‘You’re right,’ he said abruptly, causing my heart to plummet. ‘I don’t want to be friends with you.’ He stopped, running an agitated hand through his hair. ‘The more time we’ve spent together, the more I’ve realised that I can’t be friends with you.’

‘Right.’

Well. This was not the happy ending to my birthday I’d been hoping for. Was it too late to knock on Leon’s door?

‘I also…’ He cleared his throat. I almost interrupted to tell him that I really didn’t need to hear the ‘also’, but he carried on before I could.

‘To be clear, I also never wanted a – how did you put it? – a casual fling with you.’

Okay. Good to know.

Sam shuffled his chair around so that he was facing me, and it was about the most excruciating moment of my life. If my ankle hadn’t been so sore, I’d have kicked back the chair and scuttled inside, never to emerge again.

‘My feelings for you couldn’t be more serious.’

What?

What?!

‘As soon as you told me about that list, I wanted to be the person who shared your dreams with you. Made your dreams come true. I tried to pretend we could just be friends, but for the first time in years I’ve started thinking about dreams of my own. To be honest, I’ve driven myself half-crazy dreaming about you. I was irrationally fuming that I’d not met you in time, so you’d ended up starting the thing without me. In the end I didn’t say anything, not because I was unsure if I wanted to be with you. I held back because I was scared that I couldn’t be the Dream Man you deserved. The one you wanted. Last time I tried to be the answer to someone’s dreams, I ended up destroying everything. Plus…’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘That No-Man Mandate. I was trying to be respectful, until you looked up at me when we were dancing and all my good intentions were obliterated.’

He rolled his eyes before continuing. ‘Anyway. Once I’d stopped being such a self-pitying, love-struck coward, I realised that you weren’t like Carrie. Or my dad. You weren’t going to put all your dreams in my hands. To expect me to make everything perfect. You meant it when you said that you don’t need a partner to be happy. But… you also said that you wanted someone to share your life with. I came to the party with the intention of asking whether you might consider seeing if that could be me.’

‘And then you found me flirting with Leon.’