Love at First Sight

1

Sunday. I've forced myself to get up at a reasonable hour, even though I haven't got anything to be up for. I can hear the couple upstairs listening to Radio 2's Sunday Love Songs, shuffling about their kitchen laughing, and, depressingly, at one point, even indulging in a quickie. I miss that. I miss slobbing about and suddenly ending up on the living room floor. I find myself looking forward to tomorrow, which is pathetic. Wishing away the weekend because I feel lonely? I don't think I could admit that even to India, and she knows everything about me.

Stoke Newington is a hive of couple activity at weekends, so I don't want to go to Clissold Park to see everyone holding hands and sipping takeaway coffees. Nor do I fancy brunch for one surrounded by loved-up pairs with sex hair reading the Sunday supplements. After showering and getting ready, I look at myself in the mirror: my messy bronde bob and dark eyes could do with a little TLC-it wouldn't kill me to get the GHDs out and pop on some mascara-but instead I flop down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. What have I got to get ready for? Holding hands with myself?

It's a bright, sunny morning, so I positively force myself to lace up my trainers and walk. Earbuds in, podcast on, I'll go and practice some gratitude. Acknowledge being able to pick and choose what I want to do, bask in the sun, give thanks for my friends, and family, and my job, and the gym, and . . .

Oh, who am I kidding? This all sucks.


The most I can muster enthusiasm for is buying the ingredients for a lemon and orzo chicken dish I’ve seen on Pinterest. I like Pinterest. I like how you can curate a magazine for yourself of all these calming, organized images so that a sleek wardrobe and sunny holiday destination feels within reach. Sometimes it’s almost like watching a video of a girl with nice hair and sensational eyebrows making an adrenal-soothing smoothie or evening meal for less than five hundred calories but with thirty-eight grams of protein is the same as doing it yourself. But on this occasion I won’t just think about making something tasty and then order Uber Eats. I’ll actually do it. I need to accomplish something today.

I make my grocery list, take a nice long walk in the sun, and then meander around to Whole Foods, and try to enjoy the experience of selecting the best organic poultry and largest citrus fruit possible. It becomes meditative, taking my time and looking at the elderflower cordials and weird face creams. By the time I get to the checkout I've almost forgotten to be miserable. But then the fire alarm sounds. It's a deafening screech that I hear over my podcast and feel in my bones. I pull out my AirPods.

"Dear shoppers," somebody announces over the intercom. "Please be advised that this is not a drill. Exit the building at your nearest opportunity, and meet at the fire assembly point. I repeat, this is not a drill; please leave your shopping where it is and meet at the fire assembly point."

I'm next in line to pay, but the person serving closes out the till and steps away from the checkout.

"Can I just grab these?" I say to their back, even though I know they won't help me. It's not like flames are licking at our toes; the oven in the bakery probably just got too hot, something like that. But there'll be a "procedure" in place, no doubt, and "rules." My dinner plans are ruined without this chicken breast.

"I feel the same way," a low, smooth-as-silk voice behind me says. "All I want is some apples and this quinoa."

I go to answer, to say something glib and self-effacing to this stranger about my happiness resting on what I eat for supper. But as I turn around and make eye contact, I'm stunned into silence, swallowing my words. I don't know what to say at all. The comment has come from a dark-haired, stubbled man, with these kind, crinkle-at-the-corners, somebody-just-told-him-a-joke eyes. He's in gym shorts and Nikes, socks pulled up to his calves. His shoulders make suggestive waves out of his sleeveless workout top and I just . . . well, feel like I've been punched in the stomach. He is sensational. I'm sure that I know him, that we've met before. The way he cocks his head and issues half a smile, as if he can't place me, either . . . it's crazy. I know him, but then also I definitely do not know him. If we'd met before I'd remember him. I'd know his name, and be able to actually speak instead of thinking, on a loop, fuckmeheisgorgeous fuckmeheisgorgeous fuckmeheisgorgeous.

