‘All yours,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ I bent over to fill my own water bottle.
‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’
I felt my heart give a little jump that had nothing to do with the thousand metres I’d just completed on the rowing machine. Was he about to ask me out? Me? Right here, in the gym, on the very day on which I’d decided that it was time to do something about my single state? I remembered the last words the Stargazer app had pinged into my phone:
Fortune favours the brave.
If he did, I resolved, I was damn well going to say yes.
‘Ask away,’ I said, turning and sipping water as alluringly as I could.
‘Um… my name’s Stephen, by the way. I’m here most afternoons, same as you.’
I nodded. I’d seen him there, just never had the benefit of a close-up before.
‘I’m Zoë.’
‘Hi, Zoë. Uh… God, this is awkward.’
I smiled, touched by his shyness. ‘Take your time.’
I looked over to the pull-up bar, where Dani was finishing off her second set, and his gaze followed mine. Dani dropped down off the bar and rubbed her trembling arms.
Now, Stephen’s words came out in a rush. ‘Your friend – the girl you train with?’
‘Dani.’ My warm glow of anticipation melted away, like I’d just chucked the contents of my water bottle over my head.
‘Dani.’ His tone was all kind of reverent. He might as well have been saying ‘the blessed Virgin Mary’. ‘Does she have a boyfriend at all?’
‘Ooof,’ Robbie said, when I relayed the story to him over our shepherd’s pie prep later that afternoon. ‘That must have smarted a bit.’
‘Tell me about it. And when I told Dani afterwards, she just laughed and said he was on a hiding to nothing, because he’s not her type, and if he asked her out she’d knock him back in a kind way, and I was welcome to him. But that’s not the point, is it?’
‘Zoë.’ Robbie put down his wooden spoon and folded his arms across his chest. ‘May I have your attention for just one second?’
‘What?’ I kept my eyes fixed on the pan of chopped onions I was stirring, so he couldn’t see that I might be about to cry.
‘Ahem.’ He picked up the spoon again and tapped it on the worktop.
Reluctantly, I turned and looked at him.
‘That’s better. Now, listen up. You are bloody gorgeous. I’ve never seen this Dani and I’m sure she’s smoking too, but just because your man in the gym fancied her and not you, doesn’t mean you get to be down on yourself. I won’t have it. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ I sniffed and blinked my eyes rapidly a few times. ‘But…’
‘But what? She’s tall and dark, you’re petite with red hair. Different strokes for different folks, am I right? I bet there are plenty of blokes out there who’d look at her and go, “Eeeuuuw,” and look at you and go, “Phwoar.”’
‘I guess. But the thing is, if you’re dating, you’re basically putting yourself out there for people to go eeeuuuw or phwoar at, over and over again. And I just don’t know if I’m up for that.’
Robbie twirled the spoon in his fingers like a cheerleader’s baton, sending minced lamb spattering against the wall.
‘Ooops.’ He grabbed a cloth. ‘What you need is a resilience strategy.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean…’ He looked at the spoon again, then replaced it in the pan. ‘You need to be able to deal with knock-backs. Because, I’m not going to lie, you’ll get them. But dating’s meant to be fun, not hard work. You need to treat it like a game.’
‘More like the flipping Hunger Games.’
He tutted. ‘Don’t be so negative! If the idea of on-tap no-strings nookie isn’t enough to motivate you, then we’re going to have to find something that will.’
‘Meeting my Mr Right, so I’ll never have to date anyone else ever again?’
‘Won’t work. That way, you’d settle for Mr Good Enough, and then realise he’s not actually good enough, and before you know it you’ll be back to square one. You need to challenge yourself to date lots of people so you can figure out what right looks like.’
‘But I don’t want—’
‘Zoë!’
‘Sorry. What do you mean, though? Like, work my way through the alphabet, from Alfred to Zachary, and hope I get lucky round about Christopher?’
‘That could work. Although if you got as far as Q you might get stuck.’
‘Yeah, there aren’t that many Quentins about, are there?’
‘Exactly. You need something where there’s an even distribution.’
‘Like what?’
Robbie stirred the sauce for a moment. I could see his mind working furiously.
‘The zodiac!’ he said. ‘Oh my God, that’s inspired. No wonder you hired me, I’m a strategic genius.’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘What, you think I should date a guy from every star sign until I find one I click with?’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘But…’ I paused, thinking of the Stargazer app on my phone. I’d installed it a year or so back. It had seemed like a bit of fun, at first, even though it claimed to base its predictions on big data derived from international space agencies and a load of other science stuff that had completely lost me. Still, sometimes the messages that pinged onto my phone seemed almost uncannily accurate.
‘But what?’
‘Is that stuff actually real? I mean, how can it be?’
‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Astrology has been regarded as a scholarly tradition throughout history. It’s the wisdom of the ancients.’
‘And Mystic Meg in the Sun.’
‘Okay, and Mystic Meg. But that’s not the point. The point is to make dating fun.’
I switched off the gas burner under the potatoes.
‘I suppose anything that’ll make this whole finding-a-man malarkey feel like fun has to be worth a go,’ I said.
‘So you’ll do it?’
Abruptly, my enthusiasm deserted me. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Go on, I dare you.’
‘Robbie, I—’
‘Double dare you!’
‘Robbie!’
‘Triple dare with a cherry on top and sprinkles!’
‘I’ll think about it.’
It was after eleven thirty that night when Frazzle and I arrived home. As I unlocked the door of my flat after climbing the stairs, my legs so tired and heavy it felt almost like I might not make it to the top, I heard the click of Frazzle’s cat flap and he wiggled his way in through the window, hopped up onto my bed and settled down for a good wash.
‘Where have you been then?’ I asked him. ‘Busy day?’
He glanced at me, blinked, then carried on scrubbing his face with his paw like he was going in for a mega exfoliating session.
As usual after a long day, I felt knackered but also too wired to settle down to sleep. There was nothing I wanted to watch on TV. I would have loved a hot bath but the flat had only a tiny shower cubicle that provided hot water in a way I guess you’d describe as quirky, if you were its mum and wanted to make it feel better about itself. I’d eaten dinner earlier in the pub kitchen, so there was no point in making myself a piece of toast.