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Message received: 12:04
My uber driver raped me last night. What do I do?
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Joshua: Another great date, Gretel. You’re quite good at this, aren’t you?
Gretel: What can I say? You bring out the best in me.
Joshua: I could say the same about you.
Gretel: This is too cute, I may throw up.
Joshua:
Gretel: Did you just heart eyes emoji me?
Joshua:
Gretel: Ever heard of playing it cool, Joshua?
Joshua: Ever heard of taking it easy on a guy, Gretel?
Gretel:
Joshua: The modern equivalent of a sonnet.
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Megan: Hey hon. OK, so this sounds crazy, but I looked up his ex-girlfriend and is she prettier than me?
Megan: There’s this photo here. I like her dress, but she looks a bit old, right?
Megan: And then there’s this one. She looks better in this one. I am prettier, right?
Megan: Right?
Megan: Sorry. I’ll stop being mental now. I’ve deleted Facebook off my phone and I’m working really hard on this launch party. I’m fine! Sorry! Ignore me. Silly moment.
Megan: How about in this photo?
Megan: I put Facebook back on my phone.
Megan: Sorry. No more being crazy. Phew! I’m going to concentrate on my CAREER and this launch I’m in charge of and stop worrying about some stupid bitch called Regina who looks like she’s got chew and spit disorder.
Megan: OK. But in that last photo? Botox, right?
*
Joshua: Morning Gretel! Happy Thursday! It’s the weekend tomorrow. Whoop! I was just thinking, how about we remove animals from our dating agenda and add in a roof? Fancy coming around to mine tomorrow? I’ll actually cook, rather than just arrange pots of things.
Gretel: Sounds great. Can I bring anything?
Joshua: Just your gorgeous self. 7?
Gretel: Can’t wait x
On our third date, Joshua pulled out all the stops for the picnic. He brought a folded blanket, a cold bottle of prosecco, a giant assortment of chilled foodstuffs from M&S and a melted Viennetta in a seeping box which I laughed at. He kissed me the moment I rocked up to St James’s Park station, with tongue, just to reaffirm that we’d already crossed this sexual boundary and were going to continue to do so. The conversation flowed as easily as the alcohol. He’s a funny man. He’s easy to talk to. Effortless and bubbly and also very happy to talk about himself, which Gretel let him do of course. We made out in front of the pelicans. I let him kiss me and stare at me with the hope and wonder you can only have in the very early days before you really know anything about someone.
‘Maybe, this time; maybe she is different’, I could imagine him thinking.
He was better at kissing when less drunk. Less tongue. It was not unpleasant. I fancy the guy. I’ll admit that. I fancy the guy. But I also have no heart left to give him, and, even if I did, that is not why I’m doing this. We talked about his job some more and how he feels frustrated with the current management structure. We talked about his parents and how they wear matching cagoules to go on really long walks, and how they never leave Norwich. He briefly mentioned his ex again when I mentioned Chrissy’s upcoming hen do – slipping it out like an accidental fart. ‘Fiona was obsessed with getting married,’ he mumbled, before apologising.
I wondered silently what he did to her in the relationship to make her insecure enough to be obsessed with getting married. Or what he didn’t do. His poor ex.
‘Weddings are ludicrous, aren’t they?’ Gretel said, stretching her arms up into the sun. ‘They’re so over the top and I think people get married for the wrong reason.’
He beamed at me. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’
I laughed inwardly when I thought of the amount of time I’ve spent planning my wedding since I was a child. The flowers, the dress – and how it adapts over time depending on the current fashions – the food, the playlist, the location, the readings. And then I considered all the time I’ve spent pretending I don’t think any of this, to men, so they think I’m someone I’m not and can love me better and therefore I can have the wedding.
We kissed again. I started it, to change the subject. We kissed and hardly ate anything. We kissed and were shouted at to get a room. We kissed every twenty or so paces as we walked back to the Tube, and, once there, we kissed some more.
On the next date, we went to London Zoo for their Zoo Nights event. Joshua paid, which was just as well because it’s bloody expensive to get in. We walked with our arms around one another as we skidded around groups of excitable drunk twenty-somethings to look at lions dozing in the heat that still won’t go away.
‘Look at that otter,’ Joshua said, leaning his chin onto my head as he pointed one out. ‘He so thinks he’s better than the other otters with that rock.’
‘I think his name is Jarvis,’ I replied.
‘Jarvis the cocky otter. Sounds like a great children’s TV show.’
Several minutes of our lives were lost to imagining Jarvis’s day to day existence. Giving him a back story and a narrative thrust, and, ultimately, a redemption arch. Then Jarvis appeared to give another otter his little rock and we both squealed in delight that our story had come true. This required a celebratory kiss that was so intense someone threw an empty bottle at us and we moved on giggling, like teenagers.
‘So, it’s rather frustrating that you’re not very stalkable online,’ he said, as we walked holding hands and licking overpriced but lacklustre ice cream. ‘Literally you were nowhere to be found on social media.’
I grinned as I imagined him typing in the word ‘Gretel’. ‘I’m not on any social media,’ I said. ‘Why? Are you on it? Doesn’t it just make you unhappy?’
It occurred to me that, like him, I usually would’ve checked by now. If I’d had a quiet moment at work, or a low moment at home, I’d have typed his name into the search bar of various websites, feeling uneasiness and guilt in my stomach, like he could sense I was doing it. Feeling sicker if I found an album still open from the holiday he went on with his university girlfriend in 2009 because people didn’t use privacy settings back then. Wondering if she was the best sex he’d ever had. Knowing he’d been to Croatia, but when he brought up the place in a real-life interaction later on, having to act surprised to learn he’d been to Croatia, rather than say, ‘yes, I know, you went with your ex, didn’t you? Tell me, are you still in love with her and only dating me because she dumped you, but you’d drop me the moment she returned? Did you do a sixty-nine together? And, can you remember what shampoo she uses because her hair is really nice?’
‘Yes, for my sins.’ Joshua took a lick of his vanilla cone, as I reflected on him being the sort of person who actually says ‘for my sins’ out loud. ‘I just assumed it’s something everyone is on, whether they like it or not. It didn’t occur to me there’s an option.’
‘There’s always an option. You don’t have to do everything the world expects of you.’
It was such a Gretel thing to say, and it went down a treat. He stopped us next to a sign that explained how deforestation works and kissed me next to it, ice cream rolling down our hands. ‘You’re so right,’ he half-whispered. ‘Right, that’s it. I’m deleting Facebook off my phone so I can be carefree like you.’