Wed or Alive

Chapter 1

Will you marry me?

The words are scrawled across the bottom of the plate in chocolate sauce.

The dessert itself – trust my brain to go there – isn’t all that impressive.

It’s a small chocolate brownie and a single chocolate-covered strawberry, but the chocolate message – the big question – that’s really something. And then there’s… everything else.

I tear my eyes from the plate and look across the table at Andy. He’s just staring back at me, his expression unreadable, almost like he’s suspended in time.

It’s Valentine’s Day and the restaurant is soaked in romance for the occasion.

It has been otherwise chaotically busy all night but not now.

The quiet chatting and the clinking of cutlery has paused.

It’s like everyone is holding their breath, looking at us, waiting to see if I say yes.

Well, everyone has gone silent but the accordion player, who has rocked up next to us to serenade us.

This… can’t be happening… can it?

I glance at the plate again. Then back at Andy.

‘Andy?’ I whisper.

He’s still frozen, minus a couple of blinks, almost like his face is glitching.

I honestly feel like the spaghetti carbonara I just ate is about to hurtle back up my neck and hit the accordion player, but then a waiter runs over and snatches up the plate.

‘I… I’m so sorry!’ he babbles as he takes the plate – and the question – away from me. ‘Wrong table!’

The entire restaurant gasps.

‘Oh, okay, haha,’ I say, absolutely mortified. I don’t like to have all eyes on me at the best of times, but this is something else.

The waiter, who is white as a sheet, spins on his heel and hurries two tables over, where a man and a woman are sitting.

They sort of look like me and Andy, but only in the vaguest of ways.

They both look stunned but at least he looks prepared.

As the dessert reaches its rightful recipient, the man gets down on one knee and pulls a ring box from his pocket. Okay, yeah, that makes more sense.

‘Susan, will you marry me?’ he asks her.

‘Yes!’ she replies, clearly so happy that the fact that it almost all went horribly wrong has been dumped from her memory already.

As the room erupts into applause I slink down into my seat, just a little, hoping that everyone else has forgotten about us too.

The restaurant is one of those places that tries a little too hard.

Everything is a ‘moment’ and eye-wateringly expensive.

My pasta was good though – it would have been a shame to throw it up when I almost imploded with shock.

The wine is good too, and the lighting is potentially the most flattering light I’ve ever existed in – but sadly it’s not the kind of place where selfies are encouraged; in fact, they are actively frowned upon.

Not that I would have wanted to capture the look on my face any time over the past few minutes. I’ll bet I’m still bright red.

Now that all is as it should be, Andy, to his credit, is trying not to laugh.

Still, he can’t help but smirk at me. A smirk suits him; it matches the tall, dark and handsome thing he’s got going on.

‘You thought I was proposing,’ he teases.

‘Give over,’ I reply.

‘Whitney…’ he presses me.

‘I thought you thought you were proposing!’ I clap back, only vaguely aware of what I mean by that. ‘Everyone was staring at us – I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do.’

‘Would you have said yes?’ he asks.

His question hangs in the air for a second or two before a woman appears, iPad in hand and an apologetic look on her face.

She’s in her early thirties, her hair pulled tightly up in a way that screams ‘manager’.

She’s also the only one wearing a black shirt; everyone who is serving is wearing white.

I guess that’s sleeker than a name badge.

‘My name is Mya, I’m the manager, and I want to personally apologise for the mix-up,’ she says. ‘Our waiter confused table six and table nine. Valentine’s chaos.’

‘Not to worry,’ Andy reassures her.

‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ I add. I mean, it’s mortifying, but it could have been worse.

She smiles politely, then looks between us.

‘You two make such a lovely couple, by the way. How long have you been together?’

‘Since we were kids,’ Andy replies without missing a beat.

Her eyes light up.

‘High school sweethearts?’

‘Primary school, actually,’ I reply.

‘Oh wow!’ she coos, holding her hands to her chest. I don’t know if our story is especially cute, or if people are less immune to this sort of thing on V Day. ‘That’s adorable! You know, if you ever do get engaged, and you want to do it here, I’ll give you a discount.’

‘Well, we do love a bargain, don’t we, babe?’ Andy says to me, grinning across the table.

‘We really do,’ I add.

The manager leans forward to place her hand on my arm.

‘One of these days,’ she says reassuringly, glancing at my ringless hand. ‘It’ll be your turn. Until then, I’ll send over free dessert, to say sorry for the mix-up.’

And with that, she disappears. We wait until she’s gone before we both burst out laughing.

‘Wow,’ Andy blurts.

‘A mistake like that could have been devastating for anyone else in here,’ I say, sighing with relief. ‘We’re lucky it happened to us.’

‘It could only happen to us,’ he reminds me. ‘We’re trouble.’

‘That I’ll drink to,’ I say, grabbing my glass. ‘To us.’

‘To trouble,’ he says, clinking his glass with mine. ‘And to free dessert.’

‘I’m all for that too,’ I reply. ‘It will be worth a little light embarrassment, I’m sure.’

‘Maybe it is a little confusing for people, the two of us having dinner, on Valentine’s Day, surrounded by couples,’ he points out.

‘It’s not only today that people find it confusing,’ I reply.

‘If they don’t believe men and women can be friends, that’s on them,’ he says. ‘We can eat our free dessert knowing that they can.’

I don’t know why people find it so hard to believe that Andy and I are just friends, but we are.

We always have been, since we were kids, and we always will be.

Neither of us had a date tonight, so rather than stay in, we decided to say ‘fuck Valentine’s Day’ and go out together.

The engagement mix-up is something we can both laugh about.

Imagine if we were a real couple though?

Andy would be cringing, I would probably be feeling rejected – somehow it would wind up being like the opposite of a proposal.

Generally, we let people think what they want – sometimes when we do set them straight, they don’t believe us anyway.

‘We could come back here next year,’ Andy suggests. ‘Get our discount engagement dinner. We could make it an annual thing.’

I laugh as a waitress places slices of cheesecake in front of each of us. Okay, it looks good. Definitely worth a little light mortification.

I feel so fortunate to have him as a friend and, do you know what, we are in love. Just not the way everyone thinks. And on Valentine’s Day, I’ll take whatever I can get. Plus, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone else right now.