Page 10

In the whole of my thirty-six years on this planet, I’ve failed to find love to the point where I’ve given up, thrown in the towel, and resigned myself to being single for the rest of my days, so the chance of me finding it in twenty-eight days is probably zero.

It’s going to have to be plan B. I’m going to have to resort to persuading someone to pose as my boyfriend for one day. In my head, it sounds easy. Maybe it will be? Everyone loves a wedding—a free meal, drinks, and dancing. It’s a great day out. Surely someone will be up for a bit of a party. But then there’s the small detail of pretending to be my date.

“Will it be a problem? Do you both work weekends?” Sydney asks.

“Not at all. I’ll tell my boss I… we need the day off.” I wave my hand while wishing my boss, Jamal, wasn’t happily married and could be persuaded to act as my date, but I doubt his heavily pregnant wife, who’s due to give birth in the next month, would be happy about it.

“Great. I’m so relieved.” Sydney pulls her bag onto her lap and pushes her hand inside. “I should’ve guessed what Drew was up to this morning when he put an invitation in my bag.” She pulls out a cream envelope, followed by a fancy pen.

I glance down to see the card on the table. Reading upside down, I watch, in horror, as she writes, Alice and.

She stops and looks at me.

“I just need his name.”

“His name,” I repeat, buying myself some time.

“He does have one, right?” Sydney grins, and for a second, I contemplate confessing. What choice do I have? There is no boyfriend. There is no guy. There is no man who works at Kitchen City as a designer who asked me out in the Bronx kitchen.

And then he pops into my head. Just like that.

Because there is a guy who works at Kitchen City. There is a guy who is a kitchen designer, and two out of three boxes are as good as it’s going to get.

“Owen,” I blurt. “His name is Owen.”

What is wrong with me? Why do I have no restraint? Why do I speak first and then stress about it later?

“Great.” Sydney writes Owen next to my name, then proceeds to fold the invite and place it carefully back in the envelope before handing it to me. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

Taking the envelope from her, I smile, knowing I must look completely deranged as inside, I’m dying. Owen. Why the hell did I say Owen?

Because he’s a man. Because he works with me. Because he was the only name that came to me in my hour of need.

And I want to convince myself this will be okay. It’ll all work out just fine. But then I remember that I barely know Owen.

Other than our passing comments over the past year while we’ve been working together, I know nothing about him other than he dresses smartly, he only drinks red bush tea, and he isn’t the best at social chitchat. I know silly things about him, like his favourite smell is the new carpet scent, and he doesn’t believe in the five-second rule, and, in a fight, he thinks a crocodile would beat an alligator any day of the week. But these aren’t things about him, about his life, about who he is as a person. There’s only one thing I do know, and I’m not sure whether this will help or hinder me.

Owen is already spoken for.

5

Owen

My tetchiness at leaving the house this morning while Paul was still snoring hasn’t dissipated during the last few hours. I got my first job when I was fourteen. I’d asked my dad for a pair of branded trainers. He agreed to buy me them until I told him the price, at which he slapped me on the back and laughed, thinking I was joking. When he realised I was serious, he said if I wanted to pay that much money for “some shoes,” I’d have to earn it myself. Not one to be deterred, I started stacking shelves at a local supermarket. I’ve been working weekends ever since.

The staffroom is empty, just the way I like it. Most of the staff are on the shop floor since Saturdays are one of our busiest trading days. It makes little difference to me. I’ll spend the day locked away in my office, working through the designs assigned to me throughout the week.

But as I make my tea, I find myself thinking about Alice.

Today’s the day she’s meeting the old friend.

I find it difficult to imagine not seeing your best friend for twenty-one years. Smithy was my best friend in high school and still is. His hair’s thinner now, and he’s married to Romana with two kids, two rabbits, and an allotment, but we still make time for each other.

Their twin girls, Darcy and Dana, are feral in the way only small children can be, though thankfully they inherited Romana’s thick dark curls instead of Smithy’s tragic hairline. He’s forever complaining about hairstyles they demand when Romana’s working and is constantly watching YouTube videos on fishtail plaits.

Paul and I have a standing invite to their dinner table every Thursday, and as much as I enjoy these evenings in their warm kitchen, eating steaming bowls of Smithy’s signature chilli while the girls fight over who gets to sit next to Uncle Owen, I always breathe a huge sigh of relief when we return home to the peace, the order, and just the two of us.

Especially for the past few months, as Smithy has been pestering me about “getting back out there.” I was “out there” a while ago, but every date ended the same way—with the god-awful conversation I feel obligated to have before things become serious, because I refuse to end up where I was three years ago, having wasted eight years of my life on someone who didn’t deserve them.