17. PAUL

It had grown late. Colleagues started to say good night, and voices softened and blurred by the fun of the evening. The final clinking of glasses and last bursts of laughter echoed around me.

I had last been talking to Carlie and Alex, two of the youngest members of the team. They regaled me with stories about bad roommates and Tinder traumas. But soon, as the landlord was telling us all it was time to go home, it was all at an end.

“Goodnight, Paul!” Carlie called out, wrestling her coat from a twist of fabric on a long bench in the corner of the pub. I chuckled in response.

“I hope that’s your coat.”

Carlie looked at it and shrugged.

“It’s much nicer!” she joked. “I’m going to keep it!”

Emptied out, the pub looked like a disaster zone. The landlord turned the lights on, and all I could see were empty glasses, torn pieces of paper and card, and finished plates of food. The air was thick with the stale scent of spilled beer. I had eaten some fries – two plates, in fact! – but I was dizzy with the evening, with too much to drink, with the fun and giddiness of getting to know everyone.

“Take care, mate!” shouted one of our colleagues, clapping me on the back before he stalked off into the night.

I could not remember his name.

“You too…uh…mate!”

The bar staff wearily wiped down tables and collected the empty glasses. Laura and William approached to bid goodnight, too. The atmosphere between us was light and jovial. Laura kissed me on one cheek, and William kissed me on the other!

“Have you had a good night?” Laura asked.

I really felt I had. I was feeling good all round.

“Yeah, thanks, you?”

Laura put her hand on her forehead and blew out jokily as if she were about to faint.

“Yeah, but I have drunk a bit too much, and now I am so hot.”

William nudged her.

“You going to Oxford Circus to get the tube?”

“Yeah,” said.”

“Good. It’s time we went home before you collapse, babe.”

She laughed but then saw someone she wanted to say goodbye to, rushing off, leaving William and me alone.

“So, what are you and Jack going to do now?” he asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

“We’re heading back to our apartment, I guess.”

William raised his eyebrow.

“Our apartment?”

I chuckled nervously and tapped him on the arm.

“Shut up, William!” I joked. “You know exactly what I mean.”

He arched his eyebrow even higher.

“Do I?”

But then that image of Jack and me, a couple leaving our central London apartment, flashed back to me. Finally, William hugged me warmly to say good night.

“Well, be good,” he said. Then he added as a joke, “And if you can’t be good, be careful.”

“I’ll try!”

“Now, let me tell and wrestle Laura onto the tube.”

He laughed and walked off.

“Good luck,” I cried after him.

A few minutes later, almost everyone was gone, and the bar was empty. Jack walked toward me across it, having just said goodbye to someone. His movements across the room seemed to unfold in slow motion, each step timed perfectly, his body swaying manfully, his eyes and smile straight on me.

“Are you up for grabbing some food?” he asked. “I didn’t eat much, did you?”

“Two plates of fries—”

“Chips.”

We laughed.

“Crisps are chips, and chips are fries,” I said, and he chimed in, “But fries are fries, too!”

“I could eat, but I think I need to walk a bit, too, to clear my head and to decompress a bit.”

He smiled at me.

“Then let’s go for a walk.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Wherever the night takes us, Paul.”

***

Outside, the evening air was cool now. A light breeze moved over our bodies as we drifted southward through the streets of Soho, still bustling with people. Now, the people who lined up outside pubs earlier now lined up outside club entrances or outside fast-food joints.

It had rained while we were in the pub. I had not even noticed. Neon lights flickered and glowed on the puddles in the streets, casting a refracted kaleidoscope of colors on their surfaces. Long streaks of light ran along the uneven sidewalks.

We walked on across Shaftesbury Avenue, thick with buses and taxis, then venturing into the heart of Chinatown. Red lanterns swayed gently in the low breeze, casting more intricate patterns of light and shadow upon the streets.

We talked about eating something in a restaurant there: char siu barbecue or dumplings, noodles, even late-night dim sum. In the steamed-up windows of busy dining rooms, sides of pork belly and roasted duck called to us.

We found a place that sold bao buns, and we bought two each but bit into each other’s. At one point, Jack held his barbecue pork bun to my mouth, and as I bit into the soft, savory-sweet center, my lips brushed his fingertips.

