Excellent. Honesty without consequences. Big fan.
Food arrives in the form of chips that are far too hot and therefore immediately necessary. We both reach at the same time, pause, retreat, then reach again like we’re testing each other’s reflexes. It’s easy. Unforced. Which my brain immediately flags as suspicious.
She tells a story about a fundraiser that went sideways and pulls a face at the end that makes me laugh before I’ve had time to decide if laughing is appropriate. Apparently it is.
“You’re very easy to talk to,” she says, somewhere between chips.
I nearly choke.
“Oh,” I say, buying myself a second with my pint. “That’s new.”
She grins. “Is it?”
“Yes,” I say. “Historically I either talk too much or disappear entirely. This feels like progress.”
“I’ll take progress,” she replies.
Christa would absolutely take progress. She’d also write it on a whiteboard and underline it.
The conversation keeps moving. Music we pretend not to judge people for liking. Places we’ve been that were better in theory. People-watching that edges dangerously close to being unkind but never quite gets there.
And then something odd happens.
I notice that I’m not performing.
I’m not trying to steer the conversation anywhere. I’m not calculating when to lean in or pull back. I’m not wondering if this is the moment I’m supposed to do something.
I’m just… here.
This should feel like a relief. Instead, it feels like when a noise you didn’t realise was annoying suddenly stops and you become very aware of the silence.
We finish our drinks and step outside into the cooler air. She tucks her hands into her sleeves and looks up at me.
“I’m glad we did this,” she says. “I’d like to do it again.”
There it is. The moment.
I look at her, really look at her, and my brain does a quick inventory. She’s lovely. Funny. Easy. Sensible in a way that doesn’t feel dull.
And yet.
Nothing in me leans forward.
“I’d like that,” I say, because it’s true in a broad, theoretical sense. Somewhere, some version of me would.
We hug. Brief. Comfortable. The sort of hug that doesn’t linger or promise anything it can’t deliver. She walks off, glancing back once with a small wave before disappearing down the street.
I stand there for a moment, hands in my pockets, waiting for the familiar aftershock. The second-guessing. The urge to replay the evening and see what I missed.
It doesn’t come.
What comes instead is the quiet understanding that this date has done exactly what it was meant to do. It’s shown me I can sit across from someone lovely, enjoy myself, behave like a functional adult, and still feel that unmistakable absence.
Not dread. Not disappointment.
Just clarity.
I start walking home, oddly light for someone who’s just had a perfectly good date.
