all eyes on us .

[oscar rutherford]

Now that he's started looking at her he can't stop. Her porcelain skin, creamy against her dark hair and all the more alluring now that there was less of it to hide behind. But she didn't seem content. In his imagination she had shaken him off and stepped into her new life, shiny and perfect, a gorgeous vet who probably had her pick of men in a similar level of perfection to herself. So he's disappointed to hear that she's not loving it, genuinely, and it shines through in his voice. "Oh fuck, really? I thought everything would have fallen into place for you," he says, returning his cup to the table and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "It still will. You're young yet." Hearing that Vegas thinks favourably of him fills him with pride, and he glances over his shoulder to try and get a glimpse of the woman though she's nowhere to be seen. "Well. That's made my day. Tell her the feeling's one I share."

[charlotte lemeir]

“Maybe it just takes time,” her slight shoulders shrug and the tips of her fingers press into the cardboard of her cup, she wills away her thoughts but they nag at her. She didn't even know what 'everything falling into place' would look like. Charlotte looks hurt, her eyes glassy as he mentions he agrees with her mother and she pushes her sunglasses back over her nose to hide herself. She was disappointed in herself too. Usually so stoic and perfect, she couldn't believe that she let her life get so messy and pulled him into her mess. “I don't even know what to say,” she admits, having seen this scene a million times but never getting past 'hello'. “I want to say I'm sorry, but it doesn't cover it. I just don't know.”

[oscar rutherford]

"Doesn't everything." That's what he'd been told, that only time could mend a broken heart. But no one could tell him just how much time would do it, and in his experience, time wasn't doing very much at all to lessen the pain. Maybe that was his fault though, staying so immersed in a world that bore her fingerprints all over. He should have gone back to London, to date a girl called Sophie or Laura or Alice, someone who went to Central Saint Martins and thought it was so cool that he'd lived in New York. A pained look strikes her delicate features and it makes him feel guilty, a feeling that worsens with everything that she says. Before he can stop himself he reaches out and gives her arm a squeeze, wanting to reassure her. "Hey, hey. Come on now, we don't have to do that." His hand falls away, a sudden feeling of impropriety taking over him. He clears his throat. "Tell me about your life. What are you up to these days?"

[charlotte lemeir]

His touch both soothes and torments her. It feels like a hot pan on her bare skin and when he pulls away, the burn stings and ripples through her. She takes a deep breath through her nose and out her mouth, as quietly as she possibly can. Her cheeks burn red when he asks her about life. She's embarrassed of it. She hates it. She could tell him the lies she painted for her mother, but even she didn't believe them. “I don't know,” she finds the same three words repeating themselves. “I go to work every day and I work long hours not because I have to, but because I hate my house. I hate Paris. I hate French people, I don't know why I ever moved there. I might as well tell you I'm engaged and I don't know how that happened because I hate him. I don't know what I'm doing.”

[oscar rutherford]

There's some solace in the fact that this interaction was so obviously taxing for her. No longer interested in his coffee, he shifts his seat from where it's beside her to be more directly opposite, giving him a better position to look directly at her from. He wants to see her expressions, to commit this to memory to unpick at a later date. An easy laugh escapes him. "Everyone hates French people, did no one warn you?" But in truth it hurts and satisfies him to hear that her life isn't everything he had assumed it would be. Though nothing hurts as much as what she says next, stopping him dead in his tracks. A shiver runs down his spine, his sweat turning cold, his mouth running dry. He regrets putting himself in her direct line of vision. Finally finding his voice, he tries and fails to sound nonchalant. Fails hard. "Engaged? To who?" He swallows thickly, forcing the next words out though he both dreads and desires to know the answer to the question. "The same guy?"

[charlotte lemeir]

He must think she's pathetic, crying about her life and how horrible it was. Truthfully, if she were living in France with Oscar it wouldn't be so horrible. She loved her job. It was difficult and exhausting, but she was deeply passionate about it. She didn't like her home, but it was because it wasn't hers. It was because it was his and his style was cold and grey. She's stupid and foolish, and when she hears his voice crack she feels un unbearable amount of guilt that makes her eyes overflow. “No,” she looks up at the skyscrapers, trying to make her eyes soak up her tears. “He's 50, he's loaded, he does waste management.”

[oscar rutherford]

Her dissatisfaction with her fiance takes a backseat to the fact there's a fiance at all. There is genuine relief at it not being the man she cheated on him with, but it's short lived, every detail she reveals seeming less and less like the Lottie he knew. He can't really process it and it's obvious on his face, a slight hint of repulsion creeping into his features though he's genuinely trying his best to suppress it. He's quiet for a longer time than he would intend, trying desperately to find something to say that wasn't overly negative, that wouldn't make him seem insanely bitter. Though he was, so it was proving a challenge. "I don't know what to say," he says eventually, an honest reply. "I never thought you'd be that kind of girl. I guess we don't really know each other."

