TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

40. Cold Coffee

Timmy, however briefly, had managed to forget Saoirse, forget her tinny voice bouncing around in the answerphone, waiting for a reply. In fact, it wasn't until she called again that evening that he remembered. Remembered that she wanted to talk, and remembered why he had been putting it all off in the first place.

Timmy, having spent the day with Lu, spent the day lolling around on her bed and being a self-proclaimed nuisance, was in a good mood. A mood he didn't want to ruin. But, he concluded, this conversation he was to have with Saoirse was inevitable; the longer he put it off, the worse he would feel.

So he picked up the phone.

"Timmy, oh my God, are you okay? Where have you been?" Saoirse asked immediately. She didn't sound angry, just concerned.

Timmy would have preferred it if she had been angry. He didn't deserve her concern - there was nothing to blame for his absence except his own fear.

"Hey, I'm. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm sorry I didn't call you back," he said apologetically, and oh, now he remembered why he hadn't called.

"I left you a voicemail," Saoirse replied. "Quite a few," she amended. "Didn't you get them?"

"No, I..." Timmy began. Scratched his cheek and sniffed. "Yeah, no I got them, I just...Are we going to have this conversation over the phone? It kind of seems like something we should do...in person."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. "No, right, yeah. That's...we should. Can you come over tomorrow?"

Timmy sniffed again. Shunted his shoes off, because he hadn't had the chance to take them off before Saoirse called. "Yeah, I can probably...what time? I've got someone, something, a, uh- in the afternoon. About five-ish, so..."

"Whenever works for you. I'm free all day and I've got the flat to myself, so..."

Saoirse lived alone. Timmy knew that, because the entirety of the time he'd known her, she had. The last time he went round to hers, and that must have been, what, two, three months ago? The last time he'd gone round, she'd been talking about how much she hated being on her own all the time, how she hated the fact that there was too much space for one person. Timmy, at the time, had been thinking he could change that. Had been thinking how best to ask her if she'd consider him as a candidate, if she'd ever think of having him as a roommate. Maybe something more.

How stupid he had been.

How stupid he was.

"To yourself?" Timothée asked.

"Oh, well, yeah. I mean. No one's coming round, or anything, so. Lunchtime?" Saoirse replied quickly.

"Can we make it two? I've got a dialect lesson at twelve," he said. Turned on the speaker and placed his phone on the dresser. Tugged his shirt over his head and chucked it over the chair in the corner of his room, which was currently sporting a wide range of shirts that had only been once, old socks, and a pile of neatly folded laundry which was still waiting to go into his drawers.

"Okay. I really don't mind," Saoirse said. "Timmy, you don't...you...I'm still here for you whenever, you know that, don't you? We don't have to schedule things like this, it can just be... like it was before," she told him, and her concern was tangible. She might have been a twenty minute walk away, but Timothée didn't even need to set one foot out of his apartment to know that she was frowning, that she was worried about him.