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This started accidentally. It is no longer accidental.

I am not a person given to large emotional declarations. I keep my own company well. I have built a life that is organised and self-sufficient and deliberately mine.

I am revising it.

I find I don’t mind.

On Wednesday, Patrick is in Singapore now, day two of four, I have lunch with Tomas.

This is a standing arrangement — we have done this since university, the two of us, a café near the Jordaan, once a week when we are both in the city. Tomas has been my closest friend for sixteen years and knows me with the specific accuracy of someone who has watched me be wrong about myself multiple times and said nothing until I was ready to hear it.

He knows about Patrick. He has known since Cancun, since the first message I sent him from the hotel pool — there's someone here — which, for me, constituted an announcement. He has been watching the situation develop with the patience of someone who knows better than to push.

Today he doesn't push. He orders, we eat, we talk about other things first — his work, a problem he's having with his upstairs neighbour, a film he saw last week that he thinks I would hate. I would hate it. We talk about that for a while. It is comfortable in the way that sixteen years of friendship is comfortable. No performance required.

Then, somewhere in the second coffee, he says: "You seem different."

I look at him.

"Good different," he says. "Not … I'm not saying something's wrong. I'm saying you seem…” He considers it. "Lighter. Is that the word?"

I look at my cup. Outside the café a cyclist stops and locks her bike to a post and walks into the bakery next door. An ordinary Wednesday. I have had hundreds of ordinary Wednesdays and I am aware, sitting here, that this one feels different from all of them in a way I can't attribute to anything except the fact that Patrick texted me this morning from his hotel in Singapore and I read it before I was properly awake and smiled at the ceiling.

"I'm happy," I say. Simply. Because it's true and Tomas has earned the truth and there is no useful reason to complicate it.

Tomas is quiet for a moment. This means it landed the way he hoped it would. "Yeah," he says. "I can see that."

"It's a strange feeling."

"Strange how."

"I'm not … I'm not accustomed to it being this uncomplicated," I say. "Usually there's a calculation. A condition. I'm happy if, I'm happy when. This is just…” I stop. "It just is."

Tomas smiles. Not the amused smile, the other one, the genuine one he saves for things he actually means. "That's good, Jan."

"I know."

We sit with that for a moment. The café is warm. Someone near the window is talking too loudly on a phone and I notice it and then stop noticing it.

Then Tomas says: "Have you slept with him yet?"

This is Tomas. The question no one else would ask, asked at the exact moment I am least prepared for it. I look at the canal through the window. There is a pause.

"You haven't," he says. Not a question.

"I'm waiting for him to make the move."

"Why?"

"Because." I choose the words carefully. "He came out recently. This is new for him. I want it to be his decision — fully, clearly, when he's ready. I don't want to be someone who…” I stop. "I want him to be sure."

"That's thoughtful," Tomas says.

"You sound surprised."

"A little. You're not historically known for your patience."

"I'm very patient."