Page 27 of Stella is Starting Over

‘Biodynamic wines are made without isinglass,’ she explains patiently. ‘That’s made from fish guts. It makes the wine not vegan.’

‘Oh.’ I see. ‘Oh, okay, I get it. Sorry, I didn’t realise you were vegan – are there going to be enough options for you—’

‘I’m not vegan,’ she says pleasantly.

I decide not to ask any more questions about the isinglass. She orders a vodka Diet Coke and I order a beer.

‘So where did you grow up?’ I ask her.

‘London.’

‘Wow. A native, that’s pretty rare. What part of London?’

‘Godalming.’

Godalming is definitely not in London. You could maybe say London if you were on holiday abroad and a waiter asked where you were from and you were looking for a polite answer, but that’s the only exception. ‘That sounds lovely,’ I say, faltering slightly. I’ve got no material on Godalming. ‘Did you go to uni there?’

‘No,’ she says. And then she doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t ask where I’m from, or tell me where she did go to uni, or what better use of £9,000 a year she found as an alternative to going to uni. Instead, she takes some more pictures of the restaurant. Then she puts her phone down and looks at me, brightly. ‘I’m so glad that we’re doing this,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ I agree, perplexed.

‘So, listen,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to clarify that I think you seem great and I love the journey that we’re on, but I’m not currently open to monogamy.’

Clearly I don’t pull a cool enough face because she smiles. ‘I know this can be kinda scary to start with.’

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘No, not at all, I just didn’t – you didn’t – it wasn’t on your profile?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t disclose on my profile because men who are in relationships but looking to cheat take that as invitation.’

‘Bastards,’ I say, shaking my head, because I want her to be very clear that I’m not one of those people. I’m actually genuinely not one of those people. ‘So you’re, what, into open relationships?’

‘Ethical non-monogamy,’ she explains. ‘I’m open to having ongoing relationships with partners, on a non-exclusive basis. I don’t currently see myself having a domestic partner and obviously, no children.’

‘Right,’ I say, processing this.

‘Is that going to be a possibility for you?’

I’ve spent the last four years accidentally hurting women I really like because I’m not capable of offering them a future, and now this insanely beautiful woman has found a solution to my problem. Do I love the idea of me dating multiple women? Not really. But then maybe I don’t have to? Maybe I just date Florrie, and she dates whoever, and I’ve got a whole world of time to sort things out in my flat and work late and see my friends, and I’m not going to end up with anyone crying? Is this a new level of genius?

‘That’s definitely going to be a possibility for me,’ I say.

After dinner we walk for a while until she picks up a Lime bike and I claim I’m going to walk for a bit when I’m actually going to call an Uber. I kiss her, the bike between her legs, handles pressing into my torso. Her lips are pillowy, her body hard, she smells delicious, like none of the garlic we’ve just consumed has so much as touched the inside of her mouth. She gently bites my bottom lip, then pulls away and looks up at me through her eyelashes.

I’ve now got an extremely embarrassing erection.

‘I think we could make some really great memories together,’ she whispers.

‘Me too,’ I say.

I watch as she cycles away, not wearing a helmet, taking up half the road, doing everything that makes a cyclist completely unbearable, and I think only about how perfect she is.

Stella

Mum has made friends with a concert violinist from Poland, who lives with a much older man down the road from her, and has lost interest in hanging out with me – those few weeks over so suddenly – and Lou is on a work trip to Stockholm. The girls’ WhatsApp group carries on chiming like ever before, and if they’ve noticed that my replies are muted since the awful dinner at the start of my dating experiment then no one has said anything. I lick my wounds for a few days and then I accept that I’m inevitably going to take Lou’s advice, so I might as well download a couple of other apps that aren’t overtly hospitable to casual sex. I started new profiles, which didn’t mention having kids but also didn’t say that I was looking for no-strings-attached fun, and I had polite if slightly boring conversations with nice men about their jobs, their hobbies, their families. It’s amazing how much less traction I’m getting now that I don’t offer no-strings-attached fun. Before I’d get hundreds of connections per day, and men begging me to go to expensive bars and restaurants that same evening. Now I get maybe a dozen a day and they’re vaguely interested in doing something at some point, usually ‘a roast’ on a Sunday, which obviously doesn’t work with Rose.

But I soldiered on. I asked questions about the dogs in various men’s profile pictures and eventually, just as I knew I had to, I went on dates. There was an Aperol in the evening sun with Jamie, thirty-six, whose fiancée broke his heart by breaking off the engagement because she wanted to ‘travel more’. He cried halfway through the date and we agreed that he probably wasn’t ready to move on quite yet. Tom, thirty-four, who ran a fishing supplies company, took me to – I am not joking – a sushi restaurant and told me how much he wanted to move out of London, and Jim, thirty-one, took me to see some stand-up and then told me at the interval that he found some of the jokes ‘problematic’. All nice, decent, inoffensive men who I had no desire to see again. After each date we exchanged a handful of messages and then sort of let it mutually peter out. None of these men set my world on fire. But each one of them did give me a reason to put an underwired bra on, blow-dry my hair and leave the house. And with my friends increasingly locked into their long-term partners, Lou weirdly busy with work and Rose gone one night a week, I have to admit it was starting to feel like the closest thing I have to a hobby.

Tonight’s victim is Richard, thirty-nine, who describes himself as six foot (though they all do that), and into film, travel and cooking. He lives in Shad Thames, something he seems quite excited by because he mentioned it several times before I googled it and realised that it’s a fancy part of London, by the river. Richard didn’t initially do much for me. Not ‘my type on paper’ as people keep saying on their profiles, which is apparently a joke from Love Island. Gavin didn’t like reality TV so I have no idea about half the in-jokes these men are using, a bit like I grew up in some kind of cult. Anyway. Richard. He works in finance and seems like he drinks a lot of protein shakes. I was worried that he might be a bit. . . meaty for my tastes, but Lou was looking over my shoulder when his profile popped up and I was about to swipe ‘no.’