‘Right. You’ll think of something,’ I echo, but I’m not confident he will. Maybe I should offer to go with him and help. Absolutely not. I’ve done enough damage to their date already.

He turns to go, and then turns back and kisses me quickly. My heart does a little flip.

‘Good luck,’ I say. I almost say ‘I’ll miss you’, even though I’ll be seeing him in about twenty minutes, but that feels like a lifetime right now.

He walks off, and I stand on the street alone, vibrating with the enormity of what just happened.

When I go inside Harper meets me in the hallway, grinning. ‘You did it!’ she says. ‘It was like I was watching a movie!’ She hugs me, and offers me chips.

I eat one and hug her back simultaneously.

‘So what now?’ she says.

‘I’m not totally sure,’ I say. They never show this awkward after bit in the movies.

‘Should we celebrate?’ she says, walking to the lounge room and flopping on the couch. ‘Should I call Penny to come over?’

‘No, no, that would be too much pressure,’ I say. ‘Celebrating I mean. Obviously, you can have Penny over.’

‘Are you guys fully together? Or just casual to start? Is he your boyfriend now?’ Harper says, putting her feet on the couch’s armrest and balancing the bowl of chips on her stomach.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘We didn’t discuss that.’ Her questions have made me instantly nervous.

‘Well, what did you discuss?’

‘Um.’ I chew on my fingernail, sitting down on the other couch and then getting up again. The whole thing is already feeling hazy. It was all so quick. We said we loved each other, didn’t we? Did we? Yes. Sort of. What else did we say? I am starting to worry I hallucinated everything. ‘We didn’t discuss anything. We just told each other how we feel.’

‘Okay. Good. That’s a good start,’ Harper says.

‘Right,’ I say.

‘You’ll figure it out when he’s back,’ Harper says.

‘Now I’m freaking out a bit,’ I say. ‘Are we together? What happens now? Who even says I love you before knowing they’re together?’

I’m pacing again, like I was on the phone with Lauren.

‘You said you loved him?’ Harper asks, eyes wide.

I nod. ‘Well, falling in love.’

‘Oh, that’s not so bad.’

‘But it’s still bad?’

‘No! It’s good. It’s great! It’ll be fine. Let me text Penny. She’ll know what to do,’ Harper says reassuringly, but I can see a tiny seed of doubt in her now too. ‘Have another chip,’ she adds.

I hold the chip in my hand and walk in circles around the room.

‘Maybe he regrets the whole thing,’ I babble. ‘Maybe I pushed him into it.’

‘You’re making me dizzy,’ Harper says as I do another lap.