“I saw her at Grampy’s yesterday,” I say finally. “She was delivering flowers.”
Alex’s laughter fades.
“She was different,” I continue, struggling to explain something that isn’t easily explained. “Quieter. Not trying to make me react. Just… herself.”
And I’d realised, with a clarity that had terrified me, that the version of her I saw in the pub wasn’t the whole truth. That there were parts of her I hadn’t earned yet. Parts I wanted to see again.
“And you thought,” Alex says carefully, “that asking her out was a good idea?”
“At the time,” I admit.
He watches me for a long moment, his expression shifting from amusement to something closer to understanding.
“You can’t survive ten minutes in the pub with her,” he says. “How exactly are you planning to survive dinner?”
I drop my head into my hands.
“I’m not,” I say. “I need to fix it.”
He frowns. “Fix it how?”
“I just won’t text her.”
The plan had formed sometime around three in the morning, when sleep had refused to come and every possible version of the dinner had ended in humiliation. If I didn’t text her, if I let the moment dissolve quietly, then eventually it would stop mattering. She would lose interest. She would move on. She would stop looking at me like I was someone worth waiting for.
Alex holds out his hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“No.”
“Phil.”
Reluctantly, I hand it over.
He typesquickly.
My stomach drops.
“What did you do?”
He hands it back.
“You’re meeting her tomorrow. Bella Italia. Seven.”
I stare at the screen.
He’s already sent the message.
“You texted her?”
“You’re welcome.”
“What the hell, Alex?”
He folds his arms.
“You have two choices,” he says. “You take her to dinner like a functioning adult, or you humiliate yourself, her, and me by disappearing. And since Emma is her best friend, I will suffer the consequences. And I refuse to suffer the consequences.”