He held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sorry, sorry. Mine was a niche scenario. Had a whole plan but then drank way too much prosecco before the speeches.’
I shot him a look. ‘Because as we know, I have a great track record with free-flowing prosecco.’
Daniel smirked. ‘Well, I, for one, did actually think that it was great.’
I sighed.
‘No one cares what’s said in a wedding speech. Just don’t make it too long, and don’t mention any of the exes. Surely this kind of thing should come easily to an expert on love.’
The phrase made me want to tear my hair out. An expert on love. Yeah fucking right. All of a sudden I just really did not want to talk about this any more.
‘Anyway, I’m doomed and have accepted my fate. Let’s go make breakfast. I bought hash browns.’
We padded into the kitchen, him yanking on a T-shirt just as Maeve left her room, bag thrown over her shoulder and ready to leave.
‘Oh, hey.’
There was a moment of awkward silence before Daniel jumped into action, holding his hand out.
‘I’m Daniel. You must be the infamous Maeve.’
Maeve eyed his hand before taking it. I knew everything about my best friend, and I knew when she was holding back an eye roll. My cheeks flushed.
‘That I am. Nice to finally meet you.’
Aside from our initial meet-cute, I’d only seen Daniel four times. Once for coffee, once for cheese toasties, and now twice when he’d stayed over. It was hardly unusual that Maeve hadn’t been introduced.
‘I bet.’
I winced at his response, even if he was joking. Maeve was edging closer and closer to the front door.
‘Where are you off to?’ I pulled a pan out of the cupboard and busied myself opening a carton of eggs, trying not to seem like I desperately wanted to hear her answer.
‘Going to meet a friend for some breakfast. We’re trying out a new place in Blackheath.’ In true Maeve fashion, she’d clearly fought an internal battle and come out the other side, her voice warmer than thirty seconds ago. ‘If I’d known you were making breakfast, I’d have asked you to join us.’
I tried to imagine anything worse than a double date with Maeve, Rory and Daniel. Maybe getting stuck in a lift, but even then, there was an emergency button.
‘Sounds delicious. It’s a good thing Penny is on hash brown duty.’
I finally turned back around, eggs frying on the hob and my hands now out of things to do. Maeve was staring at me, one eyebrow raised, with a look on her face that said ‘we’ll be debriefing about this later’. It made me miss her, even though we spent the majority of our time under the same roof. She was wearing a bright sunshine-yellow blouse tucked into denim dungarees, and she had a stream of bangles running up her left wrist. I hadn’t borrowed her clothes in weeks. I’d been trudging around London in murky neutrals for a criminal amount of time.
‘Well, aren’t you lucky.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve always thought that it’s so nice when a man makes the effort. Anyway, I’m going to be super late for breakfast. Hash brown free, sadly. My friend can’t stand them.’
There was so much to unpack there that I wasn’t even sure where to begin. But there was only one person I knew in my own life who hated hash browns. I never forgot it, because I always ate his. Rory.
‘Enjoy.’ Maeve waved to me on her way out, leaving me alone with Daniel. I watched her leave with a lump in my throat. There was a hot man standing in my kitchen, but I kind of wished that it was just Maeve and me, attempting to make pancakes like we had when we first moved in.
‘Well, she has a bee in her bonnet.’ Daniel laughed, sitting at the table. ‘Who needs help sticking hash browns in the oven?’
I turned away, not trusting myself not to say something mean.
‘Toast duty is still an option.’ I pointed to the bag of Warburtons on the counter.
‘Right.’ I heard the chair screech backward as he jumped up. ‘On it.’
We worked in tense silence for a minute, my blood pressure gradually sinking downwards to a normal level. Daniel was humming the lyrics to ‘Easy’ under his breath, tearing into a slice of white bread with his teeth whilst he waited for the toast to pop.
‘So, how’s work?’
I fought the urge to throw one of my eggs at the wall. Nothing about this was feeling easy or remotely like a peaceful Sunday morning.
‘Let’s just say that Level isn’t my favourite thing in the world right now.’ I filled him in on the Twitter storm, and probably out of kindness, he pretended he hadn’t heard about it.
‘Sometimes, when our whole life revolves around a project, it’s really hard to see the woods from the trees. Easy to hate it just because it’s the nearest thing to hate.’
I pondered what he’d said. ‘I actually don’t think it is that. And I don’t hate it. I just don’t know if what we’re doing is that great.’
I spoke quickly, horrified but simultaneously relieved. One benefit of Daniel was that he was so far removed from my work life, I could freely blurt out my concerns without worrying that he’d think bad of me for saying it.
He instantly challenged me. ‘What about it isn’t working?’
I glugged back my second coffee of the day. ‘Well, for all intents and purposes, the basics are working. People can log in, receive their matches, and start chatting. It does what basically every dating app says on the tin. But that’s exactly what I set out not to do. I wanted to create an algorithm for love that actually worked, but I think I’ve realised I don’t even know what that should look like.’
Daniel wasn’t looking at me, instead focused on buttering the toast. ‘No one expects you to have all the answers, you know.’
My silence must have spoken volumes because he looked up. ‘What I mean by that is, could you enlist someone to help? Ask for advice?’
I thought about how my idea to work with Link had gone down like a sack of shit.
