Page 33 of One Night With You

‘I think you’ve just given us our title! Your almost wasn’t enough, so you’re going to get your answers, even though …’ I trail off. I don’t want to insult him.

‘Even though I’m half a shock away from my heart stopping?’ he supplies.

‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it like that, but yeah,’ I say. ‘Most people your age wouldn’t feel compelled to get their answers, would they? You’re special.’

‘Almost Doesn’t Count, you say?’

‘Yeah. It works on so many levels. You refuse to leave this mortal coil on an almost, everything you’ve said to me about Abe – he doesn’t count because he was an almost. It’s as if, when somebody really matters, when it’s really meant to be, you make sure there’s no almost about it. You make it count. Anything else is just …’

‘Cowardice.’

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Almost Doesn’t Count. Even just as a working title, for now. Something to anchor us.’

‘Well. I’ll take a five per cent cut, then. And executive producer. Is that what they call them? Like in the old Hollywood days?’

‘Deal.’ I giggle. ‘John-Peter Morgan, Executive Producer and star of award-winning documentaryAlmost Doesn’t Count.’

‘That certainly does have a special ring to it.’ He grins, and I grin too.

18

Nic

Tentative flirting via social media, thy name is Nic and Ruby. In the three weeks since our phone call, we’ve slowly started to like each other’s stuff on social. We write the odd comment here and there, a ‘cool!’ or a ‘lol’. I post a picture Jackson took of me at dodgeball, and I’ll own it: it is a total thirst trap. I caption it,For saying it’s called DODGEball I don’t half get hit a lot. Right-in-the-nuts-ball is more like itand she leaves me the aubergine emoji underneath, which could be a comment on the caption or my photo. Feeling emboldened, later I put a pair of eyes under a mirror selfie she posts after a haircut, and she replies with the cry-laugh emoji. I feel a small sense of inexplicable triumph. Suggestive emoji use isn’t exactly love letters across the seven seas, but it sure does keep hope alive.

Eventually, and out of the blue, she uses my phone number directly, sending a message that says:Hey, if two people have the clam is that the beginning of a chowder?Corny, but it makes me laugh. I’m walking through Soho when it comes, fresh off a mooch around Foyles. When I hit the bottom of Old Compton Street, I have to side-step tourists and their umbrellas where they’re gathered outside the theatre on the corner, and I feel a momentary pang of annoyance that they’re littering the pavement, weighed down with bags of extremely early Christmas shopping. And then it hits me: I’m not one of them. Getting annoyed at visitors must mean I’m not thinking of myself as ‘other’ here anymore. That’s a good feeling – I live here! These are MY streets! I’m a Londoner! It’s a trivial thing to feel proud of, but I do.

I reply to Ruby:I put the STD in STUD … All I needed was U.My infection cleared up ages ago, so it’s an odd thing to pick up on but I’ll roll with it. She sends back a row of cry-laugh emojis, and then a photo of a bunch of computers with various stills from what I assume is material she has to study.Student life on a Saturday,she says. I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to tell her what I’m up to as well, if this is an invitation for a chat. Communicating via proper texting instead of social media is immediately more … something. Intimate? Proper? Especially apropos of nothing. Whatever her reasons, I’m secretly thrilled, whilst also aware I don’t want to seem eager – or too available. People say one thing and do another all the time, but it’s important not to be so reactive that I’m like a toy she can pick up and put down at whim. There’s nothing wrong with me playing it cooler than I naturally would and going in for the long game, no matter how much I like her name on my screen – especially considering that, in an unexpected but needed development, I’m dating now. I’m torn between wanting Ruby to be making the first steps inchanging her mind about us staying in touch, and the self-respect of not holding my breath because what do I expect to come from it?

Anyway: to text back or to not text back – my decision is made for me. I’m already at Café Boheme, and I can see Audrey From Bumble – my date – waiting for me by the window. I put my phone in my pocket, text unanswered. I’ve wanted Ruby to act on whatever it is we had for over two months. She can wait for an afternoon.

‘And so I said to her,’ Audrey From Bumble is explaining, our pancakes long eaten and our coffee long drunk. ‘That’s just not cool. Like, okay you can beinspiredby what I wear, but it’s weird going out and buying all the same stuff, you know? Like, I work really hard to build a wardrobe that I love, and I was only sending her pictures for, like, friendly supportive approval, you know? A “yas, girl”or “slay, queen”.I don’t want to show up to work dressed like twins or whatever, you know? Anyway, thenshesaid…’

Audrey From Bumble talks a lot. She’s pretty, but I haven’t said anything other than ‘oh really?’ and ‘crikey’in about forty-five minutes.

My brother made me download all the apps. He said I have to progress todatingwomen, not just talking to them, but to keep it casual. Low-key.

‘It’s not like there’s one soulmate out there for each of us, is it?’ he insisted. ‘Anyone can be our soulmate if we try hard enough.’

I don’t know if that’s the attitude I want to take, but seeing people is a great way to discover more of London and fill my weekends. The week is stuffed with work and the gym and dodgeball, but the weekends can be depressingly emptyand that makes them feel long. I just turned thirty-one! Ishouldbe out there! I’m here for the adventure, after all those years not being very adventurous at all! It’s time to sow my wild oats!

Except, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be sowing my wild oats with Audrey From Bumble, and so I gently decline the offer of going up to Wardour Street to see her friend’s pop-up.

Kit From Tinder is a slightly better experience. She said in her bio that grand romantic gestures are her love language, so I take a punt and suggest that instead of drinks or lunch we go to Up at the O2, to climb the building and take in the view. We meet by a falafel cart and the banter flows pretty easily right from the off, but by the time we get to the top she’s actually hit it off with another guy there, also on a date, leaving me and Carman From His Accounts Team to awkwardly chat as we stand behind them, watching their fireworks explode undeniably. Fair play to them and all – take your chemistry where you can find it – but bloody hell, these tickets were thirty quid each.

Priya From Happn says we should go on a twilight vigil for forgotten Victorian-era sex workers in a South London cemetery, which I attend because she’s gorgeous and it’s attractive to have a woman organise the date, but she brings a bunch of friends and I get the feeling there needs to be some sort of group sign-off before any affection for me can be established. I wouldn’t mind, but they’re all dressed in leather and purple lipstick, and the whole thing has aThe Craft-like feeling to it, so I say I have to get up early for a work meeting and leave.

And then there’s the IRL meet. On the day I’m meeting Zola from our dodgeball squad for coffee, Ruby is on myfeed as I kill time on the bus having a scroll. She’s prompting everyone to follow her work account, Finding JP’s Girl, where she’s chronicling the making of her documentary. I go through to the account and check out the posts on the grid. It all serves to remind me how cool she is. In the bio, there’s her handle and an @harrynotbarry. Curious, I click on the one I don’t know, and the profile picture is the guy who features on her social quite a bit. His bio says:I hate it here, but @RubyPowell_101 made me. There’s three emojis: a video camera, a peace sign, and the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag. Interesting.

I get off the bus and take a photo of my box-fresh Veja trainers on the streets of Islington to send her, saying:

I have new shoes,

And that’s breaking news.

I wish there was more to say.

You came on my feed,

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