‘Yes, I only work around the corner.’
‘At the gallery?’
‘Yes.’ She liked that he had remembered. ‘How about you? A good day?’
‘Ah, you know. I’m between contracts at the moment, so just trying to keep myself busy with other things.’
Kate wondered if that was code for him being unemployed, but chose not to dwell on it.
They went into the restaurant and Kate felt herself stiffen when Ethan held out the chair for her when they got to their table. It seemed a pretty old-fashioned gesture for someone who had proudly announced that he was a feminist. She took him in, noticing that his T-shirt was a little stretched out and faded, his jeans battered and slouchy. Another thing she brushed aside. First dates from online apps were casual and informal, weren’t they? Wearing a nice wrap dress and her black boots, maybe she was the one who had got the date-wear wrong?
‘Starters?’ Kate asked, glancing over the menu.
‘How about straight to mains?’ Ethan countered.
‘OK, I’m more of a dessert person anyway.’
‘Oh, I’m not really that into sweet things,’ he added. Maybe he was broke; Kate could empathise with that. Except that when she checked the menu, she decided that she really wanted a starter. She resolved to offer to share, and to insist on paying her side of the bill. Once again she thought about his profile, how he had declared himself a feminist, and thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Ethan watched her eat her fried halloumi sticks in silence, his hands in his lap.
‘So, tell me about your travelling? Where exactly did you go?’ Kate asked between mouthfuls.
‘Oh, you know, the normal places.’
‘Like where?’
‘I did Thailand and Singapore, then South Korea, finally ending up in Japan.’
‘Wow. I wish I could just escape like that. What was your favourite place to visit?’
‘I honestly don’t think you’ve lived until you’ve slept on a beach in Thailand, under the full moon. It just puts everything else into perspective, you know? Like nothing really matters in this life, like all the things we think are important are actually not that important at all.’
‘I feel that. Or, at least, I wish I could feel that. But, you know, rent. And money in general. Are you sure you don’t want one of these?’ she said, gesturing at her plate.
Ethan declined, and Kate detected a slightly worried look on his face.
Conversation was stilted as they ate their mains. Kate had chosen a Caesar salad because she figured it would seem a little more delicate after the halloumi, plus there was less chance she would end up with anything down her front, while Ethan went straight in with his hands on his burger, chomping down and getting covered in sauce in the process. It wasn’t pretty.
‘Are you really going to have dessert?’ Ethan asked when she asked the waiter for the menu.
This was the first nice meal she’d had out in ages, and she had wanted dessert. Then she wondered: was he commenting on her weight? Or was he just in a hurry to leave?
She put the menu down and asked the waiter for a decaf coffee instead. She felt deflated and uncertain. But otherwise, he was being fairly pleasant, so she put her insecurities about him aside, yet again.
‘Let me pay for what I had,’ Kate said when the bill came. Ethan was being strangely protective over letting her see it, even though she could easily guess what was there.
‘No, this is a date. I’ve got this.’
‘I insist. I had a starter, and a glass of wine. You didn’t even drink.’
‘Well, I insist too.’ With his head bent down as he got his wallet from his pocket, the subdued lighting cast angry shadows over his face. He wasn’t being playful. Kate wondered if he was angry with her but let him get on with it.
Afterwards they walked. He was being nice again. They joked, she laughed. They talked about South Korea and Japan, and Kate told him about the big corporate job she used to have. She didn’t mention she’d been made redundant from it, but she wanted to tell him about her life there because she thought that breaking free of it was something they had in common.
She knew where they were headed, and felt a tangle of hope and dread as she rounded the corner and saw it: the rainbow alley she’d found with Freddie. This time it was stuffed with people posing for pictures, and Kate didn’t suggest that they stop to experience it. She didn’t think that Ethan had noticed it at all, or if he had, he clearly wasn’t interested.
As they walked, Kate tried to imagine having sex with Ethan, and what it might be like. There would have been a time, not so long ago, where she would have been freaking out by this point, wondering how she was going to broach the subject of her virginity. She imagined all sorts of possibilities: men getting angry with her, men laughing at her, men simply walking out of the door without any further attempt at communication. She liked that she didn’t have to have that horrible conversation any more and reckoned that she could probably get away with passing off her still considerable inexperience as nerves.
Ethan was nice enough. She wasn’t experiencing any fire-cracker emotions but Kate was beginning to wonder if they even existed. Maybe she just wasn’t a fire-cracker emotions kind of person. She didn’t mind Ethan’s body, and if he didn’t mind hers, then why shouldn’t they sleep together? This could be fine. Kate was determined this would be fine. She looked up at Ethan and smiled at him. He smiled back.
‘Sorry it’s all in boxes,’ Kate said when she brought Ethan back to her place. She had wanted to see where he lived, but he said that it wasn’t a good idea.
‘I’m in the process of moving,’ she added.
A lot had made its way over to her parents since Freddie had been there just a week before. There were only bare essentials in the kitchen, and all her knick-knacks assembled over the past few years had been packed up and shoved out of the way. She offered Ethan a drink in the only glass she had left and made herself a drink in the one remaining mug. It wasn’t even a fresh bottle of wine, but one that was already half-empty from a few nights before.
When they sat on the sofa she asked about the white patch in his beard.
‘Everyone asks about it,’ he moaned. ‘And it’s not even that interesting. It’s just a patch, it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve had it forever, but I guess no one could really see it until I grew my beard. To be honest, I’m a little bit tired of talking about it. I don’t ask you about the colour of your hair.’
Kate sat still, holding tight to her mug of wine. She had this sensation of forcing herself smaller, of folding herself up into a tiny box so that she didn’t take up so much space.
‘Sorry,’ Ethan said finally, after noticing the silence that followed it. ‘I snapped, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine. It was a stupid question.’
‘I just hate small talk, you know? After everything I’ve experienced, after you feel that kind of bliss, it’s just hard to go back to things that are so trivial and meaningless.’
‘I don’t think that making conversation is meaningless. I was just trying to get to know you.’
Kate absently wondered how she was going to get Ethan out of her house, if she needed to. But then he started being sweet again.