Feelings

Truce?

They sat and chatted about everything and nothing. The way you do when you've known each other thirty years. It was both reassuring and odd that they slipped into an easy familiarity so quickly.

Like most outdoor venues in the area, as the evening progressed, they provided cosy blankets to encourage customers to stay. Tom and Sophia were no exception. Ever the gentleman, Tom came and wrapped hers around her, his hands soft and gentle on her shoulders, making her shiver but not with the cold.

As the darkness became heavier, little lights twinkled around the buildings that made up the square. It added to the feeling that this was something special. Special and surreal.

In fact, if she was honest, the evening was one of the most surreal Sophie had ever had. Yes, this was Emma's annoying big brother, and yes, she knew that he saw her as the chubby little horror that had thrown him under the bus that was his mother's anger, but it was also Tom Hiddleston!

THE Tom Hiddleston.

Loki, Jonathan Pine, Thomas Sharpe, and Henry the Fifth, he'd been them all, but she'd always known him as Hiddlepiddle. A very unflattering nickname brewed up simply because it rhymed. Cruel, thoughtless, and, to a sister and her nine-year-old friend, hysterically funny.

Now, as a thirty something year old, it wasn't nearly so amusing. In fact, she wanted to curl up in a little ball and die.

"Tom?"

"Yes, Sofa?" he sniggered into his glass, the wine making him a little more cheeky, even to her, than he normally would have been. His cheeks were slightly flushed, and his eyes twinkled. She felt her breath hitch.

"Oh well, if that's the way you're playing it, forget it." She stuck out her tongue and then crossed her arms over her chest. Attack was the best form of defence.

He looked at her and smiled, "Did I say something wrong?" She glared at him. He knew damn fine he had.

"God, you're really still that annoying little boy, aren't you? I should have known better. You know, sometimes I wish I hadn't dobbed Emma in. Sometimes, I wish I'd just let you carry the can forever." She looked at him and instantly realised he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

"What do you mean?" he looked at her suddenly, feeling completely sober. "Dobbed Emma in?"

"I told your mum it was Emma. About a month after you went away. I couldn't do it. Every time I looked at the vase, I felt so guilty. I'd been complicit in a lie. Ok, it was only a vase, but that wasn't the point, was it? So, I told your mum. One weekend when I'd come for tea."

"Oh my god!" he was on the edge of his seat now, "is THAT why you stopped coming to the house?"

She nodded sadly. "Yes, Emma fell out with me for telling on her - you know how kids are - and that was that. I don't think she got into a lot of trouble; it was just that I'd told on her. You know?" Taking a last mouthful of wine, she put the glass down with an air of finality. "And that, as they say, was that."

Tom sat for a minute and contemplated the revelation. He looked across the table at her and, for the first time, really saw her. She was petite, with a lovely smile. Beautiful eyes - truth be told she'd always had beautiful eyes, but now they were filled with regret. It made him sad to think that a silly incident had cost a friendship. Potentially two. Now, though, he had the chance to make it right between them.

"Sophie?" he toyed with the napkin that had accompanied the plate of nibbles they'd eaten, "can I ask you something?"

"You can ask, I may not answer," she said with a smirk. He rolled his eyes and smiled.

"Ok, Miss Smarty Pants. I was going to ask if you'd like to come to dinner with me sometime. Whenever you're free. If you're free, that is. I might be at the end of a very long queue of men - or women - or both...." He rambled, realising he was actually incredibly nervous.

"Tom?" she stopped him mid flow.

"Yes?"

"Do shut up!"

"Ok!" he smiled at her across the table, and she shook her head. The low light in the square made her face glow almost, the little white bulbs suspended all around them catching like sparkles in her eyes. He suddenly wondered what her lips - they looked like velvet in the light - felt like.

"Tom, you're staring." She laughed, slightly embarrassed.

"Oh, God, sorry, was miles away." He winced as soon as it left his mouth. "I meant I was just thinking about something."

She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms again.

"Oh dear, I'm not doing very well, am I?"

"No, you're not. I think we should call it a night before it gets any more awkward. Give me your hand? "

"Pardon?"

"Give me your hand," she repeated as if he was a bit thick, which truthfully, after all the wine he'd drunk on an empty stomach, wasn't that far from the truth.

He reached over, and she grasped his hand in hers. She held back from simply clamping it to her lips - what she really wanted to do - and instead took a pen from her bag and wrote her phone number on it. And her name. Just in case.

Tom looked at her and smiled a little lopsidedly. "Thanks, Soph," he said. "Thanks for giving me a chance to make it up to you."

She stood up, "No, Tom, you're not making anything up to me. There is nothing to make up. We were kids, that's all there is to it. It's what we do now that counts. What you do with that number that counts." She put on her coat and looked at him. "I know who and what you are, Tom, in the nicest possible way. If you don't call, I will understand, but please, don't mess me around. If this" she indicated the table and the wine"is all just a one off, then I understand. Just don't make me think it's any more than that if it it's not." She took a few steps away and then stopped. "You know, even as a child, you had a lovely smile."

With that, she turned and walked away. As he watched her cross the piazza and disappear into the buzz of a West End evening, he realised two things. She'd said he had a lovely smile, and it made him glow inside just a little. She'd also not gotten his number. It was up to him now. He got up and went to find Luke.

As Sophie walked away to the Tube, she smiled to herself. Even if she never saw him again, she would have some nicer memories of him to replace the ones she'd carried about all this time. As she reached the corner, before she descended into the madhouse of the underground, she stole a look back. Would he be watching? Would he wave? Would he... oh. Nope. He wouldn't. He wasn't there.

Well, that was that, "she said to herself as she wended her way home. The day began to catch up with her, and she managed to fall asleep on the Tube, only waking up five stops AFTER the one she wanted.

This really wasn't going well.