. . . a first date
Noah was so excited to take me to ‘his favourite spot’ that there was nothing I could have said to derail him.
‘Do you like beer?’ he asked.
‘Not at all,’ I said, scowling.
‘You’ll like the beer here,’ he said, before leading me into the city centre.
The place stretches over various floors and buildings, each as filled to the brim with people as the next, and we had to hover for ten minutes before swiping a tiny table for two near the back.
He took my suitcase without asking, jamming it under the table before pulling out my chair for me.
The second I sat down, he headed for the bar without even taking my order and returned with a metre-long wooden plank loaded with ten glasses, some very scary in colour.
‘Why’s that one green?’ I ask, pointing at the main one I’ve been avoiding for the last twenty minutes.
‘Taste it and see!’ he says, laughing as I shake my head. ‘What is the point of getting a beer flight if you’re not going to taste all the beers?’
‘I never agreed to a beer-tasting in the first place!’ I pout back at his smiling face. ‘I wouldn’t have, because I don’t like beer.’
‘Keep it down, Amorie!’ he mock-chastises me. ‘This is not the place for that negativity.’
‘Then why are we here if you knew that?’ I ask pointedly.
He ignores all my snark, smile still plastered on his face.
‘It’s a Brussels staple! My aunt Lisa told me that if you don’t visit at least once, you may as well have not come to Brussels.
’ He grabs a drink from the plank for himself and places a dark-red one in front of me.
‘That one’s probably least offensive.’ He nods towards it.
He raises his glass, I follow, and we both take a sip. I splutter. It’s still beer. Vaguely cherry-ish, but definitely beer. The cherry actually makes it almost medicinal in taste, which I would argue is worse. And that’s saying something given my absolute disdain for the true form.
‘The quicker you down it, the less you’ll taste it,’ he says.
I hold my nose and tip the liquid down my throat as quickly as it will go.
He gives a cheer. ‘That’s the spirit! So, Amorie, why did you decide to interrail alone?’
I stare back at him blankly, confused at the sudden switch.
He shrugs. ‘Nobody solo-travels for this long without some sort of story.’
He’s right, of course. I’m well aware of my story and soon enough the World Wide Web will be too.
But that doesn’t make that story any easier to share without delving into weird, personal details of my life.
What is the etiquette when it comes to sharing your life with people you met mere hours ago?
I’m pretty notorious for getting the balance wrong and either being too cold and unapproachable, or too open a book.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask.
His eyebrow lifts, clocking the diversion right away, but he thankfully doesn’t press any further. Instead, he leans across the table and beckons me closer.
‘I ran away,’ he says coldly, before sipping his drink.
He draws the motion out, delighting in the way I hang on his words. I have every mind to lean back again and feign disinterest, but it’s fun watching him revel.
‘It’s the typical bachelor story – all of my friends are settling down and being the seventh wheel was getting kind of boring. Plus, they constantly nag at me about it.’
He leans back again and gulps some beer down with ferocity.
‘Why are they nagging?’ I ask.
He pauses for a moment, a darkness flitting across his eyes.
He’s holding back – of course he is. We’ve only just met.
I drop my own eyes and start to brainstorm ways to move the conversation out of a clearly intrusive question and back to something light.
But before I can, he clears his throat and takes another sip of beer before looking back to me with a clear and firm expression.
‘I’ve never had a long-term relationship.
They think I date too much and that I am getting “too old” for that life.
They’re all just so stuck in their wedding-and-baby talk that they don’t understand that it doesn’t just happen for everyone.
’ He pauses to swallow harshly. ‘I was going through a bit of a rough time before I left, which probably contributed to why I kicked off when my mate told me I can’t bring a date to his wedding unless she’s a serious girlfriend.
After the year I’ve had, I can’t think of anything worse than going alone to a wedding, surrounded by a table of loved-up couples. ’
I can’t help but linger on one phrase – ‘after the year I’ve had’. He grew tenser as he said it, his eyes briefly darting away from mine. I want to ask what he means, but it doesn’t seem like the time. We barely made it through my last personal question; it’s best to keep it surface-level.
‘So, you don’t want a serious girlfriend?’ I ask.
‘Nah, it’s not that at all,’ he rushes to say. ‘I just don’t know if I know how to do serious – at least, not in the way they all seem to do it. I thought maybe being somewhere new, with new places and people, might help me learn a bit.’
