‘You try taking two trains, a Tube and a poorly timed bus during rush hour, first thing in the morning.Especiallyafter you’ve deleted all your transport timing apps to stop being such a planner!’ I say, panting.
There is no way that this is just the way ‘normal non-planners’ live. It is far more stress-inducing this far on the edge. People may call me ‘uptight’ and ‘predictable’ and ‘too organised’, but I’m now convinced that they’re masochistic.
‘I don’t get why you didn’t just drive here. Evie would have expensed your mileage,’ he says, grabbing a trolley as we start to stroll.
‘Because public transport is cheaper than parking.’
Also, because driving requires a licence– a fairly vital piece of kit that I’m yet to obtain.
‘She would have paid your parking too,’ he says. ‘I’ll certainly be expensing mine. And I’ll be dropping you home.’
‘What? No.’
He shrugs plainly. ‘That taxi home from the Lounge showed you don’t live that far from me, and after the hour I’ll have to drive, another ten minutes out of my way is nothing. Speaking of, whydidI have to drive fifty minutes out of London and pay extortionate parking to come to a napkin store?’
He grimaces as he glances around the aisle, eyes tracing over the rainbow of napkins on the shelves, in every shade and hue imaginable.
‘It’s not a napkin store, it’s a general-supply warehouse. This is just the napkin aisle. And it’s the best one in the country, with the highest quality and incredibly glowing reviews. We want nothing but the best for the Summer Splash.’
I pick a set of soft yellow ones off the shelf, bringing them to my phone so I can compare them with the accent colour swatches I saved down. It’s close, but not close enough, and I’m not quite sure if yellow’s the vibe. I make a note to strike yellow from the napkin-and-linen-colour shortlist.
‘Anyway, are you not impressed?’ I ask, bringing the conversation back a notch. ‘I expect my lack of apps to be recorded as evidence for my new job.’
He shrugs as he pushes the trolley. ‘Small potatoes.’
Small potatoes? Small potatoes! Tell that to my ballet pumps– soaking wet from my walk through Crystal Palace after I missed the bus. With the weather app gone, I had to trust my eyes, and the sky was misleadingly clear this morning. When this is over, I will never take it for granted again. And I will be writing countless notes reminding me to put my umbrella back in my handbag.
‘What, were you expecting me to quit my job, jump on a plane and start backpacking round the world?’ I ask.
‘A guy can dream,’ he says jokingly, barely swaying as I give him a playful shove. ‘I just feel like losing a couple of apps is not that deep.’
Not that deep to him, perhaps, but I’ve been walking around feeling like I’ve lost a whole part of me. I don’t believe for one second that he is able to go about every single day without checking anything in advance. ‘So, what would be deep?’
‘There’s no specific thing– you’re just supposed to be winging life. I can see your head spinning.’
He can’t– he’s not even looking at me, just glancing at napkins as we continue to stroll down the aisle. But why wouldn’t it be spinning? ‘Winging life’ is not a quantifiable thing to comprehend. There’s nothing to measure or track, and, honestly, at this stage, I don’t know if I’d even be allowed to track it if I could. How am I supposed to know what actions are small or large potatoes if I’m not supposed to even be looking into things that hard?
‘My head’s not spinning,’ I say, lying.
He actually turns to me this time, eyes casting over my face as he raises an incredibly sceptical eyebrow.
‘OK, not spinning per se– more of a light little baby turn,’ I say.
‘A baby turn?’
‘A pirouette, if you will.’
‘That’s a spin, not a turn.’
‘Says who?’
‘My sister did ballet for fifteen years. I had to supervise a lot of classes.’
Mental image of Aiden helping teens in tutus aside, we are both losing sight of the problem at hand. How on earth am I supposed to be wild and spontaneous if I don’t know what wild and spontaneous constitutes? I live in south London; I can’t exactly start jumping off cliffs and paragliding above treacherous oceans. I have work and the city and the number three bus to work with; there’s only so exciting my life can get.
‘Don’t overthink it.’ He reaches for some teal napkins and motions for me to hold my phone screen up to them.
‘But how will I. . .’ I don’t even know what to ask.
