Chapter 13
There’s an expectant pause on the phone that I’ve got to fill, but cold dread has climbed up my spine and is gripping my throat.
No, no, no. Absolutely no way!
Four weeks in, and what started out as a bit of fun, as a brief antidote to the trauma of online dating, has become a runaway success.
Karina and Matthew cannot be parted. When they aren’t at each other’s flats, they’re talking on the phone, and when they aren’t talking on the phone, they are sending each other a million messages a day.
Elliot and Teddy are working out much more perfectly than I imagined.
Based on their combined track record, I’d presumed they’d be done by now, that Teddy would have had a few good dates under her belt and would be filled with more optimism when it came to meeting someone new, but there’s no sign of things cooling off.
There’s still an uncharacteristic lack of gushing from Teddy, but Karina’s right in reading that as a sign she’s really into him.
I don’t hear much gushing from Elliot either.
Now he’s got the job, now he doesn’t need to put being with Teddy on hold, we aren’t spending anywhere near as much time together as we were.
We’ve fallen back into our normal rhythm of only seeing each other at school.
It’s strange after all the time I spent at his flat to know he’s not going to call me up begging me to come round and to pick up snacks on the way.
I miss it, and although we’re back to how we’ve always worked, I can’t shake off the feeling that something between us has irrevocably changed.
That’s the strange thing with work friendships.
You spend the majority of your time with your work friends, see them every day.
You can make each other belly laugh one minute and be on hand to support each other the next.
In ways, your work friends understand you more than anyone else in your life, but they are relationships built on circumstance and once those circumstances change, it sometimes turns out the friendship wasn’t quite as solid as you thought.
I’ve done it loads of times before – promised I’d stay in touch with people moving on, told them nothing would change, but invariably, it always does.
In a way, Elliot has already moved on. He’s technically my superior now.
He tries to act like everything’s the same, but he’s moving in different circles, doing a great job of keeping a straight face around Mr Montgomery, and it’s hard not to feel the shift.
Maybe I’m being paranoid about El. Ever since my ex plan was put into action, I’ve been seeing everyone less.
We’ve all been choosing to focus on our new relationships.
I might miss seeing Elliot so much, and Karina, Teddy and I all agree that we miss hanging out with each other all the time, but we’re happy. That’s all I wanted.
There’s no doubt that Jordan makes me happy. We have fun together, the chemistry is building between us every time we meet up, and the more time I spend with him, the more he lets me see into his life, the more I think, yeah. Yeah, I can see a future here.
But none of that means I am going to buy into Karina’s thinking that putting us all in a room together for an entire drink-fuelled evening is a good idea.
‘Come on, Lizzie. I’m desperate to see what you and Jordan are like together, and I really, really want you to meet Matthew.
He wants to meet you too, but most importantly, I want to know what he’s like with other people.
All this time we’ve been spending together, it’s just been the two of us in our little cocoon, but what if he’s completely different out of it?
If he’s terrible with other people, if that’s where his fatal flaw lies, I need to know it before I start to—’
I can hear the sharp intake of her breath, like she’s trying to suck back in her words, but it’s too late.
‘Start to what?’ I splutter. ‘Oh my God. You were just about to say the L-word, weren’t you?’
Karina emits a snort that is far too loud and pronounced. ‘Yeah, right. It’s been four weeks. That’s not what I was going to say at all. I was going to say before I start to believe there’s nothing that bothers me about him, that’s all.’
‘Sure,’ I say, smiling. ‘Let’s go with that.’
‘Let’s. So, will you help me out? Will you get us all together?’
‘Remind me again why I have to be the one who throws the dinner party. In fact, tell me the bit again about why it has to be a dinner party at all, will you?’
‘Because if we meet in a pub, we’ll end up sitting in our couples, not talking properly, not making eye contact with our exes.
It will be awkward, and before long, someone will take the chance to slip away.
The night will be over before it’s begun, and that will be that.
But if we’re in your flat, we’ll be forced to move past how we all got together, to face it head on and get any awkwardness out of the way.
I don’t want to keep our love lives separate from our friendship.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to all go out together on dates?
We’ve never done that, and it’s a shame.
