Page 37 of Actually Yours

“I don’t know what the technical terms are. It was all gibberish to me!”

“Back up and tell me everything that happened.”

Keeping my eyes closed, so I can relive every painful moment, I detail the events of my date with ‘letter B’ Julian. It had gotten off to a rocky start when he’d turned up twenty minutes late—just as I’d been planning on leaving, sure that I’d been stood up. He’d rushed into the coffee shop near where he works (not sure how he was late when we’d arranged to meet somewhere convenient only to him) and hadn’t even apologised. Then he’d given me a long look, taking in my ripped jeans paired with my favourite silver sparkly top to match my favourite silver sparkly heels and had deemed my outfit ‘inappropriate’ for the evening ahead.

“He did not say that!” Bella squeals, her cheeks flushing with indignation.

“He did.”

And it wasn’t the worst thing he’d said to me that night. After that charming introduction, he’d asked if I could get my coffee to go because we were going to be late.

“For what?” Bella interjects.

“For the science stuff.”

“Why didn’t you just leave, right after he’d insulted your sexy date outfit?”

I shrug. At the time, I’d been desperate for date number two to go better than date number one and I’d lost all perspective. Plus, he was cute. In a nerdy, could-look-hot-in-a-lab-coat kind of way.

“So, you go to the lecture…?”

“Yes, getting nothing to eat beforehand,” I emphasise. The two of us do not do well with skipping meals so I knew she’d appreciate this point. We are self-confessed ‘hangry monsters’.

“Uh oh.”

Uh oh, indeed.The lecture theatre had been only half full when we’d arrived, with many suitable seats up the back, wherethe cool kids hang. But was that where Julian seated us? Noooo. We were right up the front, in prime position.

“He did not!” Bella is suitably mortified, knowing exactly what happens to people who dare to sit up the front.

“He did.”

And it only got worse from there. The lecture itself was all kinds of boring, incorporating the use of many words ending in -ases and -sis, but that wasn’t even the worst part. That came when my date stood up at the end of the presentation and criticised everything that had just been presented.

“And it wasn’t in a ‘here’s some feedback, maybe you can think of doing this next time’ kind of way. It was in a rude, belligerent and arrogant kind of way. He did it to make himself feel big and the presenter feel very small.”

“I hate those kinds of people.” Bella’s blue eyes are spitting fire. “What a jerk.”

“I know, right? And he’d had the audacity, after all of that”—I swirl my hand in the air to encompass the entire mess of the date—“to think that he was entitled to a good-night kiss.”

“Shut. Up.”

A burst of giggles springs out of me at her dramatics. I love that she’s on this emotional rollercoaster right along with me.

“I will not shut up,” I grin. “But it’s fine. I speared him with my most icy look. You know the one?”

She shudders in response. She knows it well.

“And then said: lose my number. And I flounced away.”

Bella claps at this and I rise onto my elbows to give a half-bow. My performance in ending this date was worthy of the applause.

“Why do men suck?” she asks, flopping back down onto the couch to stare up at the ceiling.

“Not all men suck. Your husband, for example. He’s pretty amazing.”

She lets out a satisfied sound. “It’s true, but remember how much of a jerk he was when I met him? They never make it easy.”

When Bella had moved from her hometown of Florence to join her brother here in Melbourne, she’d been stuck living with Lucas’s very grumpy (and very sexy) roommate. And he had been a bit of a jerk to Bella at the start, but we all know now that he’d just been keeping her at a distance to mask the very real, powerful feelings he’d already been developing for my gorgeous best friend.

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