“What?” Mina and I both say, although she is a little louder, a little bit more shocked. I turn to her and see her face has fallen completely and I panic momentarily that she’s close to tears.Please don’t cry, I think. I don’t know why but I don’t think I could cope seeing her cry.
“Someone’s got food poisoning or some other bollocks. They’ve rescheduled for Monday morning.”
“But they can’t do that!” Mina exclaims.
“They just did,” Garrett says, already looking bored.
I look at Mina, resisting the urge to put a calming hand on her arm. “This is good news. It gives us all of tomorrow to practise.”
“But you just said we were completely ready?!”
“Well, more practise makes more perfect?” I try.
Mina breathes in deeply and I watch her chest rise and fall. “Fine,” she says, grumpily.
“I suppose we can open the beer fridge now then,” Garrett says with a look at his watch that is far too quick for him to even read the time there. And then he’s gone.
“Sure you don’t want to stay for a quick one?” I ask Mina as she closes her laptop and starts gathering her things. I stand up to do the same.
“No,” she says, her tone a bit more relaxed now. “I have a ton of emails I’ve ignored today so I’ll just go home and work my way through them. I also need to get a few things ready for tomorrow evening. I’m going to henna my sister, for the party.”
“Oh, yes, the party of the year,” I say, with a little shimmy that I instantly regret.
Mina gives me a quick, appraising look before she speaks again, “You know you don’t really need to come.”
“A deal is a deal, Mina,” I remind her.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t feel as much of a problem anymore, the whole Hannah and Sally thing. I’ve barely thought about them being there all week, and maybe I should just be brave and face it alone.”
I study Mina and while I hear what she’s saying, I don’t see a face or body language that matches her confidence. She looks tired and defeated, and like the laptop, notebook and phone she carries in her arms weigh a ton. I’m about to insist on my attendance, along with a borderline bossy reminder that I will make the party fun for her, just like last Saturday was, but then I realise she could be saying all this for a very different reason.
“Mina, do you not want me to come?” I ask and I shouldn’t be holding my breath for her answer but I am.
Mina seems to need time to think this over and she takes so many long seconds I’m convinced I know her answer before she replies.
“It’s not a problem,” I say and I force a heavy smile. “If you don’t want me to come, or you’d rather go with someone else, I totally understand.”
“No,” Mina says quickly and loudly. But her voice drops when she continues, “I want you to come.”
“You do?”
She pouts at me then, and this crack in her armour makes me smile, a real smile.
“I mean, last weekend was fun,” she concedes.
“It was. And this week is a week we should celebrate being over.”
She chews on that a bit before nodding in agreement. “Maybe. I just don’t want you to think the whole dating thing is going to change things at work. I mean on Monday, when they decide who’s going to be the project lead and when we both have to interview for Creative Director. Work is still work.”
I don’t know why this sours my smile a little but I try not to let it slip. I also feel the need to prove to Mina I’m on the same page, even if I’m less sure of this myself. “Don’t you mean the wholefakedating thing?”
Mina blinks once before replying, “Yeah. That.”
Maybe it’s the way she agrees so easily, or maybe it’s because I need the message to get through to my own brain which has now taken it upon itself to make me feel inexplicably sad at the fact we both agree our date on Saturday will be completely and utterly fake. Maybe it will reassure her if I remind her we’re on the same page.
“And you know, the things you said, and the things we did,” I say and wait for the glint in her eyes to tell me she understands. “There are no expectations there. In fact, maybe it’s best we just agree we don’t do anything like that again. Just to keep work, work, and not interfere with the presentation on Monday.”
Mina nods, almost to herself as she mulls this over. When she doesn’t agree immediately, a spark of hope fires up inside me as I wonder if maybe she’ll disagree, if she’ll maybe step closer to me and lean up to whisper some of those fantastically filthy things in my ear again. Things I’ve been thinking about far too often this week.