[charlotte lemeir]

He's quiet and it's deathening. She takes another breath, removes her glasses and wipes away a tear with her unmanicured finger nail. She didn't expect pity, these were her choices and she had to lay with them. But there was the part of her that wanted to be coddled. To pet her head like her mother did and to be told that everything would work itself out, it always did. She felt helpless with the wolf and wanted her mother. “I guess we don't,” Charlotte finds herself agreeing and straightening herself, her spine cracking as she lifts her shoulders. "I should go find Vegas.”

[oscar rutherford]

Bile rises up his throat, burning his oesophagus. He looks for her mother again, not sure what he wants her to do - step in and console her daughter? Ask her what the fuck she was thinking? He wants to ask Vegas if she approves of this, wants to appeal to her sensible nature. Instead he has Charlotte in front of him, another woman he felt was sensible but is starting to think otherwise. But she cries, and he immediately implodes, crumpling under the weight of his empathy for her. "Come on, hey," he says softly, able to park his personal feelings for a minute. He reaches across the table and puts his hand on her forearm, trying to imagine she's someone else, a beautiful stranger-- what would he say if he didn't have such a vested interest? "Everyone gets cold feet when they're engaged, that's par for the course. And if you keep feeling this way, hey, guess what? You don't have to go through with it." He squeezes her arm, her skin so soft under his touch. "It'll be alright, I promise. Don't cry."

[charlotte lemeir]

Charlotte looks up again, blinking away the tears that form and focusing her sight on a lonely starling that flutters in the city air. Oscar turns soft and says what she wants him to, his voice is nurturing and his touch is kind against her pale skin. His kindness is the last thing she deserves and that fact makes her feel guilty. She takes her arm away from him and clutches her hands under the table. “Oh shut up,” her voice cracks and she sniffles, “stop being nice.” It was unfair of him to be kind, to show her that she really fucked everything up. “It's all some weird karma and I don't want it.”

[oscar rutherford]

She retreats from him and it feels scolding. Hurt, he withdraws his hand, letting it rest in his lap as he sits back to really consider her. What does she want from him? Maybe all she wanted was smalltalk, or more likely, she probably wanted him to decline the offer to talk at all. "Okay," is all he can think to say, pushing the napkin that came with his coffee across the table to sit in front of her. It's awkward and he wonders if people around them think he's the one that made her cry. He's quiet for another minute, building up to the question he's wanted to ask since this all happened. "Why did you do it?"

[charlotte lemeir]

Charlotte is quiet for a long moment. Her thoughts collecting into something that made sense and that wouldn’t hurt him. But she quickly realized that whatever she said would hurt, there was no escaping it. ”The long distance was too much.” It was funny how difficult the long distance had been, it was still easier and more fulfilling than her current situation. ”I was lonely and bored and drunk. There’s no good excuse. It was stupid, it was reckless.”

[oscar rutherford]

The question hangs between them as life continues on around them. It seems mad that people could be sitting around drinking coffee when he's just asked such a thing, his breath caught in his throat as he braces himself for whatever answer comes. After what feels like an eternity she speaks. "You're right, those are all shit excuses." He wants to say more, irritation bubbling up within him for the first time since he sat down; did she think it was easy for him? That he hadn't been tempted, that he hadn't had opportunities too? He wants to quote all the things she'd said about her father's philandering, the tuts she'd uttered when they saw friends be unfaithful.  But he knows there's nothing to gain from saying any of that, so he sighs. "Well. All the best with your new relationship. I should go say bye to your mum."

[charlotte lemeir]

The thing about the cheating was really that it all had been an accident. It wasn't done vindictively or premeditated. It had been with someone she'd cared about, but someone who happened to be there and she had just been too distressed and wasted to think. She'd tried to make sense of it in her own head and level with herself that it wasn't as bad as her father's relentless cheating on her mother, but it was all bad. Maybe that's why she was trying more with her father, she was trying to make sense of it all. “She's gone home,” she says glancing at a short text on her phone. Charlotte pushes her chair back and stands up. “The games on, isn't it? Just head over and I'll tell her you said goodbye.”

[oscar rutherford]

He's waiting for an explanation that won't come. That can't come, because even if she tried to explain it, there's nothing that could square that circle in his mind. It's as frustrating as it is relieving that she won't even try, glancing at her phone and squinting in the sunshine. God, she was beautiful. "Fuck, hope I didn't scare her off. What were your plans for the day?" He glances at his watch, the enthusiasm that had previously had him practically skipping down the street drained entirely. "Not for a while yet. I can walk you home, I'm heading that way." He hears himself, standing up and picking up his bag. "Or I can fuck off, either or."