Evie's Job

31: Natalie

Natalie had lost most of her friends when she and Meredith separated, and it hadn’t really surprised her that she did. She and Meredith had the same friends, and worked with the same people, and Meredith had always played rough. Meredith had developed a cruel habit of talking Natalie down to everyone they knew, and of playing games with double-bookings to exclude Natalie from social events. In the end, for Natalie, it was easier just to lose touch with people, and most of the time she didn’t even really mind. She understood why Meredith was like this. Meredith felt better about herself and her cheating by blaming Natalie for what had happened, and the more Meredith told her stories, the more she ended up believing them, and not feeling as bad.

Natalie understood, but it sometimes left her lonely. It left her without a close circle of friends, they way she’d used to have, and no-one to talk to about difficult decisions. Which meant, right now, trying to plan an evening with Evie, she had no-one she trusted enough to ask advice from.

That made her a little sad.

She thought about Evie, and the best plan she could come up with was for them to go out for dinner. She had an awful feeling that might not be a very good idea. Evie was young, and restaurants might not be what people her age did, and Evie might not feel like she fitted in somewhere Natalie would usually go. Worse, a restaurant might be too much like work for Evie, too, and it would probably cause problems about who would pay, and it might even remind Evie how much older Natalie was, in the wrong kind of way.

Natalie wasn’t sure dinner was sensible, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She didn’t really have hobbies, and didn’t do very much other than work, and she knew nothing about what Evie liked anyway, so in the end she decided that dinner was best. At least she had a fairly good idea which were the better restaurants, and she had her assistant check for her to make sure.

Then she phoned Evie, feeling oddly nervous, and said, “Would you like to have dinner with me? Somewhere nice?”

“So not the food court?”

Natalie sat there for a moment. “No.”

“So not a burger?”

“Not that either, no.”

“Wow, so somewhere really nice, then.”

“Could you stop that,” Natalie said. “Please?”

“I’m sorry,” Evie said, but didn’t sound it. She sounded more like she was smiling.

“Well then,” Natalie said. “Is dinner going to be enough to impress you?”

“I have a funny feeling that it might.”

“You’re talking strangely.”

“I’m trying to be formal. Like you. Because you phoned to ask me out.”

“You’re teasing aren’t you.”

Evie laughed. “Yep.”

Evie hadn’t actually said yes yet, Natalie noticed. “So would you like to?” Natalie said.

“As it happens,” Evie said. “I would very much like to have dinner with you somewhere nice. When would you like to do this?”

Evie was still teasing, but Natalie decided not to care because Evie had said yes. Natalie thought about when. She wanted to say tonight, but she also didn’t want to look too desperate. “Thursday?” she said, a compromise. Three days to wait.

“Yep,” Evie said. “Thursday would be good.”

Natalie hesitated. “Evie, I’d like to go somewhere nice.”