Page 48 of The Wedding Game

‘Were you having sex regularly?’ she asks, and I blink a bit at that.

‘Yes.’

‘Then, trust me, he was fine with you being there.’

I laugh.

‘When are you seeing him next?’

‘We’ve been in each other’s pockets, so I’m going to give him a few weeks to miss me,’ I tell her. ‘We might not see each other again until I’m back from New York!’

‘Winter in New York,’ Scarlet whoops. ‘You lucky thing.’

‘I know,’ I squeal. ‘Ifeellucky. I still feel as if it’s not real. Although I’ll be stuck in an office every day, learning the ropes before they cast me loose back here, which means I’m not sure how much of New York I’m going to see. But just getting on a plane and going somewhere new, meeting new people and earning money while doing it is unbelievably exciting.’

‘I’ll cheers to that,’ Scarlet says and we clink glasses, before she excitedly tells me she’s booked our spa-day treatments already as they were having a sale, so we get two hours of treatments for the price of one.

‘I’m looking forward to the Edinburgh trip, now I’ve got the job,’ I reply. ‘I might be able to pay you back some rent, my train ticketandhalf the room rate by then.

‘Let’s not go wild,’ she deadpans.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Chris

November

Tinder: gone.

Elite Singles: gone.

Happn: gone.

Remove, remove, remove. I had littered my phone with dating apps, but barely used any of them. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all this time. Maybe I should have beenmoreinvested in these recently, rather than hoping the old-fashioned way of meeting someone in real life would work better. I digress. I don’t want a girlfriend right now. I’ve got a job to do while I’m waiting for the train, and that job is decluttering my phone.

I’m standing in the subway after work, shuffling forward in a crowd of bodies. I glance up, look round. With any luck, I might get on a train this year. People elbow each other shamelessly. There’s no polite way to get on a train in New York at this time of day. I’m used to it now. I glance back down at my phone. There’s no sensible method by which these appshave populated my phone, so I’ve gone digging in a moment of madness.

Or a moment of clarity.

Coffee Meets Bagel: gone.

OkCupid: gone.

I hover over the icon for The League. There was a waiting list for this one and it took me a few months to get on it. For a while I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on it, seeing as it’s designed for successful career types where, alongside your picture, age and name, you list your qualifications. Like a CV built for romance. It pretty much tells people, ‘I’m a career-minded tosser, are you? Great. Let’s hook up.’ I wasn’t really feeling it, but seeing as two of the guys from work had found some success with itandit’s so hard to get on … I mightnotdelete this one. I might pause my account, if that’s possible. This isn’t quite the commitment to the app-culling cause I’d planned, but I never said I was perfect. I click to go into my account settings and pause. I glance at the notification.

Ah, this isn’t quite what I was expecting. I’ve matched goals with someone. She looks nice. Long, dark, swishy hair and deep-set brown eyes. Striking. Her main objective is to find a man who knows what he wants in life. Do I qualify for this? I guess … maybe? It’s certainly what I’ve been trying to do. How long am I supposed to stay single? How long am I supposed to be off the market while I indulge myself in – what did Lexie call it – taking myself for dates?

All this time, knowing I needed to be single, needed to work out who I am, the kind of person I am … And now Lexie’s friend-zoned me. And who can blame her?Who wants to wait around for a man who lives so far away to pick up a phone, make a proper call, see what it might be like to invest himself in your life – fully invest and not half-heartedly via a free messaging system. No wonder she’s done what she’s done.

Although there was nothing half-hearted about it at all. That night, and every easy, perfect interaction since, Lexie had my whole heart, I’m sure of it.

It’s only been three months since I began this journey of self-discovery. Am I there yet? God knows. But I no longer eat the same takeout from the same place every Saturday, and I will no longer say an automatic ‘no’ to foreign-language films with subtitles. I just have to make sure I’m not doom-scrolling at the same time – missing the key turning points in the film.

Maybe I do qualify for this woman who is looking for a man who knows what he wants. Maybe it’s fate. I read on. She wants to visit as many countries as she can before she settles down. Don’t we all? There’s something about her eyes. Hard to look away from, like Lexie’s, but a lighter shade of brown. She looks lovely. If I ignore this … then what if this woman is the one? What if, in my bid to find someone in real life one day, I purposefully ignore the person right in front of me who’s landed in my inbox? This is a dilemma I wasn’t expecting at 6 p.m. on a Monday.

People nudge me forward. The train is in. The doors are opening and I didn’t even notice. I get on the train: standing space only, as usual. What if I click on this and see where it leads me? What if I take a chance? I tried to take a chance with Lexie and that led precisely nowhere. I’ve got to takea chance, though, haven’t I? I’m doing it. I’ve simply got to make sure that I hold my own with this one; got to make sure I outline, in no uncertain terms, what I want.

Within a few messages back and forth I’ll know if this is a possibility. That’s all it will take – just a few messages. I begin typing. And then a notification from Max flies onto the top of my screen. I pounce on it immediately. It’s brief. But it says everything I’d hoped it would.

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