And so that was Ella. Early Ella. When our passionate, obsessive relationship cost me my job, an unreasonable amount of sleep and more bodily fluids than I could spare. On the other hand there was an exciting girl who simply did not give a ****. The most exciting kind. And worth any job I've ever had.
Apres-caprice we settled into flickering friendship with occasional lapses. My favourite. That lasted until she met someone, of course. I didn't like him. He did have that IT voice. The one that sounds so disappointed. So just drinks, no touching then. Completely over. Absolutely over. But entirely over?
Now the dirty martinis have begun working their magic, I'm relaxed and Ella is laughing again, even if she is still finding fault.
"I can't believe you said I looked well."
"You do," I said, baffled. "Or maybe you don’t," I corrected, thinking that might be the new right answer.
"Usually" she pouts, "You tell me I'm beautiful, or stunning, or lovely, or absolutely charming or some such well-worn compliment that cheers me up and makes me like you briefly. 'Well' is for your Auntie."
I must be slipping. Or subconsciously had admitted I would no longer get the chance to flicker through her frillies. She always had expensive, sexy underwear, even when just nipping to Tesco; as I found out between the sun-blushed tomatoes and the slightly embarrassed puttanesca, before the intervention of a sombre security guard, whose night, and possibly life, she had made. That episode had been a response to her under-the table heroics at a very nice restaurant in Clerkenwell we're sadly no longer welcome at. This was all during our retail phase. Not to be confused with our outdoors phase.
I pushed on to The Lab Bar and it felt good to be somewhere with a buzz, a place too crowded but filled with the fleeting joy of cocktails and soon-to-be-forgotten new friends. It was so crowded in fact, that in a doorway squeeze, our proximity ended all chance of our spending the night in anything but each other's sweat. That was all it took; a brief exchange of pheromones, a raised eyebrow, and next thing you know…
"Taxi!" The poor cab driver raced to get us back before we revisited our public transport phase.
Last weeks confession.
