The Men in her Life

fell.
    ‘All right. Mine. Look, do you still think this is a good idea?’ Holly asked.
    ‘I think it’s a lovely idea, but it’s OK if you don’t...’ he told her.
    She unlocked her door. On good days, the sight of the dusty staircase made her think of Matt. On bad days, it reminded her of the rat who must have scampered up the threadbare carpet. Now she thought of them both and it wasn’t a happy combination in the circumstances.
    ‘Yours,’ she said, shutting the door again. She had made love to lots of men in her flat and to no-one in his. That was what finally decided it.
    She sat on his beige sofa trying to relax.
    ‘Coffee?’ Simon asked.
    ‘Have you got any beer?’
    He went into the kitchen and came back with two cans of Stella. Then he sat down beside her on the sofa and they both pulled the rings on their cans.
    ‘I feel really nervous,’ she admitted.
    ‘Me too.’
    Silence as they both sipped their beer, staring at the television as if it were on.
    ‘Simon, can I just ask you whether you see this as a one-off or something more than that?’ Holly finally enquired.
    He threw back his head and laughed.
    ‘I wouldn’t be this nervous if I saw it just as a one-off.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Holly,’ he took one of her hands and held it in both of his, ‘I’ve been in love with you for years, you must know that...’
    ‘I knew you loved me, sort of, well, I mean, we get on, don’t we? We just get on really well... we have a laugh...’ she was babbling to try to hide her confusion.
    In love. He had said ‘in love’, which was lovely. But she wasn’t in love with him. In love meant you had a kind of slight nausea in your stomach all the time and you tingled when he touched you. She wasn’t tingling.
    But Simon was about a million times nicer, kinder and more reliable than any man she had ever been in love with. And he understood her, and had seen her at her worst, and still he loved her. Most of the others had only ever seen her at her best, and that still hadn’t been enough.
    On the very same day Mo had decided to settle for second best, was she going to do the same? She had seen how happy Mo was. Never happier. So why not? You could wait for ever for the One, and even then you might get it all wrong. She thought of the grey hairs at the base of Joss Drummond’s spine and his reluctant penis. And yet she had felt more powerfully for Joss in that strange week that she had known him than she ever had for Simon in all those years. But that just proved how silly ‘in love’ was.
    Even if by some strange quirk of fate you met the man you were destined for, like Meg Ryan listening to the radio in Sleepless in Seattle, meeting was just the beginning. You never got to see what Meg Ryan felt about Tom Hanks five years later. Pretty fed up, Holly suspected. But at the end of When Harry Met Sally you did know that she would be happy with Billy Crystal, because they knew each other. That was it, Holly suddenly thought, wondering why she hadn’t seen it before. It was a sign. She had been living in the middle of one of her favourite films without even realizing it. When Holly Met Simon. Even their initials were right.
    ‘Can we have some music on?’ Holly asked suddenly.
    ‘What would you like?’
    ‘Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits .’
    ‘Haven’t got it...’
    Holly’s face fell.
    ‘But I can sing one for you...’ he offered.
    ‘How about “It had to be you”?’ she suggested, her expression suddenly demure as she looked at her hand in his, then looked up.
    Simon smiled into her eyes, and she knew that he understood not just the request but the subtext. He took a deep breath.
    ‘It had to be you,’ he leaned towards her and kissed her softly on the mouth.
    ‘It had to be you...’
    Longer kiss.
    Then there wasn’t any space for the singing. They kissed for ages before going further, tasting and exploring each other’s mouths and faces and laughing a lot, not out of embarrassment, exactly, but with surprise that they hadn’t done all these nice things before. Then they slowly undressed one another and went into the bedroom. He was careful with her body, but gloriously competent, as if he had read the manual and knew how each bit worked.
    Afterwards she lay cradled in his arms, feeling complete and contented.
    ‘Will you marry me?’ she asked him.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, as usual, then added, ‘but will you marry me?’
    ‘I think I’d better now,’ she said, as if she