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is Tori.”
    We both stared at each other and nobody said a word.
    I could see Melanie was confused, and rightly so. She’d just introduced her fiancée to one of her friends, and now neither was saying a word to the other. However, if she’d peered inside my head at that moment, she would have seen a ticker-tape parade reading ‘OMG! OMG! OMG!’ circling round my brain.
    Nicola Sheen, my first love, had just shown up at my table and she was engaged to my crazy friend. I heard the crescendo in my ears as my heart sank to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. I wanted to stand up and shake Nicola, ask her what the hell she was doing here after all these years. And engaged to someone else .
    But I didn’t. I just sat and stared. Externally, I was quiet. Inside, I was exploding like a gamma-ray.
    After what seemed like an eternity, Nicola put out her hand. “Victoria Hammond ?” Her flushed face told me she couldn’t believe she was asking.
    Truth be told, I couldn’t either. I’d been waiting to hear those words and touch this skin again for over ten years. And now, here she was. I wanted to get up and embrace Nicola, feel her against me after all this time. But I knew that wasn’t social etiquette, so I stayed seated.
    “Nicola.” I shook my head. “All this time, and now you’re Melanie’s fiancée. I can’t believe it!” I didn’t mean that quite the way it came out.
    Or perhaps I did.
    Seeing her was just such a shock.
    When she touched me, it took me right back — right back to the library, my bedroom, my heartbreak.
    She nodded, still holding my hand. “Bit of a whirlwind, but yes, engaged.” She glanced up at Melanie, before refocusing on me.
    Her gaze burnt into me, and I had to remember to breathe. Nicola looked older, of course she did. Her hair was shorter, her features fuller, her body more solid. But she was still Nicola Sheen, she still owned those eyes and she still commanded that my eyes couldn’t look away.
    And of course, she had to meet me just after my failed date when I was looking like this . Thanks a bunch, universe.
    I stared at her hand, then at Melanie’s. There were no rings.
    “Haven’t got around to it yet,” Melanie said as if reading my mind. “Rings are next on the list, aren’t they, sweetheart?” She was gripping Nicola’s shoulder harder now as if she was trying to stop the situation slipping out of her control. Melanie had brought Nicola over here to gloat. Now it turned out, she was reintroducing me to my first love and I was pretty sure that vibe was seeping out of every single pore of my body.
    “I take it you two know each other?” Melanie looked from Nicola to me, then back. Her voice was too high. It scratched my skin.
    I nodded. “Went to school together. Best friends for a time, weren’t we?” I locked eyes with Nicola. My stomach dropped. Best friends, first kiss, could-have-been lovers. All I knew was the story we’d written at school had never been fully erased, nor fully written.
    “We were, but it feels like a different life,” Nicola said. And then she had the good grace to look away.
    A wave of nausea hit me as Melanie kissed Nicola on the cheek — it was as if I’d just been slapped. I didn’t even want to think about them having sex.
    I shut my eyes, and when I reopened them, Melanie had her concerned face on again. “You know, you’re welcome to come and eat with us if you’re eating on your own.” She looked like she wanted to take a jar of pity and smother it all over me.
    I glanced at Nicola, whose face didn’t alter, but I could spy alarm in her eyes — it was a look I was used to seeing when it came to her. Did Melanie know the signs yet? I doubted it.
    I shook my head. “That’s kind, but I’m just popping in on the way to meeting someone, so I won’t be long.” It was gone 9pm, so I was clearly lying. I smiled up at Melanie. Could she tell I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than have dinner with them?
    If she did, she