‘Okay, I have two comments on that.’ I dip some bread in olive oil. ‘One. Based on my friends and me I really didn’t think there was a usual place to meet. And two: what was your weirdest one ever?’
‘That’s a good question.’
We both pause to join the others in thanking the server as he fills the table with plates of enticing tapas.
‘Weird meets?’ I prompt when we’ve finished exclaiming with the others over how extremely delicious everything looks.
‘I once met someone while we were both vomiting from food poisoning, in adjacent toilet cubicles, and then dated her for six months.’ Tom takes a spoonful of patatas bravas.
I nod, satisfied. ‘Definitely weird. You must havereallyliked each other if you were attracted despite the vomiting and the misery.’
‘Yeah, no, the funny thing is – not really. I think wethoughtwe’d bonded because we were so miserable and no-one else had been through that with us but as time went on it became apparent that you can’t build a relationship on mutual gastrointestinal issues.’
I laugh. ‘This is making me feel better about my own disastrous love life. Give me some more.’
‘Let me think.’ Tom hands me a plate of ham and cheese croquettes. My mouth waters just from the smell of them. ‘Okay. Not to big up my own weird dating experience but this is a good one. Car crash. Both of us equally at fault. We reversed into each other.’
‘No, no, no.’ I shake my head sorrowfully. ‘Clearly you don’t read or watch enough romcoms to know that that’s a huge cliché. In fiction it happensallthe time. Actually, I say it happens all the time; that is not in fact true. Itusedto happen all the time. It’s gone out of fashion recently; I’m guessing because it got overused.’
‘I see.’ Tom narrows his eyes. ‘I didn’t realise you were so judgemental. Fine. Iassureyou that I have better ones than that, that you willnotbe able to say were clichés.’
I laugh again and savour a garlicky prawn as Tom thinks for a moment, before he begins to tell me some more of his frankly ridiculous stories.
‘You didwhat?’ asks Carole as Tom’s description of beginning to date a woman he met landing in a cow pat after diving over a wall to escape a stampeding herd of cows (that were not in fact stampeding) falls in a lull in the other three’s conversation.
Soon they’ve joined in and have begun to swap their weirdest first-meets too.
‘Honestly,’ I say eventually, wiping actual tears from under my eyes after a truly stunning story from Ruth involving going to the wrong wedding. ‘Why don’t I have any insane meet stories? Are these alltrue?’
Apparently they are.
‘Did you refer to some disastrous first dates, though?’ asks Tom, like he’s trying to comfort me about my lack of weird first-meets.
‘Well, I mean, yes, obviously. Billions.’
‘How many exactly?’ asks Bea.
‘Tonight’s no-show was the seventh bad first date this year. A combination of being set up by friends and a dating app.’
‘My goodness.’ Carole’s fully joining in with all the conversation now, and she’sgreat. Roger is not just a philandering arse, he’s an idiot. Hewillbe worse off without her, I’m sure. ‘What was wrong with all the others? Did you go for any second dates?’
We’ve moved on from the slightly awkwardif-you-feel-happy-to-sharequalifiers on all our questions now, like we’ve reached proper friendship level already. I genuinely feel like I’m sitting at a table with a group of close girlfriends (okay, Tom’s a man, but he’s so easy to talk to he could genuinely be an actual female friend).
‘Okay. So. Number one. His actualfirst lineto me was: “I’ve never met a girl with hair like yours who wasn’thotin bed”. I walked out.’
I begin to tick them off on my fingers.
‘Number two. I liked him. I thought we were getting on well. Weweregetting on well. Then he showed me a photo of his last girlfriend and I discovered it was a colleague of mine. Who had told us all a couple of weeks before that she’d dumped her boyfriend because his sexual fetishes were too weird for her.
‘Number three. We got as far as a kiss and it wasbad. The first one missed. His lips landed on my cheek and mine were kind of fish-like kissing air. Then we made contact and there wasnochemistry. And kissing is weird when you’ve realised that you don’twantto be kissing that person.’
Bea nods a lot. ‘Tell me about it.’
Ruth nods too.
‘Number four?’ Carole asks.
‘Hang on.’ I think back. ‘Oh, yes. We were meeting in a bar and I got there before him. I’d told him I’d be wearing a green top. He arrived and went straight up to a woman in a pink top, with a huge smile on his face. When we established that I was his blind date, not her, his face fell several feet, and then he spent ages telling me that he was colour blind and that was why he got pink and green confused. Totally missing the point that I could not spend an evening with someone who hadbeamedat another woman and looked like he was going to cry when he realised thatIwas his date.’
