The Blind Date | ENEMIES TO LOVERS | 18+

I must have been drunk when I made the deal with my mum because there was no way I would agree to ten dates a month if I was sober.

I never should have invited her to Alina’s wedding, despite my best friend’s insistence. Weddings always brought out the worst in my parents, but it appeared Alina’s wedding was what pushed them over the edge. I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, whether it was the abundance of booze, or the innumerable nephews, nieces, and baby cousins that Alina and her husband, her childhood love, Jeremy had, but it had clearly proven too much for my parents.

They had made it their mission to get me drunk and agree that I would allow them to set me up with as many men as they saw fit. I was so wasted that I couldn’t remember what level of bargaining had gone down but somehow, I had agreed to ten blind dates a month until I found the perfect man – my mum’s choice of words, not mine.

That was a little over a week ago and when chilly, spooky October reared its ugly head, my parents invited their first choice of the month to Sunday dinner without telling me. Conveniently, something had come up and the both of them had disappeared before I was able to make up an excuse myself, effectively leaving me with Steve…Stuart…Simon…whatever his name was.

Anyway, Steve-Stuart-Simon-whatever-his-name-was, was the most boring man I had ever met. Perhaps I was being too rash but the date had gone terribly. First of all, he had willingly come to a Sunday dinner and refused to eat a Sunday roast. Who did that? Instead, he asked for a salad, claiming that he was watching his figure even though this man looked to weigh twice as much as me, and like he had spent even less time in the gym than I did. And since I hated anything to do with running and working out in general, that was saying something.

Secondly, he had refused to order a drink with me and instead, opted for whatever was in his water bottle. However, when I returned from the bathroom to find him topping it up with a small stash of alcohol in a white plastic bag that was labelled Tesco, I knew this man had an alcohol problem. The fact that he couldn’t admit it to himself, instead opting to hide it under the table like no one would notice, just made things worse.

Honestly, I didn’t wait around for the third reason to dislike this man.

What were my parents thinking setting me up with a man that clearly had an alcohol problem? I was all for not judging people, especially when they struggled with something like addiction but come on! I wasn’t looking to be anybody’s fairy Godmother, coming in and nursing him back to full health.

Well, that was my first date of the month and frankly, all eight of the ones after that were just as unpleasant and unmemorable.

Today would mark the tenth and final date of this month, and it was only the eighth of October. Don’t ask how my parents managed to squeeze in two dates in a single day.

Either way, this would be my last date of the month and after that, I would have twenty-three days of bliss before the cycle started again. By this point, I was very tempted to call in one of my single friends that my parents hadn’t met before and have him play my fake boyfriend to get them off my back, at least for a little while, but I knew that wouldn’t last for long. They would see through the charade eventually, and that would only result in them coming down on my even harder than before.

I knew my parents meant well, that they didn’t want me to be alone, and that was the only reason why I was going through with all of this. That, and I was the last of my friends to still be single. In fact, all of my friends were either married, engaged or been together so long that they were basically married but without the ring and paperwork. There had been three weddings in our friendship circle so far, and I had been a bridesmaid to two of them and a maid of honour at the latest one. Two more were engaged and I had already received those bridesmaid packages that were trending right now.

“Working hard or hardly working?” a voice called out from my right, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“As it’s this late on a Friday, it’s definitely the latter,” I laughed as I leaned back in my seat, dragging my eyes away from the dark screen, littered with multi-coloured font which refused to compile. It appeared to be a syntax error but for the life of me, I couldn’t see the issue, not even with the line number pointed out to me, I just knew I would fix it within the first five minutes of walking into the office on Monday morning which both frustrated and relieved me at the same time.

“Want me to take a look?” John asked, glancing at my screen.

“My ego won’t be able to take it if you’re able to find this syntax issue I’ve been looking for half an hour now,” I groaned, unable to stop my lips from turning down into a petulant pout. “If I’m still struggling with this Monday morning, I’ll ask you for help.”

“Deal,” John grinned and despite what sounded like the end of the conversation, he moved to take a seat on the edge of my desk. “Is it safe to assume you haven’t had dinner yet?” he asked as I shut off the monitor and powered down the machine.

“It is.”

John hummed quietly as he watched me pack my bag and reach for my coat. I stood up and slipped it over my shoulder. Once I was done, we headed away from our desks and toward the lifts.

“What do you say about getting dinner together?” John asked in a quiet voice. If the office wasn’t filled with pin-drop silence, I probably wouldn’t have heard him.

John and I had both interned at M. L. Keaney during the summer between our Bachelor’s and Masters, and then gone on to join the bank as Analysts after our graduation. We were both from two different universities, me from Queen’s College London and him from Dwight, located somewhere up north. Naturally, we drifted toward each other as we were the newest and youngest on the team by nearly two decades. Over the years, John had turned into a good friend of mine and an even better colleague to have by my side, but I just didn’t return the romantic feelings he seemed to harbour for me.

He had never come straight out and admitted it, and I hadn’t ever shot him down directly but I liked to think he understood where I stood on the romance spectrum with him: definitely at zero. There wasn’t anything wrong with John, but I just couldn’t view him as anything more than a friend at most.

“I would have said yes if I didn’t have a blind date tonight,” I groaned at the reminder, forcefully pressing the down button as we waited for the lifts to arrive.

“Oh, a blind date?” he asked, his voice dripping with curiosity.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “My parents are obsessed with setting me up with someone.” I purposely left out the part where they had all but forced me to go on ten blind dates already this month – and remember, it was only the 8th. I didn’t need anyone but me thinking that my parents were crazy.

“My parents are the same,” he paused to laugh. “Thankfully, they haven’t started on setting me up on blind dates yet but I fear it’s not far off.”

“I’m just hoping this is a phase,” I chuckled, making a show of crossing my fingers with a mock hopeful expression on my face. “What about you? What are you doing here so late?” I asked as we headed into the lifts, the two of us being the last ones in the team to head home.

“Same as you. My GUI build is broken and for the life of me, I can’t fix it.”

“What’s the error message saying?”

“Some dependency issue.”

“That’s such a pain,” my nose turned up, frustrated for him.

“Tell me about it,” he groaned, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Well, at least we don’t have to think about these stupid build issues until Monday,” I grinned, playfully nudging his shoulder on mine.

“There’s always that,” John chuckled and nodded in agreement as we headed out of the building. “Well, Saffron, I wish you the best of luck on your blind date and I guess I’ll see you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” I waved goodbye and watched as he walked toward the tube station.