‘Okay, got it.’ I nod. ‘So, what you’re saying is, you came to Europe to find yourself?’
I feel the corner of my mouth curl up into a mocking smirk. He mirrors it in a way that makes my heart skip a beat.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s what I’m saying, but in a less wanky way.’
I lift my glass. He lifts his. We drink to his only somewhat wanky mission.
I confess post-gulp. ‘I’m here to write a column. It’s a new one for a big travel magazine. They’re paying me to be here and it could launch my writing career, so it’s kind of a big deal.’
His face lights up so ecstatically that it washes me with warmth.
‘That’s amazing! Tell me more.’
‘It’s a dating column.’
‘Travelling and dating. Fun.’ He sips. I sigh.
‘Kind of, I guess. Honestly, I feel like it’s going to be a lot of stress and time, and very little fun.’ I shrug. ‘They wanted something high stakes and flirty, so I kind of volunteered to go on eighty dates.’
This stops him mid-gulp, spluttering in his tracks as he chokes on stray droplets of his beer.
‘Eighty? Eight, zero?’
‘Yes, eighty dates,’ I say, unblinking.
‘That’s a lot of dates.’
‘I’m aware.’ I feel my back start to go up. ‘I called it “Around the World in Eighty Dates” for the fun word play, but now I’m kind of committed to eighty dates.’
‘Right, so Europe is just the starting point.’
I look back at him, confused.
‘You’re going “around the world”, no? Like the title suggests.’
‘Oh.’ I take another sip. ‘No, we’re just sticking to Europe. Something about budgets and a low-carbon push.’
He shakes his head. ‘How Eurocentric. It’s giving . . . coloniser.’
I gasp and rush to explain, but catch his devious smile and scowl at him instead. He throws his head back and laughs heartily at my new discomfort, before throwing a jokey wink my way.
‘Relax, it’s cool regardless. How long have you got?’
‘Six months,’ I reply.
Hie eyes bulge. ‘Eighty dates in six months? Wow. You must be an expert.’
I try to spout out a lie, but the words knot in my throat, culminating in nothing but high-pitched, strained hesitation. It captures his full attention, and he drops his glass back to the table so he can focus on nothing but my newly pinched features.
‘You do date, right?’ he asks.
‘I have.’
‘Often?’
I swallow. ‘I wouldn’t say often . . .’
‘Wow.’
‘Don’t say it like that,’ I say warningly.
‘I’m not! You just clearly like a challenge.’
I look down at my glass, taking a moment to count the bubbles before I continue. I have unintentionally painted myself as a socially awkward, dateless loser. And the sad part is, the visual is pretty accurate.
‘I just thought it would be a good way to get out there,’ I say, trying to salvage my sullied reputation. ‘Full immersion therapy, you know?’
He chuckles lightly, raising his glass towards me. ‘Got it. Pretty smart, actually.’
We clink our glasses, the sound immediately lost in the muffled voices around us.
‘So, this is date number one,’ he says.
It’s my turn to choke this time, the bubbles clashing against my throat and coughing their way back out.
‘You think this is a date?’
He shrugs coolly. ‘We’re two young, very attractive individuals, sat here drinking and chatting. That’s a date, no?’
‘That’s real forward,’ I say, biting down on my cheek to stop myself from smiling at him calling me ‘attractive’.
‘You asked me to come out! And by the sounds of it, you don’t have time to waste getting these dates in so I’d count it if I were you.’ His brow raises. It’s a dare and, dare I say it, it’s doing incredibly dizzying things to my insides.
‘I suppose I could count it,’ I say.
The glint returns to his eye.
‘I knew it.’ He downs his glass. ‘What are you gonna say about me?’
I lean forward as his mouth twists into a smirk.
‘That you’re presumptuous.’
‘Good start.’
‘Terrible taste in drink spots.’
‘Ouch.’ A hand flies to his chest.
‘Semi-decent chat.’ I arch an eyebrow.
He protests. ‘I have carried this whole conversation!’
‘And incredibly insulting,’ I say in conclusion.
‘Fair enough.’ We both laugh. ‘So, what do I get out of ten? You’ve got to rate them all, right? To give the series some sizzle. Oh – and nicknames. I can be Mr Mysterious.’
‘What part of you has been mysterious?’
He crooks his neck as he ponders. ‘Nothing yet, but I’ll work towards it once it’s out there.’
