Page 61

Meeting Eddy’s family sounds more interesting than cleaning my room or watching old league games. Also, it would help our image – that’s what I tell myself while I get smartened up anyway. I dress to impress, as best I can, because I want to make a good impression for Eddy. Real relationship or not, I want his family to like me – but only as a favour to a colleague. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m curious about him, or that I want to see the place where he grew up, or that the idea of meeting his mum gives me a fizzy feeling in my chest.

When I’m ready I head outside, so he can pick me up.

Meeting the family, bloody hell, I haven’t met a boy’s family since I was at school. I’ve forgotten how to do it. I guess it’s just like meeting anyone, right? I just need to do my best to be normal and nice and I’ll be fine.

Imagine if this were real though. If relationships could move this easily, without months of uncertainty, trying to decode messages, analysing every emoji. Just a man simply calling and saying ‘my family wants to meet you’, and you saying ‘okay’, and that being that.

Then again, the reason this is so easy is because there are no real stakes; it doesn’t matter how into each other we are, if we’re moving too fast; and his family don’t even need to like me, because realistically they’ll probably never see me again.

I’m standing outside the main entrance to the stadium in jeans, ankle boots and a navy-blue jumper – a subtle nod to the Lions.

Eddy pulls up in his SUV. I climb inside.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ I reply.

He looks… smiley, in a way I’m not used to. It’s a contagious smile, for sure, because between that and my nerves, I can feel myself grinning in a way that feels goofy – hopefully it doesn’t look goofy.

‘You look nice.’

It is such a straightforward, easily offered compliment that I don’t know what to do with it. So I laugh.

‘Is that you practising your boyfriend game?’ I check as I fasten my seat belt.

‘No, you just… do.’

‘You look nice too,’ I tell him, trying to smooth out the awkwardness I just created.

He is wearing a plain grey T-shirt beneath a dark jacket, along with a pair of blue jeans – and shoes, not trainers.

‘Thanks,’ he says.

‘So, what do they know about me?’ I ask as we drive.

‘They know you work for Leeds,’ he says. ‘And that we haven’t been together long.’

‘Okay, so I’ll just focus more on what’s true,’ I reason. ‘And what do I know about them?’

‘I have a mum, a sister, a niece – and my sister has a husband; he’s all right,’ he tells me.

‘Got it.’

‘I know this is really bloody weird, so thank you.’

‘Oh, we’re so deep in it together, it’s all part of the same deal,’ I assure him. ‘Where do your family live?’

‘In Horsforth,’ he replies. ‘Oh, and we have a bakery.’

‘You have a bakery?’ I repeat back to him.

‘Yeah, it’s the family business,’ he replies. ‘So I probably would have mentioned that, if we were together.’

‘You probably should have mentioned it anyway,’ I joke. ‘Never met a bakery I didn’t like.’

He laughs.

The bakery is on a street lined with small independent shops. Eddy parks behind a row of buildings, in a small yard beside a delivery van with Neighbourhood Bakery emblazoned across the side.