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I decided to wait a week. Don’t look desperate. Let her wonder.
I hung the shirt up with the napkin still folded in the pocket, so I wouldn’t lose it. Very sensible.
On Thursday my mum came round to help, which meant she cried about my ex for ten minutes and then did all my washing without asking. I came back from the job centre to find the shirt drying on the radiator, crisp and clean, and a little grey ball of pulp in the pocket.
I unrolled it on the kitchen table like an archaeologist. Eyeliner, it turns out, does not survive a forty-degree wash. I could make out a seven and a zero. Possibly a nine. The rest was a smudge.
So I went back to the Velvet Room on Friday to explain. Jade was on the stage. She saw me and her face did something complicated.
“Tuesday came and went, talker,” she said when she came over.
“I know. My mum washed my shirt.”
She stared at me. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard. And I once had a man tell me his wife was a hologram.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s probably true. That’s what makes it worse.” She sighed, but she was smiling a little. “I don’t give my number out twice, Owen. That’s a rule.”
She danced for me on the floor for twenty quid. She was gorgeous and kind and completely professional, and she never mentioned dinner again.
Ending 16 of 25: Through the Wash. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.