He shrugs again. ‘We just weren’t… compatible,’ he says simply.
‘Ah, very political of you.’ I can’t prevent the smirk growing on my lips at his uncanny ability to avoid sharing information.
‘Well, it’s true, we just… something about us fundamentally didn’t work. It’s obvious now in hindsight, even if break-ups do kind of suck in the short term. But ultimately, it was a huge blessing.’
I nod. ‘Hmm. You do make a compelling point.’
His eyes are bright as they meet mine again.
‘Did I just successfully convince you to break up with someone without realising it?’
I splutter with a laugh. ‘Oh God no, there’s no boyfriend. The last guy was such a disaster I swore off dating.’ I find a sharp twig at my feet and chuck it into the fire.
‘I get that. I haven’t really been in the headspace to date.’ Something drops with a loud thud inside my stomach as his words ring in my ears. As I suspected, he is definitely not a guy looking for anything romantic. Apparently with anybody. ‘What made him so disastrous?’ he adds.
I make a noise of disgust and brush my fringe away from my eyes. ‘He’s a long, tragic story. But he basically had thefun, likeableguy routine absolutely locked down. Like, really impressive. Hennie actually nicknamed him “Likeable Greg”,’ I recall with a snort. ‘We’d dated for four or five months when I realised he wassodesperate to be liked that he needed to date handfuls of women at the same time. And hide us all from each other. Then he decided he didn’t really need me in his roster, anyway.’
Elliot’s face twists in disgust before turning vaguely murderous. ‘He’s a fucking idiot,’ he snarls.
I hum into my drink. ‘Yeah. Well. Hennie didn’t like him anyway so it never would have worked,’ I say flippantly. ‘I reallyshould’ve known he wasn’t right. Our first date was watching his housemates play video games.’
His mouth is set in a grim line.
‘He said he’d make food but he didn’t fancy doing it in the end, and I got so hungry I had to go buy a snack,’ I admit quietly. ‘I think he barely noticed I left.’ I offset this tragic admission with an airy laugh.
Elliot’s expression is so troubled that I look away. ‘That date was his idea, I’m guessing?’
‘Yep.’ I stare bitterly into the fire.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says gently. ‘For what it’s worth, he sounds like a total piece of shit.’
I grin. ‘He was. But still, when he dumped me it was the closest I came to officially clocking out as a member of society and living under a bridge so I could force people to solve my riddles three. But you know. Hennie eventually coaxed me away from the idea with copious amounts of cuddles and cheese.’
He snorts.
‘The experience scarred me enough to make me delete the dating apps and promise myself I would never use them again though,’ I say.
‘I don’t blame you. I can’t use them,’ he says with a shake of his head.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he muses. ‘I don’t think I come across very well… digitally.’
I find this extraordinary considering his profile would probably make his inbox explode but I don’t argue with him.
‘That’s fair enough. I don’t think Greg and I even had much in common so I’m not sure why we matched in the first place.’
‘Why did you keep going out with him?’ he prods.
I frown. ‘I don’t really know. I thought he seemed nice, seemed like he liked me. It felt like a… just a normal dating experience. I felt like I needed to try one of those.’
I devoured romance novels in plentiful quantities in my teens and quickly learned that the idea of embodying a loveable lead heroine was very much out of reach for me. Boys looked at me with a crushing combination of humour and scorn – the opposite of how a leading man treats a love interest.
To my dismay, the closest comparison I could possibly make to myself were unbearable films likeShe’s All That, where the gorgeous lead actress is deemed a ‘geek’. And then she goes on to experience a magical ‘makeover’, (removes her glasses) and is unveiled as an entirelyunexpectedbeauty. I would scoff and roll my eyes every time, but the desperate romantic in me would still yearn for that moment when I might suddenly wake up with my freckles magically erased, my hair smoother and my body miraculously smaller and shorter.
Of course… that never happened.
So I read and watched love stories with a new sense of ease. I was able to enjoy the story without the need to insert myself into the position of the heroines who were so deeply adored.