I pull a what can you do face, because it's all I'm capable of. It makes him smile fully, with a breathless exhale of a laugh, and I can't help but smile, too, as if an understanding passes between us. Everyone around us is filtering out, but the two of us? We stand looking at each other so long it's stupid.

I see our whole lives at that checkout. I swear to god, I really do. I see us buying groceries together. I see us barefoot and dancing in the kitchen, cooking something on the stove that burns as we distract each other with kisses. I see him making my friends laugh. This man with the silky voice and massive biceps has me thinking how I'll charm his mother, how he'll get on with my dad. We could work out together, be the kind of couple that runs a 5k before Saturday brunch, takes the Eurostar to Paris for a casual half marathon before a shag-fest in some bijou little B&B. Life will be easy for us, because we have each other, and it will all have started here, in my local shop, just like that. This is the moment, I think. Pay attention.

"I think we go that way," I croak eventually, pointing to the back of the store. My seduction game is on point, as ever.

"Yeah," he says, looking at where I've gestured to and then down at my basket. "What are you going to do with your shopping?"

It's a relief that his chat-up lines aren't any better than mine. It's a relief that it doesn't even matter.

It's my turn to look around. "Abandon it?" I suggest, unsure. "I mean . . . what else can we do? I don't think there's time to put it back . . ."

The man nods, running his tongue over his thin but perfect lips as he considers this, then he holds out a paper bag. "Granny Smith?"

I look at the bag, and then at him.

"That's stealing," I say, surprised. It's only apples, but still. The man of my life should be no thief.

He reaches into the hidden pocket in the waistband of his shorts, meant for a house key, and pulls out some money, presenting it to me with a flourish.

"My emergency two-pound coin," he announces, placing it on the till. When he's done, he holds a hand over his heart and says earnestly: "I'm a law-abiding citizen, after all."

"All right then," I counter, loosening up. "In that case . . ." I put down my shopping on the conveyor belt to take an apple, and he nods, satisfied. "The superior apple genre," he comments, gesturing for me to go ahead and eat. I take a big bite while holding his eye, and it occurs to me that the fire alarm is still blasting. I'd stopped noticing. This whole time we've been conducting a conversation with sirens blaring, acting like it's totally normal. Have we been shouting? I honestly hadn't realized.

"Come on," he says, grabbing my hand and tugging me toward the exit. "I don't want to be responsible for getting you into any trouble."

My hand fits in his perfectly.


At the empty expanse of uncovered asphalt at the back of the store, the twenty or so of us who were shopping are gathered, as well as a handful of employees in fire safety vests, one with a mullet and a megaphone.

"Please wait here until we can verify everyone's safety," they say, clearly relishing this moment of power, the moment their entire half-day's fire safety training was leading up to. "We will try not to keep you long, but it is of great importance that you stay here, at least for the time being."

"I should have stolen more snacks."

Apple guy is beside me, finishing off what is, admittedly, a very tasty apple. I'm already down to the core of mine. The man is tall-imposingly and commandingly so. Lean. And he's also no longer holding my hand, now that we're out in the open. I flex it at my hip, running my fingertips over my palm like I miss him already. If I sound absolutely bonkers, that's because in this moment, I am. I can't explain my magnetic pull toward him, except to say it's there, and killing me. I'm so aware of the nearness of him, of this crackle of electricity spanning the distance between his arm and mine.

"But you didn't steal them. You paid for them," I find myself saying, because it is either that or I think I love you, shall we get married? He gives me a look that makes it clear I've been duped. ". . . didn't you?" I clarify.

He holds out his hand, two-pound coin in the palm.

"Couldn't surrender my emergency coin," he says, pulling an uh-oh face. I sigh and shake my head, both impressed and shocked.

"Middle-class shoplifting is on the up, I've heard," I reply coolly, watching as the fire safety marshal looks panicked, listening to something on a walkie-talkie. Perhaps it's the romance police, issuing a report for my arrest because my flirtation skills are seriously lacking.

