‘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.
2
‘Look at the arse on that one,’ JJ practically growls.
I look out of a combination of politeness and curiosity to see what kind of arse provokes that kind of reaction.
‘Jesus, his jeans are tight,’ I reply. ‘That’s like… vasectomy by denim.’
‘I’d have them off him before they could do him too much harm,’ JJ replies.