Paige gasps in response and the two start bickering while I continue to decompress over the chocolate fudge cake. The next time I look up, both heads have swivelled my way, silently awaiting my tie-breaking decision.
‘I mean... it seems pretty normal,’ I say, as Sara cheers and Paige rolls her eyes.
I really do hate to side with Sara; she’s the most ungracious winner. I watch as she purses her lips with indignation and triumphantly scoops some of Paige’s carrot cake.
‘This is why it never works out with these guys, Paigey,’ she says haughtily.
‘At least I’m dating,’ Paige sulks.
Sara shrieks. ‘I’m engaged!’
‘I meant Amorie,’ Paige says.
Unlike Paige, I do not thrive under the spotlight of people’s stares quite as much. Especially when those stares are coming live and direct from my elder sisters’ judging eyes. They’re both looking at me expectantly, necks crooked in synchronicity as they await my imminent response. Response to what? I’m not dating. We all know that. There’s frankly nothing more worth saying about it.
I sigh. ‘I’m still getting over Tom.’
I do my best to pack the sigh with the kind of sorrow that warrants no further questions. But it’s a weak performance from me, with little shake and far too much melancholy.
‘Bullshit,’ Paige says.
‘What she said.’ Sara nods in agreement. ‘It’s been over a year.’
‘And you didn’t even like him that much,’ Paige adds.
‘We were together for five years,’ I say.
‘Because you were too lazy to end it, so you waited long enough untilhebroke it off withyou,’ Sara says.
Paige stifles a laugh as I stare daggers at them both, but they repel my glare with nothing more than a quick bat of their eyelashes. Paige reaches across for some of Sara’s red velvet cake, moving on jovially as if the two of them haven’t just tried to denigrate my character.
‘I wasn’tlazy,’ I say in protest. ‘Lazy’s not fair.’
‘Lazy’ discredits what Tom and I had. I liked him – of course I did – we were together for half a decade. He got me through my chunk of uni and my big move to London, and he was palatable enough in small doses. We were comfortable together and we probably could have stayed that way, but for the fact he decided that ‘comfortable’ wasn’t the same as ‘in love’.
Although, I guess he was right given that my heart felt almost entirely intact after the break-up. I felt a sting, of course – nobodylikesto be rejected and I had the shock from not at all seeing it coming, but I didn’t cry. I still haven’t cried about it, despite it being over a year ago now. He met me for our regular lunchbreak walk around town, broke it off on our second lap around the area, checked up by text a couple of weeks later and the two of us never interacted again.
‘Have you dated at all since him?’ Paige asks, snapping me back to the present.
‘Of course she hasn’t,’ Sara says, as Paige nods along.
‘Hold on, what do you mean “of course?”’ I ask. ‘I’m not exactly a recluse. I have friends, I go out!’
Leaving my life in Brighton wasn’t an easy choice, but Tom got a job in London and I’d craved a fresh start. Plus, if I intended to make it as a journalist, I had to be in the hub of the media landscape. When Sara got wind of my plan, she offered up the spare room of her flat. Now I live rent-free in the middle of Shoreditch with an only slightly overbearing landlord.
I had worried about friends and a social life, and refused to centre my life around Tom or my sister, but then I started here at Groundlings – an indie coffee shop just off Old Street – and met a tonne of people in the same position. Working here comes with a string of post-shift nights out that can get their fair share of wild. Between that and the anti-social shift patterns, I barely have time to take the hour-long train to visit my friends back home.
‘Iwishyou were more of a recluse. Or at least, quieter when you get in late at night.’ Sara cringes. ‘But in the love department... When was the last time you went on a date?’
I think back. ‘There was that girl a month ago...’
Paige interjects. ‘A kiss in a club does not count as a date.’
‘We texted after!’ I say.
‘For like, what? Two weeks? And you never saw each other in person.’ She shrugs.
‘Dating is overrated!’ I change my tactic. ‘And it is certainly not the be-all and end-all. Especially at my age.’
