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Cleo: Yes.
Charlie: Would tomorrow night work for you?
Cleo: Yeah, that’d be perfect. What time?
Charlie: 6? We can meet in the city, at Melbourne Central.
Cleo: Great :) See you then.
Now, I check the time on my phone. Twenty minutes have passed, and there’s still no sign of her. I’m about to check my messages again when someone rushes up to me.
“Hi! Charlie, right?” She brushes her hair out of her eyes. “I’m so sorry for being late, it’s totally unforgivable. Nice to finally meet you.”
I stare. She’s prettier in person. Long brown hair, a few shades lighter than Lucas’s copper hair. Full red lips, arched brows, brown eyes with long lashes.
My stomach squirms. Pretty people make me nervous.
“Uh, yeah, nice to meet you too,” I manage. “Don’t worry about being late, I get it.”
Cleo smiles. “Let’s get dinner,” she says. “Where are we going?”
“I have a couple of suggestions.” Last night, I spent an hour researching restaurants. I wanted to go somewhere nice, but not crazy expensive. While I work part time at a bubble tea store, I’m not rolling in money. “Do you prefer Malaysian, Italian or burgers?”
“Umm.” She taps her face as she thinks. “Is Malaysian food spicy?”
“It can be, though I don’t find it that spicy.”
“Well, I can’t handle spice, like, at all. And I don’t really like burgers. They’re so hard to eat in a dignified way, you know what I mean? They just fall apart and sauce gets on your fingers. Let’s go with the Italian place.”
I nod, and we head out of the shopping centre onto the street. Cleo chatters on for a minute about how her train was late and that public transport in this city is atrocious, then suddenly says, “You’re shorter than I expected.”
“Oh.” I’m silent for a moment. “I have my height on my profile.”
“I know, I know,” she says, “but to be honest, I don’t know what all those feet and inches mean. We use the metric system in this country for a reason, you know?”
I force a chuckle, then realise how fake and weird it sounds and stop.
“So, how’s your week been?” I ask, as casually as I can manage.
Cleo launches into a story about how one of her tutors for her advertising class is the worst. I nod and ask questions, feeling both relieved and anxious about the fact that I don’t have to talk much. I don’t want her to think I’m boring. I know I’m not physically attractive, so my personality’s all I really have.
Thankfully, by the time we reach the dimly-lit restaurant and are seated — “romantic,” Cleo says, about the candles on the wooden tables and the olive trees in the corners — I’m feeling more relaxed. We order our food — pasta for her, pizza for me, and when she asks me if I’ve done much travelling, I take the opportunity to talk about the school trip I took to Italy during high school.
“You must have eaten a lot of Italian food,” she says.
“Yes. I gained, like, five kilos.”
She laughs. “Well, then you can tell me how authentic this food is.”
When the food comes, I dig in, though I quickly learn it’s difficult to hold a conversation while eating, especially when she asks me a question when my mouth is full. I have to chew quickly, and I swallow an olive whole when she asks me whether I’m looking for something serious or casual.
“Well,” I say, eyes watering from the olive scraping down my throat. “I’m looking for a long-term relationship. So, something serious.”
Cleo nods slowly, spinning pasta around her fork.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I’m open to both,” she says. “But something long-term…sounds nice.”
