‘I didn’t mean to be weird,’ Joshua starts. I don’t say it’s OK because it isn’t.
‘I just, well, I’m a little bit upset to be honest.’ He looks up earnestly, still attacking his hands.
‘Upset about what?’
‘It’s just … I know we’ve not talked about it, but, well, I mean, you met my friends the other day. And I don’t just, like, let them meet anyone. I thought that went without saying. I thought we were on the same page.’
I catch an inkling of where this is going, and, when I realise I’m right, a mist of surreal descends down on me. I’m in the middle of a ‘what are we?’ conversation and it’s the first time in my life I’ve not started it. I am never, ever, on the receiving end of these kinds of desperate-but-pretending-they’re-not chats. I take another sip of wine while my stomach tries to figure out what emotion it’s feeling. Excitement that I’m winning? Or guilt? Or, maybe even excitement that he likes me this much?
Not me, I remind myself. Gretel.
Joshua stumbles in to fill the silence. ‘Anyway, when your housemate turned up on Saturday, I know she was upset and everything but, well … Gretel, it was clear she’d never even heard of me.’ He makes eye contact and it hurts to look back at him, confirming the emotion I’m feeling as ‘guilt’. Guilt mixed with admiration that he’s brave enough to say all this. ‘She hasn’t, has she? You live with her. You’re clearly very close friends. Have you ever mentioned me at all?’
I shake my head and tell him the truth. ‘No, I guess I haven’t.’
His face collapses. ‘Right.’ He says it again. ‘Right.’ Another sip of beer as he faces the bittersweet relief of knowing you’re not being paranoid after all.
‘I mean, I’ve mentioned you now.’
‘Because you had to.’
‘It’s not like that. Why are you being weird about it?’
Joshua flinches and the guilt intensifies, the surreal mist getting thicker. I’ve had that hurtful collection of words chucked at me so many times and now I’m the one saying them. I panic. I do not like to hurt people. I start backpedalling. ‘Sorry,’ I reach over my hand and take his. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘No, its fine,’ he says, when it isn’t.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell her. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’
His chest inflates as he tries to puff it out. ‘You didn’t.’
‘Right.’
The waiter reappears and jolts us back to societal appropriateness. ‘Ready to order?’
We both want ramen – Josh orders the beef, me the chicken. ‘Want a side of edamame beans?’ I ask as we hand over the menus.
‘Yeah, sure.’
With no laminated A4 to use as conversational shields, we both start plucking ramen accessories out of the tray as a distraction while I wait for Joshua to explain. I snap chopsticks in two, rubbing them together to get rid of any splinters. Joshua grates peanut dust into his hand. The childlikeness of it throbs something in my gut.
I am hurting this man.
This is the first time I can see the hurt from my lies first-hand. He swipes the peanut dust into a napkin and smiles as he looks up at me, and the guilt sinks into my bones. This power doesn’t feel liberating like I thought it would. It feels confusing, like a dull ache, like I’ve let myself down. End this, I think to myself, smiling back. Now is the time to end this.
All I need to do is say it’s not working. Say it’s not me it’s you. Say we’ve just met at the wrong time. Say I’m not over my ex. Say I need to focus on work. Say there just isn’t a spark. Say it say it say it. His heart will be mildly bruised. He may not want to frequent this particular ramen place for a while. It will hurt for a day or two but his heart will receive minimal damage. Say it can’t go on. Say you’ve met someone else. Say you’re emotionally unavailable. Say it say it say it.
But I don’t say anything.
And, once more, Joshua flings himself into the silence. ‘Gretel, I’m not seeing anyone else,’ he says plainly. The man returned. Sitting up in his stool. ‘I know we’ve not had this conversation. I thought it was kind of implied, but now I’m not sure. So we need to talk about it, I think. Are you seeing anyone else?’
I have a split second to grasp Gretel’s answer. ‘No.’
He takes a breath of relief which he tries not to show. ‘Cool. OK. I mean, it would be cool if you were. As I said, we’ve never spoken about it.’
‘I don’t sleep around.’
‘I know, I wasn’t suggesting you do. Sorry, I mean, even if you do, that’s fine. Gah. OK, look …’ Josh picks up my hand and inhales courage from the air around him. ‘What are we, Gretel?’ he asks.
‘What do you mean?’ Though I know what he means, of course I know.
‘I mean, are we together? Not together? Seeing each other?’ He laughs. ‘I’ve been out of the game a long time. I’m not really sure how any of this works.’
End it end it end it my conscious screams, as I watch his hope and his heart being offered out, flecked in peanut dust. This is the line I can’t cross. This is where staying makes me a bad person. Makes this social experiment something with serious collateral damage. Joshua and Gretel can’t be together because she doesn’t exist. The poor guy just asked a phantom to be his girlfriend. He doesn’t know this, however. He’s just thinks Gretel is Gretel. Why wouldn’t he? I must stop this, stop hurting him. But I can’t. And not because I just want revenge. I hate to admit it, but part of me can’t stand the thought of not seeing him again.
‘Joshua, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?’
‘Well, I mean, I’m not sure what the term is when you’re our age. And I know we’ve not known each other a huge amount of time. But I really like you Gretel.’
I clamp down on his fingers, feeling the pulse from his wrist beat through my hands. ‘I really like you too.’
‘So?’
‘So, I guess that means we’re “going steady”.’
He digests what I’ve said and then his face splits into a smile, carving through the stubble on his cheeks. ‘Really?’
‘Of course.’ My smile matches his. I laugh. He laughs. Happiness spews out of us. Our hands mesh. I feel like a confetti cannon should fire out over us. Joshua leans over to kiss me. He leans over to do it again. He’s a different man – changed, loosened. We’re interrupted by the food arriving, forcing us to release one another’s grip.
‘Coming out for ramen was a brilliant idea,’ he says, picking up his chopsticks. ‘The things you make me do, Gretel.’
I pick up my own chopsticks, smiling back. He’s different because he’s relaxed. Because I’ve reassured him. He has pinned Gretel down. We are on the same page after all.
He, quite cutely, checks a few times. ‘It’s not too soon? I keep counting how many dates we’ve had and thinking maybe it’s too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon.’
We kiss again. We slurp our ramen and giggle about how unattractive we both look. We order more drinks. We kiss more over the table, knocking over the nut grinder. We kiss out in the heavy air of Soho, pressed against a wall. We hold hands on the Tube. We stumble into his flat laughing and kissing.