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“It doesn’t have to be,” I try to reassure him. “And if you’re concerned about there being a, y’know, a dynamic…”—I gesture to the bright red walls and the room full of Sheffieldians tucking into plates of steak and chips—”then, and don’t take this the wrong way, this is probably the least romantic place you could conceivably bring a feller.”
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a very romantic person.”
Nowhe’sthe one who’s lying. Admittedly, he’s not a red roses and candlelight kind of bloke but, then, neither am I. And what he is, is someone who lets you use his room when his family kicks you out of yours, who buys you an overpriced guinea pig to hang on a Christmas tree, who takes you to a restaurant he remembers from his childhood, and kisses you like you’re the only lad in the world. “I don’t know, you have your moments.”
He goes a bit red over that, and I’m worried I’ve accidentally taken a left turn onto Flirt Street. “I really don’t. The last time I went on date, I booked a tandem skydive and he hated it.”
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here. “You what?” Our nachos arrive—a proper mountain of them, cheese dripping down the side like lava down a volcano—but I don’t let them distract me from what the fuck Jonathan was thinking. “No, seriously, you what?”
He shades his brow with a hand. “He was younger than me and I wanted to seem cool.”
“You know”—I’m staring at him, kind of delighted—“how sometimes an answer will just give you more questions?”
“I told you, I’m not good at romance.”
“And you thought flinging a guy out an airplane would make him like yez?”
Jonathan extracts a nacho with surgical precision—though, honestly, I think he’s stalling. “I thought there’d be less opportunity for me to fuck it up if we had something to do and there was nothing good on at the cinema that week.”
I’m trying not to laugh but I’m not succeeding. Also I’m not trying that hard. “Who was this poor bloke? And how young was he exactly?”
“His name’s Coby Nightingale. He plays for Croydon FC.”
“You took a professional footballer skydiving?”
“I thought he’d like to do a physical activity.”
“Jonathan, the physical activity you do on dates is called sex.”I help myself to a nacho which turns out to be stuck to another nacho which is stuck to another nacho and so on until Jonathan helps me pry them apart. “Fair play to you, though, for getting with a footballer.”
“Well, as established, I didn’t get with a footballer. I tried to take him skydiving, he turned out to have a tremendous fear of heights, and he vomited on me in the car home.”
It’s got to the point where I can’t tell if I’m trying to reassure him or just taking the piss. “Okay, but you at least asked him out. You were, very briefly, technically a WAG.”
“Granddad Del was overjoyed. He’s been a supporter since the seventies.”
A thought occurs. “How did you even meet? No offence but I don’t feel like you and the first eleven move in the same circles.”
“I was working out a sponsorship deal. We crossed paths at a couple of lunches, he had a go at me for wearing a Sheffield Wednesday scarf but asked me out anyway.”
I feel almost sorry for him. So close, and yet so far. “And your first thought wasI bet what this man really wants is to be strapped to a bloke who isn’t me and dropped through the sky tied to a bedsheet?”
“Essentially, yes.”
The waiter brings us our milkshakes. And they are proper milkshakes, the ones that come in a curvy glass with two straws, even if you’re not sharing them. I’m just taking a sip when another thought occurs. “Hang on a sec, does this mean you’ve also jumped out of a plane?”
“With a professional.”
I stare at him. “Were you not scared?”
He stares back. “Given the circumstances in which I found myself jumping out of a plane, do you really think fear was my primary emotion?”
“Are you really saying that you were more bothered by a bad date than the actual ground rushing towards you at a hundred miles an hour?”
“Well, the bad date was my fault and didn’t come with a parachute.”
He looks like this is still haunting him. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “This is a very solvable problem. Next time you’re on a first date, just don’t take him skydiving.”
“I did work that out for myself.”
