The Reunion

he imagined the two of them together, they were never in his apartment in London making spaghetti bolognese, they were never walking on Hampstead Heath or going to the cinema. They were always in a hotel room or at the airport, never at home, always elsewhere.
    Enlightening as this conversation with Zac had been, it wasn’t helping. If anything, it was propelling Dan towards a state of panic. He’d felt this way before: over the past few weeks a sensation of real terror had visited him in the night, startling him awake and keeping him there, even as he lay by Claudia’s side, her ivory limbs tangled in the sheets, blonde hair flung over the pillow, pale lips just slightly parted, perfection. Lately he found himself terrified, and the thing that was terrifying him was the final scene of
The Graduate
where Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross get onto the bus, breathless from their dash from the church where Ross has just left her husband-to-be at the altar, and then they just sit there, not speaking, uncertainty writ large all over their faces, and you know what they’re thinking. Dan knew what
he
was thinking anyway… He was thinking, Jesus Christ, what the fuck have I done? So I’ve got her, she’s mine now. Now what do I do?
    Zac was looking at him, waiting for him to say something.
    ‘I need a beer,’ he said, and Zac obliged, fetching them a couple from the fridge. Not quite cold, but cold enough. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Dan said lamely.
    ‘If you’re not sure, you should tell her. Don’t let her leave her husband if you’re not sure.’
    He was right. The enormous himbo boy scout was completely right. But how would Claudia take that? She wasn’t big on rejection, she wasn’t used to it. If she sensed him backing away from her, that would be the end of it, he was sure; the affair would be over, the flame extinguished, never to be rekindled. Could he be without her? He was visited by a vision almost as frightening as the
Graduate
scenario: himself, all alone in a thousand-pound-a-night hotel room in Paris on Christmas Day.
    His fingers moved over the touchpad of his phone. He watched it light up, but he didn’t do anything. He felt paralysed, immobilised, in limbo somewhere between the frying pan of commitment and the fire of chronic, indefatigable loneliness.
    ‘You come from a big family, don’t you?’ he asked Zac.
    ‘Two big brothers, one little sister,’ Zac replied. ‘How d’you know?’
    ‘You just have that way about you. People who come from big, happy families have a certain… confidence, I find.’
    Zac shrugged. ‘Maybe. My brothers used to kick the shit out of me when I was little.’ Dan struggled to believe there was ever a time that Zac was little. ‘But we get on all right now. Lisa – that’s my sister – she’s a little sweetie.’
    ‘It must be nice.’
    ‘You? No siblings?’
    ‘No siblings and no parents. Not any more.’
    ‘Shit. Sorry. That’s harsh.’
    ‘Yes, it is harsh, isn’t it? I miss having a family. Not my real family of course, because that was never really a proper family. Long story. But us,’ he gestured around him. ‘These guys, they were my family once. Closest thing I ever had, in any case.’ He took a long swig of his beer. ‘It’s why it hurt so much, when everything fell apart. They don’t think I lost anything, you know. In fact, they think I
gained
. That bloody film. I never meant to hurt them.’ He looked up at Zac. ‘Tell her, tell Lilah. It was never my intention. Tell her I mean that. I hate the fact I hurt her feelings so badly.’ He shook his head. ‘It was my fault, you know. She didn’t over-react. I was stupid, I was a fucking idiot – I used stuff that she’d done and said, I took things and twisted them, I created this character… it
was
fiction. It
wasn’t
her. It wasn’t how I saw her, but there were too many similarities, it was too close to the bone. Christ, even the actress they chose –
they
chose, it had nothing to do with me – she looked like Lilah. And it was the last thing she needed, poor girl.’ Dan spread his hands out, imploring. ‘I tried to contact her, you know. Many times. She wouldn’t have it.’
    Zac smiled. ‘If grudge-holding were an Olympic sport…’
    ‘Lilah for gold, Natalie for silver?’ They both laughed. ‘I wish there were something I could do to make it up to her.’ Zac leaned back in his seat, studying Dan’s face, his expression inscrutable. ‘What?’