‘I don’t think it’s that complicated. He’s the one you’ve been kinda-but-not-really seeing. You like him, and he likes you. Simple as that.’
‘I don’t know where you got that, but you’re wrong. Besides, there’s no way you could possibly know how he feels about me. It’s ridiculous.’
‘Funny, that’s pretty much what he said about you.’
Kate stared at her, heart now beating panic-attack fast.
‘OK, so let’s try it another way. Pure hypotheticals. If it did turn out that he liked you too, then how would you feel? What would you do?’
‘Hattie . . .’ Kate wondered why she was being tortured like this, why Hattie was bothering her with something that she was desperate to forget about.
‘Kate, I promise. I just want you to settle this stupid argument between me and Cathryn. That’s it. If Freddie liked you back, then how would you feel?’
Feeling tears forming and being powerless to stop them, Kate took a long, deep breath, and told Hattie everything.
Chapter 25
Freddie checked the address on his phone once more before entering the pub. The emails had seemed innocuous at the time, claiming that Andy just wanted a chance to meet up away from the group, to check in on how he was doing without the pressure of everyone else being there, but now Freddie wasn’t so sure. For one thing, nobody else had ever mentioned that they met up with Andy for one-on-one counselling time. For another, this pub was decidedly romantic. There were window boxes out front overflowing with spring flowers in clouds of reds and pinks, and tiny candles on most of the tables.
Having peered around every smoked-glass partition and not spotted them, he bought a pint and took a seat at a small, empty table. When he took his phone out of his pocket, there was an email from Andy to say that they’d be late and to hang tight.
‘Freddie?’
Kate.
Kate was stunned to see him and embarrassed too. She was worried about the way she looked, her hair in a messy ponytail, a pair of old, scrappy jeans, and a coat designed to deal with the temperamental spring weather. This was not how she wanted to look when she bumped into him. She had wanted to be perfect and pretty.
She couldn’t say anything to him at first, beyond his name, and then suddenly she felt foolish, and scared in case he thought she had been following him. She needed to make sure that he knew this meeting was a coincidence, that she wasn’t a scary weirdo. But her mind tumbled, so instead of cool, calm and collected, she presented with babble instead.
‘Hattie told me to meet her here,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘I might end up her housemate, if you can believe it, and we were going to meet here so that she could show me around her neighbourhood. Why are you here?’
‘Andy,’ Freddie said. ‘They said they wanted to talk about stuff.’
‘Right.’ Kate sounded cynical. Freddie worried she thought he was lying.
But what sounded like cynicism to him was really the cogs in her mind turning. Kate was figuring things out.
‘No, I promise,’ Freddie continued. ‘I went to the meeting. The one after that Sunday when we . . . Maybe I shouldn’t have gone, but I don’t know. Anyway, I guess Andy got concerned, and they said they wanted to meet up to talk.’
‘Oh, I believe you,’ Kate reassured him. ‘I think we’ve been set up.’
‘Set up?’
‘You spoke to the group? I saw Hattie the other night and she didn’t say anything about it. What did you tell them exactly? How much did you tell them?’
‘Well, what did you tell Hattie?’
‘Nothing! I didn’t tell her anything,’ Kate felt flustered. She ran a hand through her hair, smoothing and flicking it back in a way she hoped would make it look less of a mess and more of a styling choice.
‘Are you going to leave?’ Freddie asked slowly.
‘No,’ Kate replied, just as slowly. ‘I’m going to get a drink. And then I’m going to sit for a bit. If that’s OK?’
Freddie nodded that it was.
At the bar, Kate instructed herself on some deep breathing. She placed both hands down on the cool counter and closed her eyes.
Freddie is here, she said to herself. Freddie is here.
He looked good as well, which was a huge problem. He looked lighter, something in his shoulders, and the way he’d looked at her when she came in – she hadn’t imagined that, had she? The brightness, the focus on her, like there was nothing else that mattered in the world.
What was going on? Kate wondered as she paid for her drink.
‘Why do you think they’ve done this?’ she asked once she came back from the bar.
‘Because they know I like you.’ He said it after a pause, with his eyes cast down towards his drink, not daring to look at her. He knew he had words now, but doing the words plus the eye contact would have been far too much.
‘They do?’
‘At the meeting, I didn’t tell them what we did, or what happened. I wanted to keep that for us. But I did tell them how I felt.’
‘You did?’ She paused, feeling tears and fighting them back. ‘Why didn’t you say it to me?’
‘I’m saying it now.’
‘Right.’ Kate paused. When Freddie finally drew the courage to look at her, she was looking up at the ceiling, almost as if she was praying. ‘Oh God, they know I like you too,’ she finally admitted. ‘Well, Hattie does, at least.’
He waited, almost like he was waiting for the punchline. It never came.
‘When I met Hattie . . . Oh, it’s so obvious now that she knew how you felt. It’s because you told them all. That explains a lot. She pretty much had me cornered, so I told her. And now they’ve set us up, the bastards.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ Freddie asked.
‘I’m guessing for the same reason that you didn’t tell me.’
‘Fear? Humiliation? Uncertainty?’
‘Sounds about right.’
Their eyes met, just for the briefest of moments, before Kate started to blush and look away.
‘I feel like I really messed this all up,’ he said softly. ‘If I had only just said something . . .’
‘You didn’t mess anything up. I was the one who messed it up. I was a complete idiot. I am a complete idiot.’
‘Maybe we can promise to just tell each other these sorts of things in the future? Instead of bottling them all up?’
‘I will if you will.’ Kate’s laugh came out fraught and awkward. ‘Is there going to be a future?’
‘Do you want there to be a future?’
She was looking at him now, nodding with sad, hopeful eyes. He looked right back, and neither turned away.
‘I need to know how you really feel about me,’ Freddie said finally.
‘Well, I need to know how you really feel about me,’ Kate retorted.
‘I asked first.’
‘Fine.’ There was a smile trying to break through, he noticed. She was forcing it down, but it was definitely there. ‘I like you. Hell, I more than like you. I’ve been feeling it for ages. Maybe from the beginning, I don’t know. But you’re hard to read. And I got stuck in my head, convinced myself what I was feeling was nothing because I was scared that you didn’t the same way. Happy now?’