as the waiter reappeared with two immense-looking buckets of frozen yoghurt. He placed them on the table in front of us and backed away, eyes wide and transfixed, half bowing as he went. Either he was terrified of us or he was in love with us. Possibly both.
‘I talked to John,’ I said lightly.
‘Oh,’ Sumi dug into her dessert with a neutral expression on her pretty face. ‘Did you now?’
‘And I might have kissed him.’
She looked up so quickly, I was afraid her head would snap clean off. A spoon of yoghurt that had been headed for her mouth, sticking her in the neck.
‘What do you mean, you kissed him?’ she screamed.
‘All right, calm down,’ I whispered, smiling nervously at the mother and her stirring baby beside us. ‘You literally just told me you’re going to bring a life into the world and I didn’t even raise my voice.’
‘I’m having a baby, I’m not breeding chimeras,’ she replied, her voice lowered by barely a fraction. ‘What do you mean, you kissed John? When? Where? How? And again, what the fuck?’
‘At the baby shower, under the stuffed rabbit, with my lips,’ I groaned. Worst game of Cluedo ever. ‘Technically he kissed me, I was the kissee, not the kisser. I don’t even know how it happened.’
Sumi pffted loudly. ‘It happened because he’s obviously got a raging boner for you. How dare you sit there and tell me how terrible things are when you’re casually getting it on with one of the most beautiful men my gay self has ever seen, Rosalind Reynolds, you are a disgrace.’
‘Sumi!’ I suddenly very much wished we had opted for an establishment that had wine. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re unhappy and confused and you don’t know what you’re doing and we’ll get to that,’ she said, waving away the last ten minutes of emotional revelations. ‘You snogged John at the baby shower? Now with the details please.’
‘That’s it, that’s the whole thing,’ I insisted before biting my lip. ‘Except we also had a bit of a dance at the dark disco. A sexy dance.’
Sumi gasped, loudly and dramatically, with her entire body.
‘And just like with everything else, I have no idea what’s going on.’
‘Your honour, I refer you to my first point,’ she replied. ‘John’s raging boner. Wait, you kissed under the rabbit? That is kinky.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, my fingers finding my lips as my memory tiptoed back to the kiss. Short, sharp and electric. I could still feel it. ‘It’s not happening again. I just had to tell you before I exploded.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Sumi confirmed, resuming her serious expression. ‘I am listening.’
‘Did you know he was divorced?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Oh yeah. One of my mates at the firm did his divorce. That’s how we met. Adrian thought he could train him up as a new wingman but me and Lucy couldn’t put him through that off the back of a nasty break-up.’
‘I heard it wasn’t great?’
‘The nastiest,’ Sumi confirmed. ‘You must have seen her at the bar, she’s always there, haunting the place. Blonde? Pretty? Very tall. Two red horns poking out of her forehead and a forked tail sticking out her arse. Cheated on him with one of their friends and then refused to sell him the business. It’s so messy.’
‘Poor John,’ I said slowly, my heart lurching at the thought of how hard that must have been for him.
‘Not that it matters to you.’ Sumi leaned back in her chair, a calm coming over her face.
‘It doesn’t?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Because you’ve got Patrick.’
‘Right, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Patrick.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Sumi said, watching me shovel my fro-yo. It really was very good, even if it wasn’t wine. ‘All you’ve ever wanted was Patrick Parker. And now you’ve got him, you don’t want him? Come on, Ros, you’re not that kind of girl. What’s going on?’
‘I just want things to feel easy again,’ I replied, sure of my answer for the first time in what felt like forever. ‘I’m tired of being tired. And stressed and on edge. I want to wake up in the morning and have all the answers. That’s all I want, for life to be easy.’
‘Well, I can’t help you there,’ Sumi said sadly, sticking her spoon into my dessert. ‘I’m a brown lesbian who’s about to use a sperm donor to become a single mother. I don’t know if I’ve ever known what easy feels like.’