We Remembered Our One-Night Stand Very Differently

Nico's version began with confidence. This was important to Nico, who had spent fifteen minutes outside the bar pretending to answer a work message while deciding whether his jacket looked intentional.

He was forty-two, newly back in Canberra, and meeting Sam for the first time after a week of messages that had become pleasingly ridiculous. Sam was forty-five, a theatre administrator, and had once described a council consultation as a meeting where hope went to acquire a folder.

Nico liked that. He liked Sam's photograph too. He hoped both qualities would survive contact with an actual room.

Inside, he saw Sam at a table, looking composed. Nico walked over and said something easy about the weather. In his memory, this established warmth without trying too hard.

Sam's version began with terror, though she later edited that to mild anticipation.

She had arrived early because being the person who found the table gave her one practical task to complete before she had to be interesting. When Nico entered, she nearly stood, then stayed seated, then half-stood anyway. Her body appeared to be voting on the greeting without a majority.

He mentioned the weather. She couldn't remember what she said, only that it included the word definitely twice.

Later, telling her friend about the date, she would describe their opening as relaxed. This was not entirely a lie. Someone in the bar had been relaxed.

They ordered drinks. Then came the first silence.

According to Nico, he handled it beautifully. He recognised that Sam might be shy, so he gave her space rather than charging ahead with a monologue. He looked at her kindly. He waited.

According to Sam, Nico had briefly lost his conversational footing, and she generously allowed him time to recover. She smiled. She waited.

The silence lengthened until both reached for their glasses. Neither glass contained enough liquid to justify the duration of the drink.

Nico finally asked about the theatre. Sam, relieved to have a subject, told him about a production whose budget had included money for artificial snow but not for cleaning it up. He laughed. She relaxed. From there the conversation found a rhythm.

In Nico's later account, he had rescued the evening with a well-chosen question.

In Sam's, she had rescued it with an excellent snow story.

The waiter, had anyone asked, might have credited the arrival of chips.

There was also the matter of ordering the chips, which neither included accurately in the first account.

Nico remembered noticing that Sam had glanced at the menu and thoughtfully suggesting food. He considered this evidence that he could be attentive without making a fuss.

Sam remembered moving the menu into Nico's line of sight because his stomach had made a noise during the silence. She considered this evidence that she could preserve another person's dignity with excellent discretion.

In fact, each had been hungry. Both had eaten a very small lunch in anticipation of dinner, then chosen a bar as though food would somehow arrange itself around the romance.

'Would you like something to eat?' Nico asked.

'Only if you would.'

'I could.'

'Same.'

They looked at the menu for another minute, waiting for the other to express a preference strong enough to follow.

The waiter arrived. 'Kitchen closes in twenty minutes.'

'Chips,' they said together.

The decision restored a surprising amount of energy to the table. Sam asked whether Nico had always lived in Canberra. He said no, then began explaining a sequence of moves that sounded more complicated aloud than it had felt while packing the boxes.

She interrupted with a question about the last town. He answered and forgot, for several minutes, to assess how the conversation was going.

Sam noticed him relaxing. In her version, this happened because she had found the right question. In Nico's, it happened because he had chosen to tell a less rehearsed story.

Neither account mentioned that the chips had arrived at exactly that moment.

They shared them from the middle of the table. Nico offered the last one. Sam declined automatically, then reconsidered.

'Actually, yes.'

'Good. I was going to offer it three more times.'

'We'd have missed the last bus.'

That was their first genuinely easy laugh. It needed no assistance from either person's private campaign to make the other comfortable.

When Sam later told her friend Leanne about the evening, she called Nico generous. When Nico told his brother, he called Sam refreshingly direct. Both assessments were fair enough, provided nobody examined the four minutes they had spent pretending not to have an opinion about potatoes.

By the second drink, they were enjoying themselves for real. Nico told her about returning to Canberra after years away and finding the city both changed and annoyingly familiar. Sam talked about living alone and the freedom to leave a book open on every available surface.

'I have a chair specifically for unread things,' he said.

'Only one? You're managing it well.'

They laughed. There was another silence, this time softer. Nico considered taking her hand. Sam considered moving hers closer. Both decided not to pressure the other.

Their hands remained on opposite sides of the table, each politely preserving a boundary nobody had requested.

When the bar began stacking chairs, Sam asked whether he wanted to walk for a bit. Nico said yes quickly enough to abandon the relaxed image he'd been maintaining.

