‘I don’t know. I told him we can’t ever be together because we live together, and now he’s going on a date with someone else.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’ Lauren sounds like she’s impersonating a therapist.

‘Panicked! Sick to my stomach! Like I might die!’ I am shouting, and a woman nearby turns to look at me with concern.

‘Ohhhhhh. I see what’s happened. You’ve fully fallen in love with him.’

I give a yelp that is half laugh, half expression of horror. Am I in love with Jesse? No. Surely not. For god’s sake. Love is for when you’re thirty-three and ready for marriage, or it’s for people like Lauren who have the confidence to throw the idea of love around casually and recklessly, knowing there are many people out there who will say it back, or it’s for soulmates like Penny and Harper. It’s not for me. Not yet.

I don’t believe in loving someone until you’ve been in a romantic relationship with them for at least a year. Until you know everything about them and their life and all their secrets. Until you’ve seen them at their very, very worst, until everything has been dug through and examined, until you have all the facts and you’re sure about everything and there’s a plan in place for your future, until you are very, very sure they will not leave or hurt you. Love comes after all that, it’s the very, very last thing. It doesn’t just arrive in your brain suddenly like this. It has to build slowly and carefully, over a lot of time, with a lot of thought and planning and a lot, a lot, of hard work. Love that slips in, sudden and unexpected and easy, love that turns up on your doorstep like a surprise package—that’s not to be trusted.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Lauren says.

‘Nothing! We live together.’ I’m sort of shouting and pacing in circles.

‘Well, shit happens.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It will make things convenient. You won’t have to argue over whose house to stay at.’

‘You’re jumping ahead. I need to sit down and think about this for a few weeks.’

‘No, you need to go and tell him how you feel! Wait for him in his bedroom in sexy lingerie or something.’

My head is spinning. Is a plain black bralette with no underwire sexy? I picture myself hiding in his bedroom wearing this, and Jesse and Amber come home from the date, and I crawl under the bed in a panic and cower beside the mouse while they kiss and moan above me. No. This whole scenario must be stopped.