We walked on. Leicester Square pulsed with the energy of a thousand tourists wondering what to do at the end of the evening. We made our way down a dark alley lined with ancient chapels to the back of the iconic silhouette of the National Gallery, turned into a huge black shadow at night. Its architectural majesty was so beautiful, there like that, a mountain of darkness in the night. I told him that I longed to visit it, to see the hallowed art inside.

“Do you like museums?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, I love them.” I really did, too. “But I especially love art galleries.”

He smiled.

“Really?”

“I have a great love of painting and art history.”

Jack grinned.

“Then maybe we should go one day. Like, on a Sunday or something.”

Briefly, I thought of telling him about my dream of being a painter, but I decided to keep it to myself for now.

We came out on to Trafalgar Square, vast and imperial with its huge columns and fountains, and went right across its huge, empty space. He pointed the way through the garishly lit Charing Cross Station, saying there was a kind of footbridge beyond that spanned the Thames.

Finally, we reached it, following down a dark little tunnel until we came out on top of the river. It was like he was revealing some wonderful secret to me, about London, about how to see it in a different way. But only as we walked onto the bridge did its real magic reveal itself to me.

There was a dazzling view east down the river. Pausing midway across the bridge, we stared out over the black river, daubed as if by some impressionist painter with endless spots of color – red, blue, gold – from the lights of the city on either side of it.

We lingered in the quiet embrace of the night. The waves below shimmered with reflections of the endless urban lights. The lights of the South Bank shimmered like stars against the velvet blackness of what Jack told me was South London beyond. And on the other side, like some picture postcard made real, were endless world-famous landmarks, all in view, from there to St. Paul’s to spires and towers of the city and Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers beyond.

As we stood suspended on the footbridge spanning the Thames, London had unfurled its beauty before us. The huge river below was entirely silent, though, so that you could hear seaborne breezes fluttering around us from out beyond the city.

A sense of wonder washed over me – a profound appreciation for what surrounded us and just for being there at all. It was a moment suspended in time.

“What a sight,” he said as we leaned on the bridge’s railings, staring out.

I turned toward him, our faces close, so close it was almost like we could feel each other’s breaths as we were talking.

“It’s amazing, Jack. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“Oh,” he said. “I needed you here, for the project.”

I shook my head. My eyes caught his.

“No, I mean here, this place right here. It’s an amazing place.”

His eyes, dark pools of mystery, shone beautifully. For that moment, we stood suspended in whatever connection we had, and I felt it was not impossible that he might kiss me, there and then. But, of course, he did not. He turned and looked out over the river, and I did the same.

We followed the line of the South Bank at night, with all its lights and all the people – lovers, many of them – strolling toward their trains home or their hotels.

Together, we watched as the river flowed on and on, as people must have at night, for hundreds – thousands – of years.

“Why aren’t you with someone, Paul?” Jack asked then. “I mean, you’re a great guy, nice-looking.” I glanced at him as he said it, but he did not look back to me. “Why don’t you date much?”

The question caught me quite unawares.

“I don’t know,” I replied, feeling such uncertainty as I spoke. “I guess I haven’t found the right person.”

The words felt hollow, felt untrue. I couldn’t bring myself to admit the real reason, couldn’t find the courage to tell Jack the truth about what I was only now realizing what I might want in my life.

I had been afraid to open myself up to the love of another man, and so I had lived a life largely alone.

“Were you looking for the right person, though?” he asked.

I felt myself grow nervous.

“What?”

“Sometimes in life, we aren’t honest about who we are really looking for.”

“Maybe,” I said, and I could tell at once that he didn’t want to push me too far.

“You know, in life, Paul, we are all basically looking for the same thing, the same person.”

I didn’t know what he meant.

“And who is this mythical person?” I joked.

His eyes were so very clear as he answered, gazing deeply into mine.

“Someone to trust.” He laughed and shook his head. “And they’re not mythical. People you can trust are everywhere. You just have to find them. I thought I had it with my wife, but now I see I’m looking elsewhere for that person.”

He turned slightly, standing upright from where he had been leaning on the side of the bridge. Then, in a fleeting moment of intimacy, Jack’s hand found its way to the small of my back. His gentle touch landed on my body, his fingertips very briefly running along my spine. I caught my breath, and it was possibly one of the most exciting moments of my life.

“Come on, Paul,” he said softly as his hand fell away again. “Let’s head for home.”

It felt like so much, and it felt like nothing at all. I couldn’t work it out. Was he just being nice to me, or was this something romantic? Sometimes those things are the same, and sometimes they’re not.