‘Which is?’
‘You.’
* * *
We gave it another half an hour before Ben went back to the wedding to take a few more photos, capturing the bride’s dissection of the heart cake and the first dance. I lingered in the bar. Thinking. Stressing out. And then I made a decision, and in an instant my insides stopped quaking, so I knew it was the right one.
Ben arrived back a few minutes later. ‘Right. I’m signed off for the night. Do you want another drink?’
‘Actually, I think I need to go home. This is my fifth wedding of the day.’
‘Home alone on Valentine’s Day?’
‘Bridget’s spending the evening at my parents’ house. I’ll get an Uber and join her.’
‘Okay.’ Ben had stopped smiling. He shuffled on the seat next to me, scratching at his head. It was so unlike him it took me a few moments to realise that he was nervous. So now I felt nervous. I started gathering my coat and bag together.
‘How about another time?’ Ben blurted.
‘Um.’ It took a couple of seconds for my brain to catch up. ‘You mean a drink?’
He attempted to grin. It came off sheepish. ‘Yeah. Or… dinner. A film. A walk along the river.’
‘You mean a date.’
He nodded, biting his bottom lip. Who was this Ben, such a contrast to the casual guy who’d asked me out the first time I met him?
I thought about his question, the silence stretching out between Ben’s lip-chewing and my coat-button fumbling.
But I knew what the right answer would be:
‘Thank you. But no. Thank you.’
He sat back, starting to run his hand through his hair and it ending up stuck there on the top of his head. ‘Because of Cooper.’
‘No. Not because of Cooper.’
‘So, it’s because of me.’ His hand found its way out, then, dropping into his lap.
‘I don’t want to say it’s not you, it’s me. But it genuinely is. I really like you, Ben. If I was interested in a date, you’d be top of the list. But if this year has taught me anything – and I pray it has, because not having learnt anything from a failed fake-marriage is too depressing to think about – well, it’s taught me that maybe you were right. If I need to find someone else in order to feel whole, then that means there’s something wrong with me. Long-term commitment, sharing your life with someone, clearly isn’t the right path for everyone. I’ve been raised to think that finding a man, getting married, having children, is the end goal. Like it’s the only destiny mapped out for me.
‘I think that’s why it seemed the only option, like nothing else was worth considering, because I never took the time to imagine any alternative.
‘But these past few months, I’ve been building my own picture of a future that doesn’t seem terrible. It feels like mine. I want to do up my house, get a dog. Grow my business. Travel more. Properly get to know my niece and nephews. Spend more time helping my mum with fundraising. Meet my neighbours and become part of the community and make some proper friends I’m not related to. Be spontaneous without having to tell anyone.
‘Making a conscious choice to build a life for myself that is satisfying and full to the brim even without a romantic relationship in it doesn’t feel like a loss. I feelfree.I feel giddy with excitement at the thought of not having to worry what anyone thinks about how I spend my time or what I look like or whether they’ll love me enough.
‘And while, yes, I know you weren’t proposing marriage – you’d never do that, anyway – I’m not sure casual dating wouldn’t bring with it some of those hopes and expectations. They’ve been so deeply engrained in me for so long, I know they’ll be loitering around for a while, yet.
‘I think you’re gorgeous, and maybe one day I’ll be ready to meet up for dinner with you. I know I’d enjoy it. But until I know I can do it and know it’s just dinner, then my answer’ll have to be a no.
‘Sorry – are you asleep yet? I guess by this point the offer of a date is retracted anyway, after that insight into my highly boring and overly intense inner workings.’
Ben sighed, managing a slight smile at the same time. ‘The offer of a date is unretracted. It’s actually open-ended. Because while I totally agree with everything you’re saying, that the presumption that getting hooked up with someone has to be the end goal, and no one can be fully happy without it, is a load of rubbish… while youknowhow fully I subscribe to that theory, what I didn’t factor into my hypothesis on long-term relationships was how it has the potential to be utterly derailed by another person. You’re fine by yourself, all complete and happy and sorted, and then suddenly you meet someone, and you start thinking about them. And then you meet them again. And you’re thinking about them when you wake up, and then it’s when you go to bed. And the more you get to know them, the more you want to be the man standing up with a glass of some rip-off, fairly nasty champagne, telling your family and friends, and their family and friends, that you will love and care for, and give your very all to her, because she’s quite simply the most wonderful woman you’ve ever met. Your heart has found a new owner and you didn’t even notice it. Let alone plan or want it. So, while this isn’t a marriage proposal, in the interests of full disclosure, for the first time in my life I’m open to the possibility that it might lead to one. And, to be honest, while on the one hand I fully endorse this new, freeing, fabulous theory of yours, I’m also gutted.’
‘When did this happen?’ I managed to croak out.
‘I asked you out the first time I saw you, if you remember. And you’d recently crawled out of a skip at the time. It’s not too implausible to say you only got better from there.’ He shook his head. ‘But when I saw you on your wedding day, leading your dad across the courtyard, it felt like everything I’d ever known to be true flipped over in an instant.’
