous architecture. The Hanoi Opera House is there.’
They walked to the opera house and he noticed Viv tugging at her top. The temperature was rising, and he could see her hair sticking to her neck.
‘Let’s stop for a minute and get a drink before we head to the park.’ He ducked into a doorway and led her to an elevator that took them four floors above the streets. ‘Café hopping is almost a trend here.’ He led her to a table in a café overlooking the streets below, with a view of the lake. He handed her a menu, which she handed back with her eyebrows raised.
‘Sorry.’ He shook his head as he realised it was in Vietnamese. ‘What would you like?’
‘Frozen mango smoothie,’ she said promptly, and when the waiter approached, he ordered two.
He pointed down at the busy road and crossing beneath them. ‘This is Hanoi’s answer to Times Square or Shibuya Crossing. I could people-watch up here for hours.’
Viv leaned back in her chair. Her gaze had narrowed. ‘So, are we going to talk about things or are we just going to ignore them?’
He started. He hadn’t expected her to say anything quite so blunt, but this was Viv and he should have known better.
His cheeks flushed and he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I feel as if I took advantage of you. You’ve came here, given up a job and everything to help me out, and then...that happens.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I meant it when I said you’re family to me. I crossed a line. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’
For the first time since it had happened he
r face didn’t seem quite so annoyed. She raised an eyebrow. ‘I know what you were thinking of.’
The waiter placed the frozen glasses down in front of them and they both jumped.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah...that.’ He looked up and met her gaze. ‘But why? Why now? How many times have you and I got drunk together—shared a bed even—and nothing like that has ever happened?’
A sad kind of smile appeared on her face. ‘Who knows? Timing? Hormones? Change of venue?’ Her voice dropped. ‘Change of circumstances?’
He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. ‘I’m sorry. This is what I hate. I’m scared to touch you now. Scared that something that was so easy between us is now just...’
He let his voice tail off. His thumb was unconsciously making little circles in the palm of her hand.
‘The last two weeks have been hard,’ she said simply, and he could tell she was trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I wanted to go home.’
His head shot up. ‘No.’
A tear slid down her cheek. ‘But I realised I don’t know where home is. I don’t even really have one.’
He didn’t hesitate. Duc stood up and moved around the table, wrapping her in his arms. ‘Home is with me, Viv. We’re family.’
She was shaking now, and he hated every bit of himself for doing this to her. ‘You should have told me. You should have shouted at me—yelled at me. You should have told me you wanted to leave. I am so, so sorry. I had no idea you were feeling like that.’
She gave a nervous laugh and pushed him back a little. ‘How could I do that? I was the one that kissed you first.’
His breath caught somewhere in his chest. She was right. She had kissed him first. She’d responded to his every touch. Every moment of that night was seared on his brain. But he’d wanted to take all the responsibility, all the blame for what had happened.
He could tell that right now she was struggling to keep her emotions in check, and he couldn’t get past the first words she’d said—that she didn’t know where home was, that she didn’t have one.