Nadia was an hour late for work, and in a foul mood. She’d been on time for work once this week, on Monday, but had forgotten to set her alarm twice after that. Last night she’d had a cocktail after work with her team, and then met her old colleague Naomi for dinner and they had talked so late that she was basically asleep by the time she fell into bed at midnight – again forgetting to set an alarm. That meant she’d woken up this Thursday morning with a start, had to rush to shower, and hadn’t had time to fully assess if her outfit actually looked like an outfit or was mismatched in a way she couldn’t pass off as cool. She’d have to start The New Routine to Change My Life again tomorrow. Or maybe on Monday.
‘Don’t act like you’re mad!’ said Emma, when she eventually called back in response to the scathing voice note. ‘It’s a cute advert. I did you a favour! And I promise I didn’t do it when we were drunk. I saved it in drafts and only sent it yesterday, when I was sure it was a good one.’
‘It’s not a good one! It’s awful!’ said Nadia, determined to give her a hard time for doing it without her permission. I don’t bite?! What was Emma thinking?
‘No! It is a good one! I 200 per cent know in my bones he will approach you. You’d be talking to him right now if you’d been on time for work! That’s how good it is!’
Nadia had a weird twinge in her tummy at the thought of it – that if she had gone into the office on time, on her regular train, she could be talking to her future right now. But her future could wait twenty-four hours. Couldn’t it? She could use today to build her courage. Suddenly she was less angry and more excited.
After talking to Emma, Nadia picked up the paper again, open on the page with Missed Connections on. She took a breath and reread it, carefully unpicking it sentence by sentence.
It’s creepy that you’re watching me when you could be saying hello, but maybe you’re trying to be romantic.
Okay, well. That bit was actually okay, if she was totally honest. It was a sort of warning that he had better not be an actual creep, stalking her or something. She could deal with that. The line between big romantic gesture from a stranger and weird stalking was, actually, pretty fine, and probably rested on how handsome and well-adjusted the author of the letters was. Nadia had once read a Twitter thread about a girl whose date had known to come to the back door of her house, not the front, and brought a bouquet of lilies for her, because he knew she liked lilies. The woman said she’d never told him to use the back door, and that her favourite flowers had never come up in conversation; and to some it might have seemed like she was overreacting, but this woman said she knew in her stomach something wasn’t right. Two weeks later, the guy was arrested for masturbating onto her car bonnet at three o’clock in the morning.
I just want you to know that I won’t bite until at least the third date, so don’t be shy. Bloody hell. That bit really was awful. Horrid, horrid, horrid. I won’t bite until at least the third date? Emma was insane for including that. It was provocative in all the wrong ways. If Nadia had written it, she would have said something like … well. She wasn’t actually sure, off the top of her head. That’s why she’d delayed writing her own response – it was tough to get the tone right! But just because she hadn’t got around to it herself didn’t mean she wouldn’t have done it in the end. Probably. Maybe.
Hmmm. Nadia started to acknowledge the edges of a feeling that maybe Emma had done her a favour. Would she have ever decided on the ‘perfect’ response? Maybe it was like Pilates: you could put off doing it, or you could just go and get it over with and admit the flood of endorphins felt incredible after.
If you think I’m devastatingly cute then be brave with it: kind, romantic and bold? That’s my love language.
Hmmm. That bit was nice. Nadia could deal with that. It sort of stated her values and she