I was at the pub with my friend Jonny, and I was talking about this guy I’m always talking about, to the point that it’s actually embarrassing. I told Jonny about the time we went on a long walk together, our elbows brushing through our big coats. How we didn’t speak for a long time, but then, just before my birthday party, he rang me when I was on my way to work out and we spoke for hours and he told me he was so proud that I’d managed to write a book, that the Josh character in it sounded really familiar... I was having so much fun talking to him that I carried on even when I’d got to the gym, leaning against the wall outside, chewing on my finger, glad he couldn’t see me smiling. I told Jonny about a time in a lift where we were hugging for ages and his hand slipped up the back of my top, how our noses grazed and we held hands on the way back to the rest of the group. How when he did come to my birthday, he came at 8 p.m., right when it started, before anyone else. I told Jonny about every loaded phrase, every gaze that lasted a little too long.
“Well, what the hell are you both doing?” Jonny asked, compelled by my story. “Sounds like he’s in love with you.”
I realized in that moment that I’d gone a bit too far, because I know deep down that guy isn’t in love with me. You can make almost anything sound like the truth if you say it in a certain way, pause in the right moments, and fast-forward through others.
After I left the pub, I thought about this a lot. There’s a real chance that guy doesn’t think anything is going on between us at all, that we’re just good friends, and I’ve made it out to be so much more than that in my head for years. It was like realizing I’ve been in a Christopher Nolan film or something—one about a woman who lives in another dimension she built out of her own thoughts.
I probably need to stop doing this, seasoning the truth, letting my imagination run away with me, but it’s hard to let go of this way of thinking when I’ve done it for so many years of my life. At my school’s parents’ evening, my teachers used to complain about how much I would daydream during class. One of them said I disappeared off to “Annie Land” in their lessons. I’ve always thought being able to do this was kind of like a superpower. I might be standing on the Tube during rush hour with someone’s backpack bashing into my shoulder, but without too much effort I can escape to a chic warehouse conversion I bought by the river, one with huge windows and a deep fluffy rug that my toes sink into, where some hot neighbor who looks like Harris Dickinson might knock on the door and introduce himself. I can hurtle through space to a podium where I’m thanking my mum and my dad and my agent, Florence, as I win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I think fantasizing in this way is part of the reason I’m a good writer. I’m forever embellishing things, taking small moments and building them out into something more. Doing so has attuned me to the most romantic elements of every interaction. The little crease between his eyebrows when he says I’m looking really good at the moment. Wiping off pastry that’s stuck to my lip balm.
I do think I need to leave Annie Land, though, or at least spend less time there. And I’ve been doing that naturally recently without even trying. I’ve been finding it harder to enjoy my fantasies now that what I want is a lot more straightforward. Before falling asleep every night, I used to dream about will-they-won’t-they romantic scenarios, someone who really likes me but is terrified by the intensity of his feelings, a love riddled with misunderstanding. But I don’t want someone who says cryptic things—who isn’t sure about me—anymore. The more I like myself, the more I want what I deserve: someone who’s really into me. Which is basically the most boring rom-com ever. There’s just one scene, and it’s us meeting, him liking me—then that’s it.
My friend Shon says that people tend to fantasize less when most of the major needs in their life are being met. I love writing, my friends, long dinners where we drink too much wine and stay so long the waiter has to give us the bill. I love my flatmates so much; when I come home and I see the kitchen light on, I’m excited to have a catch-up when I get in. I don’t have everything, but I have so much more of what I want.
I don’t even think I really want that guy to be my boyfriend, anyway; that’s why our relationship predominantly exists in my head. We have such different views on the world. His friends are so different to my friends.
Dreams are often much more interesting than what’s actually happening, but they can also make you miss what’s right in front of you, like the fact that the guy who apologized for knocking your bag in the café is quite hot. You can be happy about things that aren’t made-up, that are actually there—just looking at them and seeing them and enjoying them for what they are. Because sometimes, the guy in the café looking at you for a little bit too long is enough.