I hurried up to the flat and showered and changed ready for my date, pleased that I’d gone to the effort of having my nails and eyelashes done, telling myself that if I was going to be back in the dating game, it was quicker than doing them myself and an investment in my future.
‘Okay, Frazz,’ I said to my cat, who was lounging on the back of the sofa looking deeply pissed off that I should have the bare-faced cheek to go out on my evening off, rather than staying in with him and maybe playing an exciting game of pounce with my toes under the duvet. ‘I’m off. You’re in charge here.’
Frazzle blinked crossly.
‘I know, I know. But at least Jude isn’t here any more, and you ought to be relieved about that, because you never liked him much, did you?’
Frazz blinked again, then stood up, yawned hugely, stretched his back and then each of his four legs, and followed me out, trotting down the stairs and into the bar, where he’d spend the evening socialising and staring pleadingly at the customers until they gave him scraps of food off their plates.
‘I won’t be late,’ I said. ‘Mind you be a good cat, okay?’
I hadn’t bargained for just how not-late I would be, however. It was before eight when I returned to the Ginger Cat, strangely rattled by the revelation I’d had about Brett. I hadn’t felt unsafe at any point. Nothing bad had happened. But still, the whole experience had been the worst of my dating life thus far – a new low. One day, I hoped, I’d be able to look back on the time I thought I was on a date with a spy, only he turned out to have been recently released from gaol, and have a good laugh about it. But I wasn’t there yet – not by a long shot. And the prospect of going up to the flat and spending the evening alone made me feel weirdly insecure.
So instead of climbing the stairs and going home, I pushed open the door to the pub. I could sit on my own and have a drink, or help Alice out behind the bar, or maybe Archie and Nat would be there and I could join them for a bit. Or, if all else failed, I’d go into the kitchen, pull rank on Robbie and tell him that I could decide to cancel my evening off any time I liked.
But the first person I noticed was Adam. He was sitting alone at a table, not working on the Dungeons & Dragons game or tapping busily at his laptop but reading a book, a half-finished plate of food in front of him, Frazzle snoozing on his lap.
I needed company, and he was going to have to put up with me.
Alice poured me a glass of red wine and I asked for a mint julep as well, and took the two drinks over to Adam’s table.
‘Hi,’ he said, glancing up from his book.
‘Hi. Mind if I join you? I brought you a cocktail.’
Adam shook his head and closed his book, putting a paper napkin inside to mark the place. ‘Thanks.’
I sat down and took a sip of wine, and noticed that my hands were shaking so hard my teeth rattled against the glass.
‘Are you okay, Zoë?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am. I’m fine. I just had a really weird experience and I’m not sure what I think about it.’
Adam raised an eyebrow. ‘Want to talk about it? I’m good at telling people what they should think about things.’
I took another big gulp of wine and found myself blurting out the whole story of my date with Brett.
‘I’d kind of persuaded myself that him being all weird and secretive about his life was a good thing. Like it made him more interesting, mysterious and stuff. I’d even half-convinced myself that he was a secret agent. And then when I saw the tag on his ankle, I realised how wrong I’d been.’
‘Must’ve come as a bit of a shock, realising he’d been doing porridge instead of sending undercover messages to his fellow spooks.’
I managed a shaky laugh. ‘Exactly. Less of the designer dinner jacket and more of the orange jumpsuit. Except they don’t wear orange jumpsuits in prison here, do they?’
‘I have no idea. Never having done time in one.’
‘But then part of me is like, was I being really harsh and judgemental? I mean, I always think of myself as being super open-minded, and here I am completely writing someone off as a date because of something that happened in their past. And I don’t even know what he’d done. It could’ve been murder or it could have been – I don’t know, committing some sort of victimless white-collar crime to pay for his grandmother’s life-saving surgery or something.’
‘Zoë, there’s being open-minded and then there’s being so open-minded you let your brain fall out. You’re allowed to decide who you date and who you don’t, for whatever reason. It’s not an equal-opportunity situation. If you don’t like someone’s face or they give you bad vibes or you’re just not feeling it, you can walk away and you don’t have to feel bad about it. And I bet you were getting bad vibes before you even noticed the tag thing, right?’
‘I… yeah, to be fair, I was. Not least because he smelled like he’d had a bath in tequila before he came.’
Adam grimaced. ‘Oh no.’
‘Oh yes. Right then, I should have called it a day and told him I was leaving. But I didn’t.’
Adam sipped his drink and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Why do you think that was?’
‘I just… I don’t know, I suppose I didn’t want to be rude. And I didn’t want him to think I was a horrible person. And I didn’t want myself to think I was a horrible person.’
‘Oh, Zoë.’ He shook his head pityingly. ‘Just as well you left, otherwise you’d probably be marrying the guy in two weeks, because he asked and you didn’t want to offend him.’
‘Oh God. I know – you’re right. Worried about offending an offender, what am I like?’
‘Still, you got out of there in the nick of time,’ Adam said.
It took me a second, then I got his joke. ‘Just as well I didn’t let my guard down.’
‘Or you could have ended up shackled to him for life.’
‘It’s because I over-cell myself.’
‘You need to be more fuzz-y.’
‘I’m just bad at thinking off the cuff.’
Adam paused, and I could see his brain working overtime as he tried to think of more crime-and-punishment-related puns.
‘Another drink?’ he said, and headed for the bar before I could even properly accept. A few moments later he was back with two glasses.
‘Thanks, Adam.’
‘Know what we have to do now?’
‘What?’
‘Clink.’
I groaned and we both laughed, relishing our shared silliness. My sense of anxiety had faded, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long until I’d forgotten all about the date, except as a funny story to tell.
‘Anyway—’ I began, but Adam spoke at exactly the same moment.
‘Zoë, I was—’
‘After you,’ I said.
‘No, you go first.’
‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking, and that’s me done. I’ve given dating my best shot and it just hasn’t worked for me. I’m going to go back to being single, and if I die surrounded by cats I don’t care. There are worse things, right?’
‘I guess,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, you must do whatever makes you happy.’