Outside, the air was cool. They walked past dark shop windows, talking about ordinary things. A streetlight flickered. Someone cycled past carrying flowers in a basket. Sam thought that was romantic. Nico thought the flowers were badly secured. He wisely kept this assessment private.

At the corner near her flat, she stopped.

'Would you like to come up? No assumptions. I'd just like more of this.'

Nico liked the clarity of that. He said so. Sam later remembered making the invitation with considerable assurance. In fact, she'd said like three times and briefly forgotten where she kept her keys.

Upstairs, they drank water. They discussed the books on her chair. Nico admitted to owning a novel he had moved through four houses without opening. Sam said some books were essentially furniture with pages.

Then came the couch silence.

This one would feature prominently in both accounts.

Nico believed he created a thoughtful pause in which Sam could decide whether she wanted him to kiss her. He turned towards her and stayed still.

Sam believed she made herself clearly available for a kiss while giving Nico the chance to initiate it comfortably. She turned towards him and stayed still.

After several seconds, they both said, 'Can I...'

Then both stopped.

Then both said, 'You first.'

There was no graceful recovery. There was laughter, followed by Sam asking, 'Can I kiss you?' and Nico answering, 'Please.'

The kiss was lovely. The night that followed stayed private, full of mutual choices and much less polished than either would later pretend. Nobody needed it to be polished while it was happening.

In the morning, Nico made coffee. Sam found the good mugs. They ate toast beside the window and agreed they'd had a good time. Neither made a speech about what came next. They were adults who had shared a night, not delegates required to issue a joint statement before departure.

Nico left wearing the jacket he'd worried about. Sam watched him walk to the gate and thought he looked comfortable in it.

There had been one more small misunderstanding at breakfast.

Nico saw two mugs on the bench: a large plain one and a smaller one covered in tiny painted houses. He chose the plain mug for Sam because he assumed it held the amount of coffee she would want. Sam interpreted the choice as him avoiding the decorated mug because it might be personally significant.

'You can use the houses,' she said.

'Oh. Thanks.'

'It's not special.'

'I didn't think it was.'

'Right.'

They stood in the kitchen for a moment, each trying to work out which invisible concern had just been addressed.

Nico finally asked how she liked her coffee. Sam told him. It was an astonishingly efficient method, and both quietly wished they had thought to apply it to several earlier subjects.

At the table, she asked whether he had plans for the day. He said he was going to buy a bookshelf. She glanced towards the chair holding her books.

'Careful. It starts with a shelf. Soon you'll expect the books to participate.'

He laughed and asked whether she wanted another piece of toast. She did. He did too. This time, nobody offered to go without it as a gesture of consideration.

Later, Nico's brother asked the obvious question: had he enjoyed himself?

'Yes. Very much.'

'And did she?'

'She said she did.'

'Excellent. Why are you giving me a detailed analysis of the silences?'

Nico stopped. He had been halfway through describing how carefully he had managed the beginning of the date.

'I suppose I want to know I handled it well.'

'You could ask the person who was there.'

Across town, Leanne was providing Sam with similarly inconvenient advice.

'You make him sound lovely,' she said. 'You also make yourself sound like the host of a very small support group.'

Sam laughed, then thought about it. She had enjoyed Nico's company, but her account kept placing her in charge of his ease. She did not actually know whether he had needed half the help she imagined providing.

Leanne asked what Sam wanted to do next.

'See him again.'

'That sounds simpler than the report.'

It was. Sam put the phone down, looked at the two mugs still on the bench and decided that next time she could ask more ordinary questions before building such an elaborate interpretation of the answers.

Their accounts had agreed on the most important points: both found the other attractive and funny. They had simply added an unnecessary theory about who had been shy and who had done the rescuing.

Then Nico sent a message.

I really enjoyed last night. Sorry if I went quiet sometimes. I was trying to leave you room to speak.

Sam read it twice.

She replied: I was doing exactly the same thing.

For a minute, neither sent anything. Then three dots appeared, vanished and returned on both screens.

We gave each other a lot of room, Nico wrote.

An entire conference centre, Sam replied.

He asked whether she'd like dinner the following week. She said yes, provided they agreed that occasional silence didn't mean somebody needed rescuing.

They kept that agreement. Mostly.

Months later, when friends asked who had made the first move, they still offered different answers. Neither version involved the weather, the chips or the two adults silently waiting for the other to become confident.

Some stories improve with editing. This one, they eventually discovered, was funnier with both drafts left in.