Page 44 of Fake It 'til You Make It

After very quickly finishing my first glass of wine, I excuse myself to the ladies’ room to message my sister and best friend three words:

No, no, no.

This date is up there with the top three most awful experiences of my life, including my final dinner with Andrew and a nasty bout of shingles when I was sitting my finals at college.

Which is why I’m both horrified and aghast when I return to the table to find that my wine glass has been topped off, andAdam, now with slightly glazed eyes, is giving me a look like a vampire might give to his human prey.

Reluctantly, I take my seat, purely because it would be impolite to leave before at least finishing our drinks, but as I raise my freshly topped off wine glass to my lips, Adam looks at me in a way I think he believes is sultry. He leans across the table, speaking more quietly than he has been up to now.

‘What do you say to just skipping straight to the good bit?’

‘Excuse me?’ I ask, fairly sure I know what he’s insinuating.

He presses his hand to mine on the tabletop. ‘We both know why we are here and it isn’t small talk, is it?’

Ick. All sorts of ick. I slide my hand out from under his and rise from my seat.

What I want to say is: Adam, I apologize if I’ve given you the wrong impression of the kind of woman I am. I don’t know how, frankly, because the last hour has been truly awful for me, and it must’ve been something close to painstaking for you, too. I didn’t come here with the ambition of taking you to bed, nor will I ever take you to bed. I’ll pay for my share of the wine on the way out.

What I actually say is: exactly what I want to say! Go me!

I tap my card for half the bottle of wine on the way out and would really like to flag a cab but more pressingly, I would really like to get out of those predatory eyes of my horrendous date.

So, I start walking two kilometers home in my toe-breaking shoes.

17

TED

‘I know where you are and if you don’t start answering my calls, I’m coming to Mike’s place to make you speak to me.’

I keep replaying Fleur’s voice message in my mind as I pound the streets of Brooklyn, music plugged into my ears, my feet impacting the hard surface with each beat, running as fast as I ever have after already pushing through six miles.

Running is not my favorite pastime, far from it, but hearing Fleur’s ultimatum ranks even lower on things I’d like to be doing, and at least running is curbing my anger, rather than creating it.

Would she really come? Would she really fly across the USA to hunt me down? And say what? Sorry, Ted, I didn’t mean to have sex with Roman, his dick just kind of fell in?

Who am I kidding? Of the multiple times Fleur has broken up with me for hours or days at a time, she has never said sorry. Not once. She’s always turned it on me.

And I’ve accepted it. Sucked it up. Taken her back. Like an idiot, falling for her time and time again.

My heartrate is skyrocketing again, my watch tells me as much, and I know it’s not just from cardio. I can’t get the image of the two of them out of my head. I hate it, yet it won’t go away. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to erase their betrayal.

I’m so lost in my reverie, I come to an abrupt halt, almost crashing into a very pert bottom sticking up in the air on the sidewalk in front of me, its owner bent forward, unbuckling her shoes.

‘Hey, you need to watch where you stop, I almost ran right into?—’

The woman turns her head to look at me, hands still on her shoes and wrestling with her buckle. ‘Abbey?’

She stands and I can’t help but appreciate how she looks in her short skirt and T-shirt, which was casual but has been twisted and knotted at the back to make it fit snug to her waist. She looks nice. She’s wearing make-up. Her hair is styled to fall across one shoulder. I’m drawn to her glossed lips – pink, natural, which surprisingly, I’m not used to. Fleur’s lips are filled to an unnatural size. Abbey’s lips look soft, some people might think inviting.

‘Mike.’

That’s right, I’m Mike. Mike isn’t running because his ex has cheated on him and is threatening to arrive in New York. Mike is just out for a run, casually bumping into a woman who Mike would probably be chatting up already.

Except in my head and heart, I’m not Mike Mike, I’m Ted Mike.

This is getting confusing. What started out as passive acquiescence to a misunderstanding is rapidly becoming an outright farcical lie.

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