Free Friends Like Us by Siân O'Gorman

got to their feet and when they were sitting in the quiet of the car, and before she started up the engine, she said: ‘Don’t love me, Cormac.’ She played with her keyring. He remembers it, it was Snoopy and Woodstock hugging. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘At least, not like that. Please.’
    â€˜I don’t!’ he laughed a little too hard. ‘Not like that , okay? You know, like friends .’
    She nodded. ‘I need you, Cormac Cullen. I need you in my life. You’re for keeps. Let’s not ruin things. Ever.’
    â€˜That’s what I meant! You fool.’ He laughed it off. ‘What did you think? That I was declaring my intensions? It’d be like incest anyway. We’d be arrested.’
    How they laughed. Cormac’s performance of his disgust of being physical with Melissa, the horror of her naked body next to his, kissing her lips, and touching her and sleeping with her, made them howl. It was convincing. So convincing the subject had never been returned to.
    He should have been an actor but, instead, became a photographer, but after a decade or so, he decided that there was a limit to how many photographs you could take of children in pushchairs asleep at the end of the St Patrick’s Day parade. So, somewhere along the way, he had discovered baking and instead dedicated his life to the joys of flour, eggs and butter.
    After spending six months in Paris, learning the art of pastry, he and his friend Walter, a German whose bread knowledge and passion was impressive, bordering on the obsessive, had been planning their own bakery for years.
    And this month, as finance was in place, the two had signed a lease on a modest premises in Dalkey, a small suburban village along the coast, with a little main street and a church at one end and a pub at the other.
    There were to be ovens at the back and room for a coffee shop at the front. The only drawback for Cormac was the dawn starts.
    But at the end of the day, it was only bread. Cormac wanted his life to be about more than just work, he wanted a partner. Well, he wanted Melissa.
    But it was time for New Cormac. And New Cormac would not be pining and whining over Melissa, he was going to find a girlfriend. He had the blind-date tonight and although he knew he was still clinging onto Melissa, and that he wasn’t ready to let go but tonight he would. He really would. But the thought was killing him.
    This, he had decided, was his year to end it. He had to get on with his life, if he put his mind to it and showed a bit of backbone. He had the new business venture with Walter, so there was a new life just itching to get going but only if he had the balls to grab it.
    And it was Walter, his business partner, who had handed him a life-raft. Or rather the name of the woman he was seeing tonight.
    About a month ago, he’d met Walter in the building-site-bakery. He’d put down his take-out cappuccino from the supermarket.
    â€˜Disgusting,’ he concluded.
    â€˜Ours will be better,’ Cormac had said.
    â€˜Ours will be super-fucking much better,’ said Walter, before their conversation turned to relationships. Walter had arrived straight from Bremen for a month’s holiday in Connemara a decade before but had had his blond head turned by a red one, Nora’s. And he was blessed with Nora, capable and brilliant, she was one of those women who was able to manage everything. Bremen was now a distant memory and he and Nora had five-year-old Axel, plus a brand-new baby due the week of the opening.
    Walter had shrugged at the timing. ‘We will cope,’ he said, optimistically.
    â€˜Will Nora’s Mam be looking after the baby?’
    â€˜A little. Or I’ll have him in a sling with me.’
    â€˜You Germans!’ teased Cormac. ‘So modern!’
    Walter shrugged. ‘Why? Is it not normal? Should I not take care of my children?’
    â€˜Of course… I was joking.’