"It's one of the few highs we've got left," the man says. "Everyone is meat-free, dairy-free, booze-free, drugs-free . . ."

"So we're nicking stuff, just to feel something?" I supply.

I wonder what he tastes like.

"It's that or skydiving." He laughs, and it makes me laugh, too.

Love me. Choose me. Pick me.

"Does that taste better because you didn't pay for it?" I ask, as he reaches the core. He looks shiftily from side to side.

"Shhhh!" he implores. "What are you, a cop?"

"A concerned citizen of the world," I reply. "And also genuinely curious. You've made me a criminal accessory. Before today I hadn't stolen anything since I was six."

"Ooh, now we're getting to the good stuff," he says, awkwardly rubbing his hands together-the apple core is cramping his style-with glee. "What was it?"

"A Mother's Day card," I say pathetically. "That somebody else had made. But hers was prettier than mine and so, shamefully . . . I took it."

"Did you get caught?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you've never stolen again?"

"Yes."

"If you hadn't got caught, do you think you'd be a criminal on the run by now?"

"No," I say, and the man tips his head like, Oh? You're not playing our game? "I'd hide in plain sight," I continue. "A criminal on the run suggests having been caught, but if I'd never known being discovered, I wouldn't have anything to run from. So if stealing Gemma Jenkins's card and hiding it in my bag had worked . . . I mean, I could be standing here talking to you whilst also emptying your wallet."

He pats down his thighs, like I really could be helping myself to his money. He sees me notice and then does a comic frown.

"I don't even have a wallet." He shakes his head self-deprecatingly.

The noise of a fire engine blares, and a hush falls over the crowd. You can tell everyone is put out at having their shop interrupted, but also varying degrees of curious at what the heck is happening. If there is a fire truck, I was wrong about it not being a big deal. But then, who cares what's happening in there, when out here is this man, tall and dark and handsome, a dizzy whirlwind of a cliché.

"Do you think there's really a fire?" I ask.

"Maybe," my soulmate says. "Or maybe it's all just a precaution. Makes sense that they'd have us all stay here in one place, though, if the fire is real. Don't want anybody dashing back inside for more apples, say."

"No," I agree, and for the second time since we've been talking, this stranger and I lock eyes and my insides explode. This has never happened to me before in my life, this . . . feeling. It wasn't like this with Craig, my ex, or any of the guys at uni. I've never had it on a night out or when I was a teen. If this man I have known for all of eight minutes took my hand again and led me away, to his house, to his life, to our life together for the rest of all time, I would go in a heartbeat. I've half a mind to lean in for a kiss, to get irrefutable proof that this isn't all a sad-girl hallucination and I'm really sitting on the top deck of the 149 with a bucket of chicken from KFC and tears in my eyes at how lonely I am.

"This might be forward of me," the man says. "But bloody hell-you're beautiful."

Thank god. It's really there, then, this connection. This instant connection.

Dare I say it?

I think this might even be love at first sight.

2

Look. I know this isn't really real. I know this is all in my head. I know it cannot be that eyes meet across a crowded room (or a crowded back entrance at Whole Foods), et cetera.

And yet.

"Cal," the man says, offering his hand after a beat longer than polite has passed. He has to be feeling this, too. His eyes roam my face and I actually believe what he's just said-that he genuinely thinks I'm beautiful. I flush pink, unaccustomed to such forthright flattery. I take his hand and second contact is established. He shakes it, and I think we both realize it's strange to shake hands after a handheld walk.

"Jessie," I say, and then we laugh, about what precisely I have no idea, but we're both doing it, and urgh, this is so embarrassing, but later, when I tell India about all this, I'll say, And everything else just melted away into the background. Like, those words will actually leave my mouth. Mortifying. It's just me and him, looking and trembling and smiling and falling. Until a staff member booms a thanks for our cooperation out over the megaphone, anyway.