While waiting for Jonny come back downstairs to our table, I leaned back in my chair, allowing my mind to drift. He'd gone to get a second helping from the buffet. Although I couldn't imagine how he'd managed to still have any room; his plate was stacked with different items.

Remarkably, he'd managed to fit a little of each of the dishes, which each smelled amazing.

They consisted of dim sum, rice, spring rolls, pork dishes, chicken rolls, rice noodles and many other savoury delights.

I kind of regretted limiting myself to the dumpling soup, even though it was delicious and steaming hot. Jonny, ever the gentleman, had been nice enough to share some of his dishes with me. From the few mouthfuls I'd indulged in, the buffet was indeed a great choice.

During the meal, we'd talked about work, school and a new TV series that was about zombie vampires currently airing. It was a dystopian show set in a highly commercialised version of America, where the population were divided up into two groups: The Zombies and The Vamps.

Without much success, Jonny tried persuading me to believe his theory about one of the lead characters; he thought that the whole dystopian world was a figment of bounty hunter Florian Darkwood's crazed mind.

However, I wasn't so sure.

I had a theory that Darkwood's half-zombie girlfriend Jocelyn was his long-lost sister, which Jonny promptly declared was absurd, but he didn't put it pass the producers to create something so messed up going by the previous storylines.

I forgot that we were on a date, feeling comfortable around him now that I'd got used to the situation.

Jonny was good company, but, of course, that came as no surprise. We'd been good friends with each other for six months, so I knew a lot of things about him, just like he did with me.

However, that didn't mean I didn't learn a few new things too. Mostly anecdotes about his family.

His parents were both Scots. Until he was five he'd been raised in Edinburgh, then his family had moved to Kent as a result of his father's IT consulting work. His mother worked as a primary school teacher.

Jonny didn't have a Scottish accent because he'd lost it, but he could do wonderful impressions of his parents and surly older brother Kevin, who was currently taking a weekend break to Prague with his wife Helena.

In one such anecdote, The Pollacks had been invited to in the highlands for a wedding and Jonny had sent me into spasms of laughter when he'd explained how a stubborn Kevin had delegated himself as driver of the expedition, which had resulted in them getting lost and having to stay in a sheep farmer's humble abode.

Helena had complained of hearing strange noises downstairs, so to halt her complaints, Kevin had gone out into the corridor in his boxers to investigate. When he'd got down to the kitchen, baseball bat in hand, he was confronted by the site of the farmer's wife chopping up a huge pig. The poor animal was leering at him.

The farmer's wife gazed at him with a blank, eerie expression, and he hurried upstairs and locked his room door. It had been a weird sight for him.

Despite his brother's unwillingness to admit it at the time, he'd been terrified.

The next morning Jonny had found out from the farmer that his wife was a sleep walker, which explained her actions during the witching hour.

All in all, I was having a good time that evening and I was glad that I'd accepted his offer.

A Chinese New Year poster stuck on the wall beside our table, so I took the opportunity to see which events caught my eye. There was a photo of a red dragon at a street festival with people lining the streets and it reminded me of the festival I'd gone to earlier in the year with a Korean friend.

We'd managed to get free masks from a bored black dude, and it had all kind of gone by in a rush of colours, shouts and drunken people, but, all the same, it had been a fun day out.

The waiter magically appeared with a jug of water. Since my glass was empty due to the dumpling soup's spicy flavours, I accepted.

As I was glancing at my phone, I saw that Louisa had left me a few messages. She'd just finished a piece of English coursework that she'd left to the last minute, as usual, and was now watching a scary movie with her younger brother James.

Have you watched that movie about the weird little girl who gets adopted by some dumb American couple?

I knew which one she was talking about because she'd tried to persuade me to go with her to the cinema to watch it last summer, but I was too chicken because the girl freaked me out.

Oh, you mean the one about the creepy puppet girl?

That's the one. Love it!! The girl is such a savage, appearing out of the mirror like that and trying to choke the cheating wife's lover with a pearl necklace. The beginning was shit, but it got better when we discovered her backstory.

I shook my head with a smile. They all sound the same after a while.

Chicken.

Am not.

You so are.

I began to laugh at her insistence that I was a scaredy cat, because she was right. I was the type who was terrified if I was left alone in the house and heard the doorbell ringing.

So what you doing ho?

I debated whether to tell her, but then realised that she was probably going to find out somehow, so I might as well share the gossip sooner rather than later.

