The Piano Man Project (28 page)

He examined her efforts as she worked behind the kitchen counter. She glanced at him as he turned her best cutlery over in his hands and rubbed the edge of the oilcloth between his fingers. No doubt it wouldn’t pass his restaurant standards, but at least he didn’t know it was covered in a kitsch Christmas print. It had been the only thing she could find that remotely resembled a tablecloth, a gift from Lucille several years ago.

Honey checked the tray of small crispy potatoes and roasted vegetables and then closed the oven.

‘If you were cooking fillet steak, how long would you cook it for?’ she asked, eyeing the lumps of raw meat on her chopping board as if they were her own kidneys.

‘Not very long. Depends how thick they are and who I’m cooking them for,’ he said, pushing his chair back and making his way over to the breakfast bar. ‘Let me feel them.’

Hal tested the meat’s thickness between his thumb and forefingers, and Honey tried not to admire his hands.

‘Do I grill them?’ she asked.

‘Jesus, no.’ He looked aghast. ‘Get the frying pan. And some butter.’

‘Am I about to have my second cooking lesson?’

‘I can’t let you ruin good steak,’ he said. ‘Now melt some butter until it foams.’

She did as he’d instructed.

‘That sounds about right,’ he said after a minute. ‘Season the steaks well and then lay them in the sizzling butter.’

Honey grinned at the satisfying sizzle as she placed one of the steaks in the pan.

‘Both together?’ she said.

He nodded, and then fell silent.

After a minute or more, she pushed a fork into one to check the underside.

‘Leave it,’ Hal said; an order, not a suggestion. Honey eased the fork out of the meat with raised eyebrows and stepped away from the pan.

A minute or so later, he finally spoke again. ‘Now baste them in the butter and turn them over.’

Honey followed his advice to the letter and then stepped away.

‘Don’t touch them until I tell you they’re ready.’

‘You haven’t asked me how I like my steak.’

‘It’s fillet. You’re having it the only way it should ever be cooked.’

‘Rude,’ she murmured, and saw him smirk into the glass of buck’s fizz she’d just pushed his way.

‘Eurgh. What the fuck is this?’ he said, frowning.

‘Buck’s fizz. It’s for your birthday.’

‘Am I fourteen again?’

‘No, but seeing as you were half cut a few hours ago I thought we’d go in easy,’ she chided.

Hal placed the glass down. ‘Take them out, they’ll be ready.’

Honey frowned. She’d have left the steaks in for far longer.

‘Already? They’ve only just gone in …’

He sighed pointedly. ‘Do I try to tell you how to sell dead people’s clothes and cast-offs?’

Honey huffed. ‘Pre-loved and upcycled, actually.’

‘Take the steaks out. Now.’

He waited enough time for Honey to obey his instructions. ‘We can’t eat them straight away, they need to stand for five.’

Honey stared at them. ‘But they’re ready. You just said so yourself. They’ll go cold.’

Hal rubbed a hand over his mouth as if holding in a string of swear words. ‘You can do everything else while you wait. Warm the plates. Pour some actual wine. Put some music on. Sing “Happy Birthday”. Do anything you like, just don’t touch those goddamn steaks.’

Honey stuck her tongue out at him, and immediately regretted it because it seemed mean.

‘It’s rude to stick your tongue out at a blind person,’ he said.

She didn’t even ask him how he knew.

‘So how old are you today?’ she asked, turning the oven down and sliding a couple of plates in with the potatoes and roasted vegetables. She loosened the plastic lid on a tub of ready-made chilled red wine sauce and stuck it in the microwave, waiting for him to reply.

‘Thirty-four,’ he said. ‘Thirty-four years old and going nowhere fast.’

Honey opened the bottle of cabernet sauvignon that the supermarket advice tab had reliably informed was great with steak.

‘Don’t say that,’ she said, pouring the wine into the glasses she’d set on the table and reaching across to flick the radio on in the background. ‘Come and sit down. It’s almost ready.’

Hal listened to Honey moving around the kitchen. The clank of plates, the rush of heat from the oven when she opened it, the scent of food. It was intoxicating, all of it, even more so than the decent glass of red she’d finally given him.

He could practically feel the pride radiating off her in waves when she placed his meal in front of him.

‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘Fillet steak, little potato things, roasted vegetables, and a red wine juice.’

‘Jus?’ he said.