It would be so much fun triple dating with you and Ted!
All we need to do is go through one night facing our exes round a table and we’ll be sorted. ’
‘Karina,’ I say, my voice as earnest as I can get it. ‘That sounds truly horrendous.’
‘Maybe, but it needs to happen. I need to know what Teddy and Matthew are going to be like when they meet up, if they can be friends or not. If it is a disaster, better I know that now instead of a few more months down the line, when there’s every chance I will be falling for him.’
Like she’s not already.
I’m in my flat on my own, but I find myself nodding to no one.
I get it. Karina’s trying to protect her heart, a heart that, despite what she says, is already well on its way to being filled with Matthew.
As much as she likes him, she would never want to risk her friendship with Teddy because of it, and she has to know if Teddy can handle them being together.
‘Fine,’ I relent. ‘You can have your dinner party, but you’ll need to get Teddy to agree to it, and I wouldn’t bet on that being easy.’
Karina hangs up and a message appears on our group chat a few minutes later to say I’m hosting a dinner party. Teddy’s reply is almost instant.
TEDDY: Hell yes! Sounds great. Me and El would love to come.
Shit.
‘Which one do you want?’ Karina asks, holding up two different bottles of Barolo as I manoeuvre the heavy trolley towards her.
‘I don’t know, which one would you go for?’
‘Given how much all that food you’ve loaded up is going to cost, I’d probably say the cheaper one.’
‘Agreed. Let’s get three bottles of that.’
Karina loads up the wine, and I swear I hear the sound of the trolley buckling under the weight.
‘Right,’ I say, consulting my list. ‘Next up, dessert.’
I lead Karina from one side of the supermarket to the other to get back to the fruit, where I’m going to need three punnets of raspberries, jackfruit and the pick of the season’s best berries if I’m going to pull off Paul Hollywood’s pavlova.
‘Are you sure you want to go to all this hassle?’ Karina asks, when she catches up to me.
‘I mean, no offence, Lizzie, but you’re hardly known for your culinary skills – I still remember the picture you sent me and Teddy of that jacket potato with crumbled feta on your beans instead of Cheddar, which you considered a triumph.
Doing a beef wellington as well as a vegan one for me sounds pretty complicated. ’
Open mouthed, I spin round to her.
‘Do I want to go to all this hassle? Me? You were the one who bloody railroaded me into this whole thing, remember? What did you think I’d be serving to my new boyfriend, my friends and the person I’ve slept with? Fish fingers and chips?’
‘No, good point,’ she says. I put all my weight into pushing the trolley to get it moving again, sure ligaments are being torn from multiple places all over my body when I feel her hand on my arm and stop.
‘I’ve not heard you say that before, you know?’
‘What?’
‘Your boyfriend.’ She looks so excited, I prepare my ears for the squeal to follow, but she squeezes my arm instead. So tightly, I can picture the bruises forming under my T-shirt.
‘That’s because it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud,’ I admit. ‘But he asked me a few nights ago if that’s what we were now – and I couldn’t think of a reason to say it wasn’t. We talk all the time, we’re not dating anyone else, and he is lovely, so yeah, I guess he’s my boyfriend.’
‘That’s amazing, Lizzie. If we weren’t in Tesco, I’d be hugging you right now. I take it this means you and your new boyfriend have now sealed the deal?’
I swallow and feel the heat rising up my face. ‘Not exactly.’
Karina’s eyes grow huge, and she’s so busy gawping at me as I continue to push the trolley down the aisle she doesn’t spot the young child in her path and crashes right into her.
‘Shit, sorry,’ she says to the little girl, which earns her a filthy stare from her parents. ‘What do you mean you haven’t slept together? That is so unlike you. Not in a bad way. Obviously.’
She’s right. This is a long time for me not to have had sex with someone I’m into.
It’s not like there’s anything off between us.
I find him extremely attractive, we kiss all the time, and we’re always finding ways to touch.
His hand is never off my thigh whenever we’re sitting next to each other.
Everything is lined up correctly for the next step, we just haven’t found that moment yet to take things further.
Jordan isn’t pushy either, and I like that about him a lot. It’s refreshing.