Suds and Snow Globes

I missed the train by four minutes. Four. The conductor saw me running and still shut the doors, gave me a little wave through the glass like we were mates. So that's how I ended up twenty-eight years old, standing on the platform at Hopsend with a phone full of angry texts from my boss and nowhere to be.

I was walking home past The Hop & Hops when I heard my name.

"Jordan? What are you doing here? You said you had the London run."

Leanne was leaning in the doorway of the bar in her zookeeper kit, khaki shirt, hay on one sleeve, a paper bag hanging off her wrist. She's thirty-one, three years older than me, and she keeps a zoo about six fields over from the hop farm. I've known her six months, ever since she moved into the flat next to mine in the old stable block. Friendly neighbors. That's all. That's what I kept telling myself.

"Missed it," I said. "By four minutes. Watched the doors close and everything."

"Oh no!" She winced. "That's brutal."

"Yeah, well. There's always next year's delivery schedule."

Then she held out the paper bag like it was of no consequence. "Happy birthday, by the way. I nearly forgot. Open it later, or now, I don't care."

I opened it right there because I'm rubbish at pretending to be patient. It was a snow globe. A cheap one, the kind you'd find at a flea market for a quid, with a little plastic farmyard inside. And a crack running clean across the glass.

"It's broken," I said.

"It was broken when I bought it. That's the point. All the good ones are broken." She shrugged. "The snow doesn't even fall right anymore. It just kind of drifts sideways. I thought you'd appreciate that."

"I do appreciate that," I said, and I meant it more than I meant most things I said that year.

"Go home, Jordan. Sleep. Stop sulking on a public street." She tapped my arm and went inside to meet her friends, and I stood there on the pavement holding a cracked snow globe like an idiot.

***

I did go home. Then Luis texted me to say come out, it's your birthday, don't be a hermit, and I went back. That was my first mistake. My second was the fourth pint.

By eleven I was outside The Hop & Hops on the bench by the bins, and Leanne came out for air, and somehow that turned into the conversation I'd been avoiding for six months.

"Can I tell you something?" I said. "And you can laugh, but I've gotta say it or I'll explode."

"That sounds ominous."

"It's your birthday present to me, listening to this."

"It's my birthday present to you? It's your birthday."

"Leanne." I put the pint down so I wouldn't do anything stupid with it. "I've wanted you since the week you moved in. You brought me a plant as a flat-warming gift and I kept the pot it came in. I've wanted you for six months and I've said nothing because you're my neighbor and if it went wrong I'd have to see you every morning by the bins, and now I'm drunk on my birthday telling you by the bins, which is exactly as bad."

There was a pause that lasted about a year.

Then she laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but a nervous one, hand over her mouth. "Oh, Jordan!"

"Yeah."

"Oh, God. Okay. Wow!" She was looking at the bins, at the sky, anywhere but me. "You picked a hell of a night to say that."

"I warned you, I'm drunk."

"You are extremely drunk." She bit her lip. "Look, can we not do this tonight? Not because... just not tonight. I need to think."

"Sure," I said, and my face was burning, and I wished the ground would open up and eat me whole, bins and all.

But consider this. Next morning, nine o'clock, there's a knock on my door and it's Leanne in her zoo kit again, holding two coffees, looking like she hadn't slept either.

"So," she said. "About last night."

"Forget it. I already have. Done. Erased."

"Stop it, you haven't." She handed me a coffee and walked into my kitchen like she owned it, which is a thing she does. "I need to ask you something and it's going to sound mad."

"Go on."

"My ex. Dean. You've heard me mention Dean."

"The one who texts you at midnight. Yeah."

"He's started up again. Properly. Wants to 'talk about us.'" She made the air quotes with her fingers. "And I keep ignoring him and he keeps turning up at places. The zoo cafe last week, of all places. And I thought, what shuts a man like that down?"

"A locked door?"

"A boyfriend, Jordan. A visible, public, obviously real boyfriend." She looked at me over her cup. "So I'm asking. Fake it with me. One week."

I nearly dropped my coffee. "You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend."

"Just for a week. Sloan's karaoke night Thursday, a couple of appearances, that's it. Dean hears about it, sees a photo, loses interest, done."

"And the confession last night?"

"Is a separate matter." Her voice went a bit careful there. "One thing at a time."

I should have said no. I want that stated clearly, because everyone in this story is a grown adult making choices, and I made a stupid one with my eyes open. "Fine," I said. "One week."

"Ground rules," she said, counting on her fingers. "No real kissing. Not telling anyone it's fake, especially not Sloan, she's the worst gossip in Hurst. It ends Sunday after next, clean, and we go back to being neighbors."

"Deal," I said.

She stood to leave, then reached over and squeezed my hand. Just squeezed it. But she held on a couple seconds past what any handshake requires, and neither of us moved, and then she let go and said she'd see me Thursday.

***

Thursday. The Hop & Hops was packed, karaoke in full swing, Sloan behind the bar pulling pints like she was paid by the keg. She grew up on this farm, knows every soul in the village, and missed nothing, ever.

"Jordan. Leanne." She banged two glasses down. "Together. On a Thursday. Sitting on the same side of the booth."

"Is that a crime?" Leanne asked.

"It's a Thursday. You two have never been in here on the same Thursday in six months." Sloan leaned on the bar, grinning. "Whatever this is, I approve. Two pints?"

"Two pints," Leanne said quickly, and Sloan poured them while looking at us like a scientist looking at mice.

We did our act. I put my arm along the back of the booth, not touching her. She leaned into my shoulder at one point, and I nearly forgot my own name. Sloan brought us a bowl of nuts on the house and said loudly, "Dean came in Tuesday asking after you, by the way, Leanne."

"Did he now," Leanne said, pressing closer. "Well. I'm spoken for."

"Clearly," said Sloan, and winked at me when Leanne went to the loo. "Terrible actor, that girl. You're worse. Whatever's going on, sort it out."

Halfway through the night Leanne got up on the little stage. I figured she'd do something safe. Instead she picked a slow one, an old soul ballad, and her voice came out smaller than I'd ever heard it, and her hands were shaking on the mic, and she kept glancing at our booth between lines.

She was nervous. She was nervous singing at me. That's when the floor tilted under my whole plan, because fake girlfriends don't get shaky over you.