‘Don’t question the chef,’ she warned, sliding into the chair opposite him.

‘Are there any lit candles on this table?’ he asked.

‘Yes, because I’m stupid and want to set your head on fire,’ she said. ‘Of course there aren’t any candles.’

He didn’t reply, mostly because he’d actually been thinking that her first homemade steak dinner deserved the romance of a candle.

‘Oh my bloody God,’ Honey suddenly said. ‘This steak. Hal, it’s perfect,’ she sighed, with something that sounded like rapture. ‘I didn’t think it was going to be anywhere close to cooked, but you were totally right.’

‘Don’t question the chef,’ he quipped lightly, and found that he could only agree when he tasted his own steak. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but given his diet over recent months it was pretty damn close to perfect. They ate with the sound of the radio in the kitchen, low music to accompany the chink of cutlery against china and their idle chat about the well-oiled plans for the covert event she’d planned at the home the next day.

‘Will you come?’ she asked. ‘They say an army marches on its stomach, and Skinny Steve is no born leader.’

‘I like him,’ Hal said, jumping to Steve’s defence. His young apprentice for the week might not be a culinary genius, but he was a hard worker and good at following instructions. ‘He’ll make a decent chef one day.’

‘Yeah, but not by tomorrow,’ she wheedled. ‘Say you’ll come?’

‘Fine,’ he relented. ‘I’ll come. But I’m staying in the kitchen, okay?’

‘Deal,’ she said, and he knew he’d pleased her from the smile behind her voice. Considering the volatile nature of their relationship, Honey was actually a pretty easy person to please. He’d been accustomed to a life surrounded by high-maintenance people before the accident; demanding customers, his party hard friends, and of course, Imogen. Had he himself been high maintenance too? Probably. If a penchant for expensive clothes, good food and fast cars made someone high maintenance, then maybe so.

Honey stood and cleared the plates.

‘I didn’t buy dessert,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but you don’t strike me as a dessert man.’

He didn’t argue. He’d always choose a cheeseboard over a cheesecake. ‘I’ll take some Stilton?’ he said, teasing her.

‘You’re welcome to a Dairylea triangle,’ she laughed lightly.

‘I’ll pass,’ he said, pushing his chair back. ‘Shall we go through to the lounge?’

He followed Honey and settled on the sofa, accepting his refilled glass with thanks.

‘I have something for you,’ Honey said, hovering close enough for him to smell the light scent of her perfume and sounding uncharacteristically shy. ‘For your birthday.’

He put his glass down carefully on the coffee table in front of him. ‘You brought me a present?’

In years gone by, he’d given and received many extravagant gifts. This year his only wish had been for his birthday to slide in and out again unmarked, so quite why he’d had a skinful and blurted it out to Honey was beyond him. The fact that she’d gone to all of this trouble and rustled up a late notice gift had actually touched Hal greatly. Although, knowing Honey, he should probably approach any gift she’d chosen with a certain degree of trepidation.

She perched beside him on the sofa and placed a package into his hands.

‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know whether to wrap it or not,’ she said. ‘It’s in a box so I left it.’

He felt around the contours of the box and picked open the lid, feeling inside until his fingers closed around something cool and metal.

‘It’s a hip flask,’ she said. ‘I thought it might help you drink less whisky if it comes in a smaller bottle.’

‘There’s that girl guide again,’ he said, but without malice. ‘Thank you, Honey, for all of this. You didn’t have to.’

‘I wanted to,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s your birthday. No one should drink alone on their birthday.’

Hal placed the flask back into its box. ‘I haven’t always drunk this much,’ he said. ‘I used to be too busy.’

Taking the box from his hands, she laid it on the table.

‘I don’t think badly of you for it, Hal.’

He shook his head. ‘You should. I don’t like the man I’ve become, Honey. I don’t like the life I have now.’ He tried to choose his words to make her understand. ‘I’m not talking about the material stuff. I mean sure, I miss the trappings, but it’s not that. It’s in here.’ He tapped his fingertips on his chest like a builder testing the soundness of a wall. ‘My heart needs to race. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as I was pushing myself over my limits. Faster cars. Bigger bikes. Higher slopes. I was always restless for the next big thrill.’ He rolled his shoulders and scrubbed his hand over his stubble. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore without all that.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel like a dead man walking. Nothing makes my heart race.’

