After my confession to Tall Boy the other night, all was suspiciously quiet between us. I was hoping he couldn't see my tears in the dark, and that he would blame my words of love on the alcohol and general atmosphere of our post-coital fug, but you can never be sure.
Today I tried to find out when that office party was that he invited me to.
"There will be loadsa clients there", he text back, "why don't we just meet up when I am back next week?"
Oops, silly me: and I thought that the clients present would be the point in having a glammed-up, tall blonde on his arm!?
I called him to give him a piece of my mind, which, of course, turned into mindless flirting and general catching up and being filled with bubbles of happiness upon hearing his voice.
His explanation left me feeling less fobbed off than his text had done, and I wished him a good night and a fun trip (he is going off abroad AGAIN this weekend)- vowing to myself that I would delete his number and never see him again this side of Christmas, for the sake of my own sanity.
Once upstairs, my friend rang me, asking where I was: "We've just been to Bryan Adam's house and are now hanging out at St Martin's Lane, why aren't you here!?" I answered that I had tried to ring her an hour ago and had called it a night after a Chinese meal with a friend who'd come to the cinema with me.
"I thought you'd gone home after the exhibition", I told her, "the film was good, but I would have stayed if I'd known you'd end up hanging out with Bryan Adams!"
Even my friend had gone off to spend the night at his girlfriend's.
I rang Tall Boy back.
A bit of chit-chat ensued before I got to the point. "You are so smooth", I said to him. "I've been called a lot of things", he replied, "but never that". "Why not?" I asked, "how would you define 'smooth' then?"
"As someone who has a lot of lines", he answered, "and always tells people what they want to hear".
"Well, you've told me a lot of nice things that I wanted to hear very much", I said, "like when you told me you wanted me to meet your parents, and that you'd fancied me for a year, and how I was like your dream girl..."
"That is true", I heard him smile, "but that was not a line. My parents would love you, and they are always banging on at me about bringing girls home. Well, my mum is", he continued, "my dad doesn't say very much".
"Maybe he knows you don't bring girls there, but you bang them at home", I suggested.
The conversation started to unravel a bit and I found it hard to express what I actually wanted to say. "Maybe", he said, "I will just give you a ring when I get back and we can meet up next week".
"I was thinking the opposite", I told him. "We've not been very good at just being friends, have we". "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Every time we see each other we have such a nice time", I continued, "but we're not just friends, are we? I mean, every time I see you we end up holding hands or something, so we're more than just friends".
"True", he said, relieved that I hadn't said he was a crap friend or anything, as he thought that's what I was implying.
"But it's hard for me", I went on, "to see you and feel really close to you, and then we don't see each other for ages... you don't know what I am getting at, do you?" I asked. "You told me you don't want a girlfriend and I think it's messing with my head too much".
At this stage I began to realise that he hadn't actually noticed me drawing back from him, but interpreted as my being "too busy" to see him.
"Have you ever asked me to do anything, and I've said no?" I asked him.
He couldn't think of anything. "You see", I proved my point.
"You remember last year", I carried on, "when I kept asking you to come out for cocktails or something, and you were never free".- "It's all my trips", he agreed.
For the first time it dawned on me that he may be well and truly out of his deapth with me, but not admitting it.
Judging by the state of his house, his friends, his social habits, I think it is fair to say that although he is older (and much taller), he could be intimidated by me in some way.
What a novel thought!
(I wonder if he actually will ring me next week...)












