“Apparently”—Bridge squirmed—“he changed his mind. About the job. And, obviously, he must have cancelled his hotel room as well.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” put in the receptionist. “But please leave.”

Priya threw her hands in the air. “You fuckers owe me dinner. Or I’m driving back on my fucking own.”

“Can you at least stop saying ‘fuck’ in the lobby?” asked the receptionist in the plaintive tones of a man who, at this stage, would take what he could get.

“The restaurant here looks perfectly acceptable,” piped up James Royce-Royce. “All their ingredients are apparently sourced within twenty miles of the hotel, and I do like a good side of local beef.”

“Quick question.” I turned back to the receptionist. “Would our going and buying dinner in your restaurant make you less annoyed with us or more annoyed with us?”

The receptionist shrugged. “Right now, I mostly want you away from my desk.”

“Yay.” Bridge did an actual dance. “Food adventure.”

She and I ended up splitting the bill between the two of us since this had been entirely her idea and, theoretically, for my benefit.

After we’d had starters, mains, desserts, and Priya had made a point of ordering coffee, we bundled back into her truck and started the journey home—always the worst part of any road trip, especially one with a gigantic anticlimax in the middle.

“It’s a good sign really.” As ever, Bridge was the first to break a perfectly satisfying miserable silence.

James Royce-Royce lifted his head from James Royce-Royce’s shoulder. “Go on, darling. Spin this one for us.”

“Well, don’t you see? He was so sad when he broke up with Luc that he had to run away to the other side of the country. But when he thought about the reality of leaving you behind, he couldn’t do it.”

“Alternatively,” I said, “he was in a bad place because he’d just got out of a weird not-quite-fake relationship and his parents had been dicks to him so he thought about doing something dramatic. Then realised it was stupid, because his house, his job, and all his friends are in London. Where he’s perfectly happy without me.”

Tom had been half dozing in the corner, but now he sat up. “Is it at all possible there’s a middle ground here? Like maybe whether Oliver wants to get back with Luc has nothing to do with whether he wants to move to Durham?”

“So you’re saying”—I glanced at Tom over Bridge’s shoulder—“that Oliver isn’t happy or unhappy without me because I’m completely irrelevant?”

“No. I’m saying you might be irrelevant to one very specific set of decisions.”

“That’s not true,” protested Bridge loyally. “I’m sure Oliver wouldn’t have been looking for work on the other side of the country if he hadn’t broken up with Luc.”

I made a fuck-it-all gesture. “In any case, it doesn’t matter. I tried to do the big-gesture thing. And all I did was waste about ten hours of everybody’s time.”

“Time spent with friends,” opined James Royce-Royce, “is never wasted. And the beef was excellent, if a trifle under for my taste.”

Priya’s eyes flashed in the mirror. “My time’s been wasted. As has my petrol.”

“I’ll reimburse you for the petrol.”

“And what about the sex I could be having right now?”

“Well…” I blinked. “I’d reimburse you for that as well, but I’m not really qualified. This was your idea, Bridge. Over to you.”

She squeaked. “I don’t think I’m qualified either.”

“Yeah,” said Priya, “can we stop talking about my sexuality like it’s an entry level position at Deloitte?”

We apologised. After which, Bridge transitioned seamlessly back into my love life. “You’d better not be giving up, Luc.”

“He wouldn’t even answer my call.”

“Yes. That’s another good sign. If he didn’t care, he’d be fine to talk to you.”

“We’ve been through this. I didn’t know what I was going to say in a hotel in Durham. I don’t know what I’d have said if he’d answered the phone. And I’m not going to know what to say if I suddenly show up on his doorstep at ten o’clock at night.”

“Oh,” Bridge gasped. “That’s a wonderful idea. Priya, drive to Oliver’s house.”

Priya scowled again. “Sure. I’ll just type ‘Oliver’s house’ into my satnav, shall I?”

“It’s fine. I’ve got his address.”

“This is my truck. Not a fucking Uber.”

“Oliver didn’t like using Uber,” I heard myself say. “He thought their business practices were unethical.”

“Y’know what else is unethical?” Priya shot back. “Making your only South Asian friend drive you everywhere.”

“Ooh”—James Royce-Royce started—“I hadn’t thought about the optics of that. I could take a turn at the wheel if you’d like.”

Priya shook her head. “Nobody has sex in my truck but me. Nobody drives my truck but me.”

“Then stop complaining that we make you drive us places,” I complained.

“You could, for example, get your own cars.”

“With the congestion charge?” James Royce-Royce looked genuinely shocked. “And parking would be a nightmare. Besides, dear heart, you’re the one who chose a career carting scrap metal around.”

“I’m a sculptor, not a refuse collector.”

I closed my eyes. They could go on like this pretty much indefinitely. And I’d had, to put it mildly, a long day—made longer by its absolute futility. I mean, it was probably for the best that Oliver wasn’t randomly upending his entire life in a moment of…whatever it had been a moment of. And, actually, I’d had those kind of moments myself, and they were never a good sign. But, in terms of my relationship, fake or otherwise or lack thereof, it did leave me sort of nowhere. At least if we’d found Oliver in Durham, I could have been all “No, please don’t go, come back with me.” Whereas if I tried to talk him now, I’d just have be like “hi.” And I couldn’t quite see that being a love story for the ages.

Wow. This sucked.

Resting my head against the window, I let myself doze to the humming of the engine and the comforting white noise of my friends bickering.