‘Maybe, in time …’ she said, tentatively. ‘There’s loads of things you could still do, when you’re ready, I mean. Tandem skydiving, even. Stuff like that.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s just I like to be the one in charge, not the passenger.’

Honey sipped her wine. ‘I bet you were a scary boss to work for.’

‘You wouldn’t have liked me.’

Would she have liked him? Aside from doctors, Honey was the first person he’d let anywhere near close enough to become a friend since the accident. She hadn’t known the man he was before. She only knew this pale, watered-down version of him.

‘Probably not,’ she said, candidly. ‘You frightened the living daylights out of me when I first met you.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re Honeysuckle Jones, freedom fighter, bona fide Wonder Woman.’

She laughed gently. ‘Tash dressed up as Wonder Woman on New Year’s Eve last year. She had a terrible wardrobe malfunction in The Cock; Superman had to save her virtue with his cape.’

One of the things Hal had come to value most about Honey was the fact that she didn’t take life too seriously – never more so than in that moment. He loosened his shirt collar and tie as he sat back against the sofa, his arm along the back of it when she scooted back beside him.

‘Is your life always on the edge of ridiculous?’ he said, leaning his head back on the cushions.

She was silent for a moment. ‘Not always. Quite a lot more so since you moved in though.’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault you’ve become a female version of Robin Hood with a band of merry pensioners, or that your crazy friends have some bizarre insistence that you can only date pianists.’

‘They did it again today,’ she said.

‘Did what?’

‘Tash and Nell set me up on a blind date,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to meet them at the café and they sent a pianist to meet me instead.’

‘Oh.’ The idea that she’d been on a date and then returned home to his drunken
poor me
rant pissed him off. ‘Was he better than the last two?’

Honey sighed. ‘I guess he was, yeah.’

She didn’t elaborate, and her hesitancy to share details frustrated him. He wanted to hear her laugh and tell him it had been another dating disaster, but she didn’t. Frustration had him reaching for his wine. He wanted to see her face, to be able to see the things her face wouldn’t be able to hide rather than pick through her words for clues. And he wanted to see her face because when he dreamed of her she was always indistinct, more of a feeling than an image. A good feeling.

‘Two dates in one day. It’s my personal best,’ she said, making light and sounding anxious as her head rested on his arm.

Hal’s need to be top dog at everything kicked in hard. Honey was beside him on the sofa, bumping against him from hip to knee.

‘Did he kiss you goodbye?’ he said.

‘It was lunchtime and I was stuffed full of American pancakes. He gave me a peck on the cheek and his number.’

Even that sounded too promising for Hal’s liking. He found that he didn’t want Honey to use that number. He knew well enough that he was being unreasonable, but it was his birthday and she was, well … right now, she was
his
date, and it wasn’t lunchtime, and they weren’t stuffed. They’d skipped dessert. He could hear her breathing, feel her waiting for him to take his turn to speak.

‘I don’t have a number to give you,’ he said, winding silky strands of her hair around his fingers. ‘And I don’t kiss on the cheek.’

He heard her intake of breath when he wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck and drew her head to his.

He hadn’t intended on kissing her tonight, in fact he’d planned not to as he’d tipped his face up into the beating rain of his shower earlier. He needed involvement like he needed a hole in the head; but he wasn’t too big to admit that he was lonely. What he really needed was a friend. He just wished his body had got the memo from his brain, because in that moment he didn’t want Honey to be his friend. He just plain wanted her.

If she’d have resisted for even a second, it would have been enough. But she didn’t. She was pliant and warm, and she turned into his kiss rather than away and opened her mouth under his.

When he’d kissed her before, it had been urgent, frantic. This time it was neither of those things, deliberately so. She moved closer into the circle of his arms, and he stroked his thumb along the curve of her jaw. He took his time, because she was a luxury and his life was so starved of luxury that he needed to drink her in. He could feel the tremble in her lips when she sighed against his.

‘I’m glad you don’t kiss on the cheek,’ she whispered. He felt her reach over and click the lamp out, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t so easy to go slow because her hands were inside his shirt and his blood was roaring in his veins. He’d been wrong earlier. There was still one thing that could make his heart race. This, here and now. He pushed her down onto the sofa, or maybe she pulled him down, he couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. Either way he found himself lying on top of her, feeling himself yield into her softness, wanting her so badly that his whole body ached with it.