Chapter Seventeen
Junaid picks me up outside St Margaret’s House bang on time and I feel the fizz of anticipation as I climb into his car.
It’s a bit messy inside and I have to nudge an empty Fanta bottle out of the way as I slide my feet into the footwell, but I’m hardly a neat freak myself.
Jonah constantly snarks at me for forgetting to put the empty loo roll tubes in the bin and he says if he had a pound for every time he found one of my empty crisp packets wedged between the sofa cushions, he’d be a very rich man.
I am, however, better at stacking the dishwasher than him, and I’m not squeamish when it comes to unblocking the drain in the shower, so we make a perfect match.
‘Do you like board games?’ Junaid reaches into the footwell, grabbing the Fanta bottle and a balled-up paper bag I hadn’t even noticed, tossing them onto the backseat.
‘Love them.’
‘Great.’ He waits until I’ve clicked my seatbelt in place before moving off. ‘There’s this board game cafe near Boyd Mill Park. Luna Brew. Do you know it?’
I shake my head. ‘It sounds fun though.’
Luna Brew is only a short drive but I manage to find out that Junaid is the middle child, with an older brother and a younger sister, that he lives with his best friend from school but hopes to buy his own place in a few years, and that he’s a digital sales analyst, though I don’t find out what this entails exactly as we pull up on the street alongside the park before he has the chance to elaborate.
We walk the short distance to the main road, where the cafe sits.
Its exterior is painted teal with navy blue accents, with game-based pictures drawn on the windows (dice, Monopoly pieces, Scrabble tiles, etc.) in wispy white paint, and there’s a sandwich board listing coffee and hot chocolate options standing by the door.
Inside, there’s a cake-filled counter straight ahead and shelves piled with board games to the left (some I’ve heard of, many I haven’t) and the rest of the space is filled with tables.
It’s a great place for a first date; relaxed but fun, a bit quirky, and it gives me a spark of hope that this date could go well after the stinkers I’ve had lately.
But the spark dims when Junaid leads me to a table near the back with a chessboard sitting upon it.
Chess? Of all the board games, he chooses the most boring game on the planet.
‘What would you like to drink?’ Junaid shrugs off his jacket, draping it over the back of one of the chairs and squashing any hope that he wasn’t planning on playing this particular game.
I hover by the table, not committing to anything by sitting down, until Junaid returns with the drinks and a bowl of nachos.
‘I’ve just realised I never asked if you could play.’ He sets the drinks and the bowl down on the table beside the board and pulls back one of the chairs. Joy lifts my heart again as I’m handed my get out of jail free card.
‘No, I’ve never played chess before.’ I try to inject sorrow into my voice while in my head I’m thinking about what we should actually play: Connect 4 versus Battleships.
‘No worries.’ Junaid indicates the seat opposite as he sits down. ‘I’ll teach you.’
‘Great.’ There is no hope of sounding anywhere near pleased and I don’t even bother.
I sink into the chair and try to concentrate as Junaid labels all the different pieces and explains what moves they can make, but I find my mind drifting away and I’m seriously fed up by the third checkmate.
Junaid, however, is oblivious to how tiresome I’m finding the whole experience and happily sets the board up for another round.
‘They don’t serve alcohol here, do they?’ I know they don’t, but I’m hoping this will be a massive enough hint that I am hating this date.
‘Afraid not.’ Junaid picks up his queen and knight and pops them back into place. ‘But they host Bring Your Own Beer event nights. I think there’s a Dungeons and Dragons tournament coming up at the beginning of April, if you’re interested?’
I am very not interested. I simply force a smile in reply and grab my king, plonking it in the wrong place on purpose.
Junaid titters and places it where it should be and soon enough, we’re ready to go again.
It takes an agonising fifteen minutes before Junaid declares checkmate and ends my torment.
‘I’m really bad at this.’ I scrunch up my nose. ‘Sorry.’ Not sorry. ‘We could play something else?’ I glance longingly at the shelf of games. ‘Connect 4? Guess Who?’
Junaid puffs air out from his lips as he starts to reset the board.
‘Waste of time. Waste of brain cells. No, there’s no point in playing anything without intellect.
But don’t worry – we’ll soon train you up.
Do you remember where this one goes?’ He hands me a king.
I know where I’d like to shove it, but it isn’t on the board.
So we go again.
‘I had a really fun evening. Thank you, Christina.’
We’re sitting in the car outside St Margaret’s House, the engine thankfully still running because I will not be inviting Junaid up to the flat.
He leans towards me, filling the gap between us, and plants a wet, suction-cup kiss to my cheek.
The kiss is nothing like the one that lit me up outside the piano bar, and I kick myself once again for losing Kit’s number.
This kiss makes my skin crawl, and I have to try really hard to suppress a shudder as I climb out of the car.
I lift a hand in farewell before dashing inside. Checkmate. Again.