I'm on a date now, bitch.

Her response was quick and I could just imagine Louisa hyperventilating at this piece of information.

SHUT UP OML. Who's the lucky guy?????? Am I disrupting you guys ;)

Guess.

Ohhh so you're playing coy with me, eh. Is it Darren from our English class? You know he's got a major crush on you. He tried to get your number from me ;))))

At his piece of news about Darren, I was astounded. Because our English teacher Mr Wozniaki was stubborn about his seating plans, this year I had to sit next to Darren Harris, a decent kid, but whose conversation was solely limited to video games. When I tried to bring up anything else, the conversation stagnated.

I would never have guessed he was crushing on me, but it went some way in explaining why he'd offered me a snickers bar during the interim part of the lesson.

You didn't give it to him, did you? I typed anxiously.

Uh no. You think I'm that much of a fool?

Noooo. Phew.

Ok. Who's the lucky lad??? I'm dying here.

I decided to spare her.

Jonny.

Ohhh, Jonny boy. Well, it's about time. I knew that dude had his eye on you, but you're just so oblivious ahahaha.

Shut up.

It's true. God, that guy is sexy. You're lucky that you work with him. ;)

As I typed my response and hit the send button, I jumped when I felt a hand against my shoulder.

My phone clattered onto the floor just as Jonny bent down to kiss my cheek, pulling away as I started to curse. He set his plate down; this time he'd limited himself to some noodles and spicy pork strips.

'Oh sorry, didn't mean to surprise you,' he grinned, patting me on my shoulder, grey eyes scanning the floor for my phone.

Red-faced, I tried to bend down, to retrieve it. Too late.

'It's fine, Jonny.' I tried to grab it off him, but as he glanced at the screen. I was the sacrificial marshmallow being poked in the fire.

Jonny's smile faded as he took in my response to Louisa.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully and glanced at me with raised eyebrows as though he was still chewing over what I'd wrote to her.

'You think I'm so delicious that you wouldn't mind licking ice cream off me?' he said, with a stern expression. 'Wow. Just wow...'

I groaned, covering my eyes with my hands. 'You weren't supposed to see that.'

After a few seconds, he began to laugh loudly, as I took a peak, I saw some of the other diners look at us in interest.

A man reading his kindle, laser-focused on his story as he'd been shovelling a mouthful of rice, paused to stare at us, and I smiled stiffly at him.

My eyes travelled back to Jonny, whose face had gone red from the intensity of his amusement at my comment, now at my embarrassment.

'Your food is getting cold, Jon...' I nodded down at his plate. I made to snatch my phone away from his side of the table, but he surprised me by grabbing my wrist and planting a quick kiss on the skin, sending a pleasant spark through me as though his touch were the first bite of a meal. The anticipation of tucking into the whole feast, or in my case, this guy was enough to make the rest of my body hypersensitive.

I was relieved when he released my hand saying, a tad mischievously, that he had a tub of hazelnut ice cream back home, so perhaps I could experiment on him later.

'I'll consider it...' I finally broke into a grin, deciding to embrace the situation.

'So, Jonny, how long have you had a thing for me?'

'God. What a question!' This question almost made him choke on his noodles. His eyes widened in surprise as though he hadn't expected me to be so forthright.

I suppose it was payback for reading my message to Louisa, but as he took a swig of his drink, I was anxious about the silence that followed.

It wasn't like Jonny to be so nervous around me, especially when he was so extroverted, nothing seemed to bother him. He was such a chill guy.

'Well, I liked you since that day you showed me how to operate the coffee machine,' he said, at last.

I leaned forward expectantly, urging him to continue. 'Really? But that was during the first week though...'

'That morning, I was pretty flustered because I couldn't get the hang of it and the machine was acting up on me. I'd made several customers the wrong drinks and was close to giving up the job, when the door opened and I saw a pretty girl come in, wearing a yellow dress with plaited hair.'

'Oh yeah?'

'I thought she was a customer at first. She went over to a table to talk to someone she recognised.'

My mouth went dry as I listened to him recall the memory. It was one I remembered too, but I had no idea that Jonny had harboured feelings from the get-go. I'd never thought of liking if as anything more than a friend, but it seemed that because I was on a date with him, alone, I was thinking of him as a potential boyfriend.

Like I said, we were as comfortable around each other as butter spread on hot toast.