the next day – not true, obviously – he was like, “Why don’t I get our drinks next time and you pick up the tab tonight?”’
‘What? The tight fucker! No wonder he’s looking forward to a comfortable retirement if he never buys his own bloody drinks!’
‘I know, right. And my card was behind the bar and I couldn’t exactly force him to get his wallet out of his extremely deep pocket with his extremely short arm, could I?’
She shook her head.
‘So there we go. A date with the dullest man in the world ended up costing me the best part of eighty quid.’
We stripped our weights off the bar and moved over to the mat. I got down into a plank and Dani put a weight on my back. As I always did, I started off thinking this was really quite easy, and wondering if I would try a heavier one next time. And as always, after about thirty seconds, I felt my arms and legs start to tremble and my mind begin to tell me insistently that this was a really terrible idea and I should stop right now.
Dani’s voice distracted me from the growing urge to give up. ‘I’m so sorry you went through that. Honestly, what a wanker. That really sucks. What kind of dick expects a girl to pay on the first date? I bet he hadn’t even been stood up, I bet he was just on the scrounge to be bought a few drinks and wang on about interest rates. Loser. Time’s up, you can stop.’
I dropped to my knees and we swapped over.
‘No, but the thing is,’ I said, ‘I actually don’t mind at all. I didn’t want to meet Mr Right on my first go. Well, I did, obviously, but Robbie says I won’t know who Mr Right is until I’ve been out with loads of Mr Wrongs, so that’s what I’m doing.’
‘But isn’t that – surely I’m done now?’
‘Ten more seconds. Isn’t it what?’
‘It all sounds a bit… I don’t know. If it was me, I’d want a bit more romance. Like, your eyes meet across a crowded room and suddenly your heart skips a beat and you know that he’s The One.’
I sighed. ‘That’s what happened with me and Joe, and look where it got me. Back at university we were in the same queue for beers at a festival, we got talking and bam – I thought we’d be together forever. Then three months later I got an attack of commitment-phobia and ended it, and I spent six years regretting it. This time, I’m all about the scientific approach.’
I didn’t mention that the science I was basing my approach on was what lots of people would regard as next-level woo. I did too, quite a lot of the time – except when my phone buzzed with one of the app’s spookily accurate messages. And besides, I’d accepted Robbie’s dare and taken on this challenge – project, whatever it was – so I might as well see it through.
My turn in the plank was over and I lay on the mat for a bit, waiting for my arms to stop feeling like they were about to fall off. Then I rolled over and sat up. To my surprise, Dani wasn’t standing next to me, waiting for me to start her timer. She was in her plank already, the metal plate on her back. I could see drips of sweat from her nose landing on the mat.
And there next to her, looking intently at his watch as he counted down a minute for her, was Fabian Flatley.
I had no idea how long he’d been there, listening to us.
Challenge or no challenge, project or no project, it was hard not to let my first date make me doubt my decision to leap into the murky waters of online dating, which, if they were infested with men like no-show Dominic and dull Justin, no doubt contained far worse, too. And it made me doubt myself, too. If I wasn’t good enough for Dominic to even turn up and meet for a drink, what hope did I have of finding an actual, proper relationship? And what right did I have to decide that Justin – who was, after all, perfectly normal and pleasant and some would consider quite the catch – wasn’t good enough for me?
Was I going to have to lower my standards? Were there men out there who’d have to lower theirs to