It’s a Bad Idea, Right?

“Hey, you. Fancy coming for a smoke at mine tomorrow night?” he asked, during our third accidentally shared smoking-in-the-back-garden-moment, around four weeks later.

We did the dance that gardeners (as the cool kids say these days) do: a heavy sniff and a nod of the head. Yep, you’re safe with me, buddy. I’m a pothead too.

I pondered his invitation for a minute. “Yeah, sure. Who else will be there?”

“Oh, just us. You and me.”

I nodded my agreement before heading back to my flat, but I kept thinking about his invitation. Did ‘just us’ mean… a date? Was he asking me out on a date? Because I’d said yes… but if it was a date invitation, I’d want something more substantial than a smoke at his place. What kind of first date idea is that? It sounded more like a murder-in-the-news-tomorrow kind of date to me.

For the rest of the afternoon, I tried to come up with reasons why he’d invite me to his, alone, for reasons other than a date.

Maybe he’d run out of smoke and wanted to puff away on mine? Nope. He had only just met a man about a dog, so to speak.

He couldn’t be a plug; he runs out too much for that, then asks for some of mine, then replaces more than he ‘borrowed.’

Maybe, just maybe, he actually wanted to be… friends?

I overthought every single possibly scenario anyway, just in case. You know how us overthinkers get. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and all that.

Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about him. Did I actually like him enough for a date, if it even was a date. I’d learned a little about him by that point: no kids, boozed a lot, a tiny bit younger than me, and does “everything” in terms of drugs. I was like, yay, nay, ew, fuck no. He might be a bit cute and enough of a gentleman to carry my suitcases, but he definitely wasn’t relationship material.

But what about fuck buddy material…?

Okay, maybe he could be fuck buddy material. Like, short term. To scratch the itch, but nothing more.

I didn’t know much, but one thing was for sure: I didn’t want to go to his for a smoke, alone. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I didn’t like him. I’d already definitely overthought it. The date/non-date had already confused me. He was already doomed. All I had to do, was find a way to tell him that was cool, totally nonchalant, and didn’t potentially put us on poisonous ground for the rest of our tenancies. 

My prayers were soon answered when an unknown appliance tripped my fuse. I had found my reason to cancel. Unfortunately, I had also found a reason to call my landlord and ruin the rest of my afternoon. Who doesn’t love hunting through every single electronic to try and work out which fucker kept blowing the fuse? 

“Fuck it,” I eventually said to myself. “It’s time for a spliff.”

While I was puffing away in the garden, The Neighbour popped out. “Yo, still good for later tonight?”

“I’m so sorry!” I told him. “I’ve got a fuse issue.”

“I can help with that,” he offered. “I’m a chippie, but I can do fuses.”

Shit. Nope. That’s not what I meant.

I managed to put him off with little white lies about the landlord coming soon anyway, then promised to text him and let him know… since he had also just given me his number.

It was definitely a date request, wasn’t it?

Anyway, the landlord took forever to firstly, reply to my texts and secondly, turn up with the key I needed (?!) to find the fuse. I didn’t mind so much, though; the longer he took, the less I had to lie to The Neighbour about his maybe, maybe not date request.

By the time the fuse was sorted, I’d fucked around for a while, then made my first coffee in like, five hours, it was too late to pop next door. Thankfully.