I shake my head and laugh. ‘That is not how this works.’
‘ “Mr Mysterious blew me away with his stellar conversation and great insider knowledge of the city’s best spots . . .” ’ He scribbles a fake pen in the air.
I reach over, snatching his fake pen from his hand and emphatically snapping it in half. He plays along, gasping loudly and picking up the invisible pieces before we both dissolve into a hearty laugh.
‘Another round?’ he asks.
‘You must be crazy,’ I scoff. ‘Half of those made me retch.’
‘A glass of wine, then.’
‘You told me they didn’t do wine!’
‘Because you had to try the beer. You’ve tried it now. You can have wine.’ He gets up.
I scowl at him, but it rolls off his back that now faces me as he makes his way to the bar. I watch him closely. He speeds through the crowd, slowing one time only to throw me an annoyingly triumphant smirk over his shoulder.
We go through three more rounds and talk well into the night, eventually even switching to water just so we can stay and keep chatting.
We lose ourselves in conversation about our lives back in London, his dating life, my ex, and everything in between.
We both gasp at the 2.53 a.m. time stamp when the last orders bell rings.
Then he insists I can’t walk alone, despite my protests, and wheels my case down the uneven streets towards my accommodation.
With all the drama of the day, I hadn’t yet had a chance to check in or even see my accommodation in person. So when we near the severely underlit street, I have to double check that I have, in fact, got the address right. Unfortunately, I have.
There’s a mysterious brown stain smeared across the door, but, still, I shine my phone torch and reach into the lockbox for the key.
The door creaks open. I flick the light switch and it shakily buzzes to life, revealing chipping paint and a stark, empty room with nothing but a wire bedframe in the centre.
‘I haven’t been paid yet, so it’s all I could afford,’ I say as we creep closer to the bedding and its dubious-looking stains. ‘Plus, it looked nicer in the pictures.’
Albeit, not by much. But it at least looked like a place that wouldn’t leave me riddled with disease. He circles the space a couple times, his nose crumpled tightly, before looking me in the eye.
‘You can’t stay here.’
He opens the door to the bathroom and an all-consuming stench overwhelms us, our hands flying to our noses. I gag.
‘It’s not that bad,’ I lie meekly, trying to breathe through my mouth.
I don’t want to stay here – no person in their right mind would want to stay here – but I can’t afford literally anything else.
Honestly, between the goodbye partying, the new holiday wardrobe and all the random travel accessories the internet convinced me to buy, I could barely afford this place to begin with.
And I need to save my credit-card limit as much as possible .
. . Who knows when my first payment will come through?
He swings the door shut again but not before a cockroach emerges, scuttling across the floor. I look up. He’s even more horrified than I am, but it quickly shifts to something far more pragmatic. He walks over, grabs the handle of my suitcase once again and heads back towards the door.
‘You’re coming to mine,’ he says.
‘I can’t possibly. I don’t know you.’
It’s too kind and too much, especially for someone I just met.
‘It’s just one night. We’ll wake up tomorrow and find you somewhere that doesn’t resemble a crime scene.’
I glance over to the bed one more time and swear I see something move underneath the mattress cover.
‘Where’s your place?’ I ask.
I try to keep it monotone and entirely free of intrigue; I don’t want him thinking I’m that easy to persuade.
But I have a sneaky suspicion that literally anything would be safer than this .
. . Even a night with a complete stranger.
Although I suppose with the hours we’ve spoken tonight, he’s not exactly a complete stranger.
‘City centre – a thirty-minute walk from here or ten minutes in a cab if you don’t feel like walking.’
I look up at his face and am reminded of all we’ve shared tonight.
I can tell you his goals, his need to be here, some of his deeper fears.
I could paint out the way his forehead crinkles when he laughs.
I know his mum’s name and his birthday, and his dream job as a child (astronaut, until he watched Apollo 18).
I’ve told him things tonight that I’m not sure I ever even told Tom, and I’d love to blame the drinks but I know deep down that’s not the case.
I wanted to talk to him. I never wanted to stop. I would have kept going and going as long as he let me. Because talking to him feels like talking to someone I’ve always known. Someone that would never lead me astray.
‘One night,’ I say firmly.
He nods. ‘Just the one. I promise I’ll kick you out the second the sun comes up.’
‘Wonderful,’ I say, before skipping back over to him.
He links his free arm around my waist as we head back through the door.