Genuine Hearts-and-Cards $$$-Level Restaurant Shit

You woke up early on the 14th of January and tried phoning every restaurant in the city, starting at the top (they could hear the poor on your voice; they could hear the poor in you shaking through) and working your way down the list (“Nando’s doesn’t take tables, Sir”), desperately trying to make a reservation; you’ve been looking at underwear online, at work, going all red and blush as you do it and trying to angle your screen down even though you work with your back to a wall; you’ve ordered flowers to their office, and a medium price-range chocolate box, and some assorted gifts as well, all wrapped in tissue and petals; you might even have gone wholly insane and booked a hotel room. You’re about £400 in the hole and you’re stressed. You’re going over to theirs afterwards and your overnight bag contains a shirt, trousers, fresh pants for tomorrow, a toothbrush, and then for some reason two bottles of massage oil, one of them very much threatening to leak and soak your work clothes for tomorrow in scents of lilac horniness. The meal was really nice but even though there was a set menu you ordered a bottle of wine thinking it was included and when the bill came you had to move some money around on your banking app to make it add up. You got a cab back because it felt profane, somehow, getting a bus home on such a day of romance, dressed in your finery, but also now you’re £20 down for that. When you get back the sex starts, obviously the sex starts, but during it you’re detached: you lie back with your head ramming into a pillow and make the appropriate sounds but in your head you’re silently totting up how much you’ve spent, even though there’s a tongue on your body in a place where it’s not normally on your body and this really is the ‘Extra Spicy’ version of sex when you normally have ‘Lemon & Herb’. The restaurant was about… and then the gifts were: hold on, how much did the gifts—… and then the cab and the new outfit and the massage oil, two bottles, your hands are sluiced with oil… and then the… you realise you’ve spent about two weeks’ rent on this shag. Stare at the ceiling as your body is rutted to dust. You can’t finish because you’re worried too much about your overdraft.

TECHNICALLY YOU HAVE WON VALENTINE’S DAY BUT YOU VERY MUCH DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE